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Spiders II

Started by akiratubo, December 18, 2002, 08:52:28 PM

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akiratubo

I picked up Spiders II because Jabootu.com gave it a good recommendation.  Unfortunately, it did not live up to that recommendation in my eyes.

Spiders II starts out well enough, with a mysterious dead body being mysteriously fed to a mysterious giant spider.  The spider has a mouth, by the way.  Spiders don't have mouths, nor do they "eat".  The spiders in the original "Spiders" all had a mouth as well and that just gets to me.  Having your insides liquified and sucked out is even worse than being eaten alive, in my opinion, but that doesn't happen once in this movie.

After that, some people are on the high seas in their yacht when they are attacked and kidnapped by black-clad assailers.  Refreshingly, the people put up a good fight.  They don't win and the yacht is destroyed.

Once that's over, the movie derails almost instantly when we meet our protagonists, a woman and her husband.  Both are solid 0s on the screen-presence meter and they aren't helped by the sound mixing, which makes their voices much quieter than any other sounds.  They don't have anything interesting to say, anyway.

They find the still-adrift yacht from the beginning just in time to run into a convenient (for the movie) storm that swamps their boat.  The two are rescued by a passing cargo ship.

What follows is essentially some gender-reversal schtick as the man sees all sorts of odd things and suffers plenty of abuse while his wife steadfastly remains oblivious to it.

To make a slow-paced story much shorter, it turns out that giant spiders are being bred on the ship in order to find some way to transfer their immunity to all known pathogens (the hell?) to humans.  The husband gets an egg laid in his gut and his wife turns into Ripley (from Aliens) to save him.

There are at least two big problems with the climactic sequence.  First, the wifey rescues hubby from the lab and they fight their way out, to the deck.  Only then does he mention that the "vaccine" he needs is . . . in the lab, forcing her to fight all the way back.  Second, how can a "vaccine" save a man from a giant spider growing in his gut?

Richard Moll is in the movie, playing the evil scientist, and he plays his role more seriously than he usually does.  He's not spectacular but I hope he continues in this vein.

All in all, not worth the price of a rental.
Kneel before Dr. Hell, the ruler of this world!

Chadzilla

Akira Tubo wrote:
>
> All in all, not worth the price of a rental.

I thought it was...two or three slimes, depending on my mood.

Chadzilla
Gosh, remember when the Internet was supposed to be a wonderful magical place where intelligent, articulate people shared information? Neighborhood went to hell real fast... - Anarquistador

Steven Millan

             Yeah,guys,it was extreme cheese,and wasn't as gory as the first one(even my mom loved that first film,believe it or not!!),but it did have lots of entertaining value,a heroine as strong as tough as the first film(a single theme in these films)and Richard Moll's all-too-hammy performance as the evil doctor who happily fonders over his horrid creations(as well as being the best thing about this movie).

Chadzilla

I will say this, the Spiders series is easily the best of the Nu Image monster animal franchises (when compared to Octopus 1 and 2, Crocodile 1 and 2, and the Shark Attack series, oof).

Talk about damning with faint praise! :P

Chadzilla
Gosh, remember when the Internet was supposed to be a wonderful magical place where intelligent, articulate people shared information? Neighborhood went to hell real fast... - Anarquistador

Haze

I rented this flick hoping that it would do what Crocodile 2 did to the first and that was be completely uneeded and wasteful enjoyment.

I got that. the movie is lightweight fun and nothing more.

Low 3 slimer.

Ken Begg

In defense of my positive review, I explicitly said I was grading it on a curve with stuff like They Crawl.  Even so, I thought it was a pretty strong effort, although they've *got* to get away from giving the hero/heroine a 'cool' thing to say when they kill the monster.

akiratubo

No need to defend your review, Spiders II just falls in a different spot on your curve than mine, it seems.
Kneel before Dr. Hell, the ruler of this world!