Spiders II: Breeding Ground

The first "Spiders" is one of my guiltiest guilty pleasures in the horror genre, simply because that movie is just too stupid NOT to enjoy! It had grotesque special effects, featured every single cliché of the freshly revived creature-feature sub genre and it never took itself too seriously, which resulted in a fairly entertaining & campy flick. Part two regretfully is the complete opposite of all that. It tries to be scary and original, which is a pretty bad approach if you're dealing with mutated spiders that look as gigantic as a house! Despite the remotely promising opening sequences (featuring an authentic pirate attack!) and a lot of gory killings near the end, "Spiders 2" is also a very boring film and that's really unforgivable for a post-2000 horror production. The sail boat of a young couple sinks during a storm but they're rescued by a huge cargo ship. The exclusively male crew members are insufferably friendly even though it's more than obvious that they're naughty villains, especially the annoying captain of the ship and the stereotypical mad doctor with the white beard. It takes another tedious half hour before it's confirmed that the cargo ship actually is a floating research lab where the sinister scientist feeds human bodies to over-sized tarantulas. The ramshackle old cargo ship forms an interesting location, but crap-director Sam Firstenberg nearly isn't talented enough to make full use of it. The CGI-effects are atrocious, as are the acting performances and it's really pathetic to see how everyone involved in this Nu-Image production takes this thing so damn seriously.

This movie starts out good, almost like a suspense/mystery more than a horror movie. Richard Moll is great as the demented ship doctor. After the first half of the movie it starts to go downhill somewhat. The story gets predictable and the spider special effects are not too great. The majority of the CGI effects look fake and outdated, and some of the spiders are obviously tarantulas in miniature environments. But, a fairly decent sequel offering which is better than most...

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!

Now, granted the 2000 "Spider" movie was campy in its own right, but still proved to be an entertaining creature feature, then this 2001 sequel was just an atrocity that shouldn't have ever seen the light of day.

I mean, seriously, what were they thinking? The plot and storyline for "Spiders II: Breeding Ground" was so vague and thin that you couldn't even get a bowl of soup from it. It was one of the most pointless storylines in a sequel in a long time. Sure, the movie was from 2001, but still...

The special effects were atrocious in comparison to the prequel movie that was made just one year prior to the 2001 release "Spiders II: Breeding Ground". That was just abysmal to bear witness to. Most of the scenes with the spiders were just laughably fake to watch as the CGI was something taken out of a 1990s computer game. And when they opted to put ordinary real tarantulas on model ships, that just tipped the iceberg and it all crumbled into idiotic means of trying to make special effects.

The characters in the movie were adequate, although suffering from being very generic, especially the scientist/doctor character, played by Richard Moll.

I believe this time in 2019 actually marks my third time of watching "Spiders II: Breeding Ground" since it was initially released back in 2001. And it will probably be my last time as well, because it is nowhere near as fun and entertaining and the 2000 "Spiders" movie, not even by a long shot.

"Spiders II: Breeding Ground" suffered from being a sequel, but was dealt the killing blow by its horrible storyline and plot. It was just unfathomably stupid and ridiculous. A word of advice, stay well clear of this 2001 sequel if you enjoyed the 2000 "Spiders" movie, trust me.

Most of the people who've seen and slated Spiders 2 have obviously never seen Spiders 1, as the sequel is practically Citizen Kane in comparison. Most of the actors do a passable job (including Richard Moll - an actor I actually recognised, the last thing you expect from a film like this), and the director even throws in some halfhearted camera tricks - brilliantly stupid shots include the heroine diving through a bit of flimsy webbing in slo-mo as if it were a plate glass window.

However, any and all attempts to build up suspense totally disintegrate when the SFX are brought into play (some of the CG shots near the end are laugh-out-loud hilarious), and, unforgivably, it also suffers from Boring Spider Deaths. It also has absolutely no connection to the original, though I'm not sure whether that's a good or bad thing.

Still impossible to recommend as a good film, then, but it's definitely a cut above the original (if not quite as funny).