Spiders II: Breeding Ground

There's a movie channel in LA called 'B' Mania. You can see some of the worst 'fun' movies on it. They wouldn't dare show this one. I expected Richard Moll to lapse in his 'Bull' character at any moment. The CGI is bad, the acting is bad, the movie is bad. Period.

I had read about this film in Fangoria, so I was really looking forward to seeing it and my local video store had it for rent, so I figured why not check it out. I was severely disappointed. Judging from the trailer the film had a lot going for it and I knew going into it that it was a low budget film, so I was willing to cut it some slack and even then it has real problems; the major one being the film was too ambitious for its budget and having had a better budget probably could have better than Eight Legged Freaks.

Im not going to be as rough as some reviewers are on this film, but I wouldnt recommend it. Its major fault was the SFX, which considering the title are the cornerstone of a movie like this and considering the low budget, it did some some good effects, but for every good SFX shot, there was 2 bad ones. The film had a great atmosphere in the claustrophic confines of a ship and spiders running loose but never managed to create any tension or a feeling of claustrophobia. Also why they made computer generated shots of stuff like a wrecked ship or even the cargo ship itself is beyond me, because thats some of the stuff that really looked fake esp. when they had long lingering shots. The interiors sets were believable probably because they actually filmed it on an old ship. I was really expecting some good gore in this film and it even failed on that level, the spider attacks were just consisted of their fangs impaling their victims. The major fault of the film though, which many had pointed out, was the script and even for a film like this you expect something other than ,"Spiders are Carninvores, you know that?". No kidding you mean flies and insects are vegetable matter? Are people stupid enough to believe that a cut on the neck of the lead actor that required stitches would need as much medical attention as it got in the movie? The acting was passable but still left something to be desired.

The bottom line is that this film isnt really worth your time or money and its a shame, because with a better script and more money it could have been at least entertaining sci-fi splatter film.

OK, there are some mad scientists entering a ship and forcing the crew and some more good scientists to experiment with spiders until they become large, blown-up rubber monsters running amok and diminishing the crew one by one until the final showdown.

What could have been a horror classic in 1931 and a trash pearl in 1961 is just a joke in 2001. You wonder how producers can do such a movie in this decade... I really like all kind of trash movies like this, but the story is to thin, the acting just wooden, with only non-screaming heroine Stephanie Niznik showing some acting abilities and sex appeal, and a really dull direction.

The worst of this movie with the great title "Spiders 2" (where have been the first spiders?) is the lack of special effect. While it's rather easy to produce great special effect with today's computer technology, you can see very special effects that where found somewhere beyond the sea probably... a stupidly looking rubber spider that has already been fighting against your Action Man figures back in the seventies, enlarged and dubbed over some ocean pictures... nonsense explosions, unrealistic and really stupid stunts, and smaller or bigger plastic spiders being dragged and pushed all around the burning ship.

You wonder if the actors and crew were on dope all the time, or if they had great fun and a big laugh doing this picture... this could be a logical explanation for this baddie that otherwise has no real reason to exist, except if you're looking for another cheap movie for a retro trash film night with your friends a some cans of lager beer, next to, let's say, Van Damme's "The Order" and "Maura's Sexual Fantasies"... in fact, all these three movies were running on German TV last weekend. Have fun!

let's see now... Spiders 2... ummm.... the special effects are just silly..... the dialogue is wooden, weird, and hard to take seriously... the mad scientist acts and talks and looks like a Saturday morning cartoon character... the story has lots of plot and logic loopholes, verging on the ridiculous....

the story is predictable and is very very very slow moving -- we can all see where it's going, so why can't the characters?

actually you could save this movie by taking out virtually all of the dialogue -- not a word of it is necessary --- then taking out redundant and unnecessary scenes -- and bringing in a better cinematographer with more knowledge about dramatic lighting. It would work okay as a silent movie, about ten or fifteen minutes long.

The biggest problem with this movie is its simplistic dialogue. One example is when the made scientist gloats "Spiders are carnivores. Did you know that?" It makes one wonder if the writers added that for the 3-year-olds who may be watching. It also lacks creativity and fails to create any suspense or scares. The actors also fail to generate any sense of urgency. Lines such as, "This is creepy" are spoken in the same tone you might use to say "We need milk." If the characters on screen are not afraid of their situation, why should the audience be scared? The spiders themselves never seem very real. There is no sense of scale or consistency. (One spider chasing the heroine seems to change size constantly--almost as if the animator couldn't get it quite right) They have a trumpeting roar that sounds suspiciously like an elephant and which detracts from any realism they may have had. (When was the last time you heard a spider say anything?) If you can see it for free, give it a try. But don't waste your money on this film.