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ON THIS DAY IN HORROR - July 17th

"EIGHT LEGGED FREAKS" released in 2002

When an accident causes a barrel of toxic waste to land in a reservoir, it sets off a chain reaction of events that will end with a collection of poisonous spiders growing to monumental proportions and going on a monster-fueled rampage. Welcome to the horror comedy Eight Legged Freaks!

Watch the Eight Legged Freaks trailer below!

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In the quiet mining town of Prosperity, Arizona,  Sheriff Sam Parker (Kari Wührer) struggles to raise her daughter Ashley (Scarlett Johansson) and son Mike (Scott Terra) as a single mother, as well as deal with the town mayor, Wade (Leon Rippy) who plans to sell the mines and relocate the entire town elsewhere. Chris McCormick (David Arquette), whose father owned the mines before he died ten years ago, shows up and stands against Wade's proposition, and also begins a budding romance with Sam. Meanwhile, Joshua Taft (Tom Noonan), a local exotic spider farmer, feeds his "pets" a buffet of crickets he had collected from the local reservoir, which unknown to Taft has just been contaminated by a barrel of noxious toxic waste. The spiders escape their cages, devour Taft, and start to grow to an enormous size. As the giant-mutated spiders advance towards Prosperity, the remaining townsfolk barricade themselves in the mall. It's not long however before the spiders start to breach the defenses, leaving Sam and Chris to come up with a plan to destroy the rampaging spiders before the town of Prosperity is completely wiped out!

Deputy Pete: They're not aliens they're spiders mutated by contaminated waste!
Harlan: That's probably a more logical explanation!

Top:   David Arquette stars as unlikely hero, Chris McCormick;

Above:   Sheriff Sam Parker (played by Kari Wührer) prepares to 

fend off the arac attack!

Originally titled Arac Attack, debut writer/director Ellory Elkayem first conceived the idea for Eight Legged Freaks with his own short film Larger than Life; a 13-minute black-and-white, FX-driven homage to the 1950s Hollywood horror genre, featuring a giant, man-eating spider (Larger Than Life was also produced by Academy Award winner Jamie Selkirk (Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogies) and was funded with the largest grant ever offered by the New Zealand Film Commission). Premiering at the 1998 Telluride Film Festival, Elkayem's short caught the eye of Hollywood producers Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich who recruited the young filmmaker to adapt the short into a feature film.

Harlan: There's no way you're telling me that thing back there is from earth!
Chris McCormick: All right! They're spiders from Mars! You happy!
Harlan: [thinks about it] ... No.

Top:   Chris and Harlan (Doug E. Doug) get trapped in Harlan's trailer;

Above:   The townsfolk take shelter in the mall

Co-starring with Wührer, Arquette, Johansson and Rippy, was Rick Overton as the long suffering Deputy Pete Williams, Matt Czuchry as Wade's dimwitted stepson and Ashley's former boyfriend Bret, and Doug E. Doug as the eccentric extraterrestrial enthusiast and DJ Harlan Griffiths, who regularly broadcasts his crazy conspiracy theories over the radio. Scenes filmed inside the fictional Prosperity Mall were actually shot in an abandoned mall in Glendale, Arizona and Aunt Gladys's house in the kitchen and in Gladys' basement were filmed at the Manistee Ranch directly adjacent to the Mall itself. The film itself features primarily six different species of killer spiders; the Orb-weaver spider, Jumping spider, Tarantula, Trapdoor spider, Spitting spider, and the Australian funnel-web spider.

Larry: Dude did you piss your pants?
Bret: Come on we got to go! We got to get out of here! They're coming!
Randy: Looks like the only thing going is you dude!

Above:   This guy is about to have one terrible evening!

Released in 2002, Eight Legged Freaks received moderately good reviews. Urban Cinefile Critics wrote, "After rolling out the trusty old 'radioactive barrel in the lake' routine, Eight Legged Freaks flips through the pages of the monster movie manual - written in the 50's by classics such as Them and Tarantula - and doesn't miss a trick." Roger Ebert gave the film three out of four stars, writing, "The movie contains creepy but reliable cliches (sticking your hand into dark places), funny dialogue ("Please! Not the mall!") and bizarre special effects, as when a spider slams a cat so hard against plasterboarding that its face can be seen on the other side in bas relief!"

Top:   Debut writer/director Ellory Elkayem (middle);

Above:   Producers Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin

A moderate success at the box office, producer Dean Devlin began talks for a sequel, with director Ellory Elkayem and star David Arquette returning. However, since that January 2003 announcement, nothing more has been heard of a potential sequel to Eight Legged Freaks, with Elkayem going to direct instead two more low budget horror movies, Return of the Living Dead: Necropolis (2005) and Return of the Living Dead: Rave from the Grave (2005) - in these later movies, barrels of toxic waste (in this case the dreaded Trioxin 5) are again used as a plot device; although in this case to bring the dead back to life, not created a strain of deadly mutated spiders.

ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE:   48%

Also check out the original short film that inspired Eight Legged Freaks, 

the NZ film, Larger Than Life!

Click on the poster below that'll take you to IHdb's Facebook video section