Ice Spiders

If nothing else, the giant spiders in ICE SPIDERS look pretty convincing. A group of skiers run into a messed-up lab experiment, a bunch of black widow spiders the size of rottweilers that are on the loose and plenty hungry. The location photography is gorgeous and the skiing sequences are great, although they sometimes give the appearance of being stock footage. Pat Muldoon of STARSHIP TROOPERS stars, and legendary TV mogul Steven Cannell is on board as one of the besieged group. Beware: This is otherwise a typical Sci-Fi Channel job, so have a good stiff drink before watching. We do get snow scenes instead of the endless eastern European wood and field scenes of past productions for the channel.

All the spiders are different species and colors so of course they have the scientist say that they all basically look the same. Ugh. The only good thing about this movie is that a guy has his entire lower body eaten and an hour later we can still see him clearly breathing. The ending may be the worse ending of any movie ever.

This is what somebody runs into the lobby of the dead ski resort and shouts. This is classic stuff. Unfortunately, one doubts that it's intentional. The skiers who ski down the hill and stop in a heap so that the skittery spiders can attack effortlessly are like something from Monty Python. The Olympic team huddled behind the machinery and watching from afar is supremely atrocious. I want to laugh but it's too stupid. It's like laughing at a physically impaired person falling out of his wheelchair. No, Sci-Fi channel is way too cynical to earn any more of my time. This is pure tripe. Have they a single idea in their heads, or must it all be this embarrassing crap...? (Alas, rhetorical question.)

I've watched about 30 minutes of this movie, and it's been enough to conclude that the script is a piece of junk, the acting is just as bad, the CGI looks like an tenth grader programmed it in his afternoon study hall, and that the movie is a total waste of time and brain power. The only thing that could make this movie worse would be to cast Steven Seagal as the lead. Actually, he couldn't have done any worse than the guy who did play the lead. NOTHING about this movie is entertaining or of any value. I honestly wish I would not have wasted the past half an hour of my life watching it.

Spider food? Come on.

And, if you don't mind my saying so, I've been around. I've seen the legendary "Plan 9 From Outer Space," as well as a whole host of network TV films ("Locusts," "Vampire Bats," "Category 6," "Category 7," "Fatal Contact," whatever the sequel to "10.5" was called) and I stand here before you today to say that cable proves that you don't have to be a venerable broadcast giant to really, really stink.

The plot of the movie is that some government scientists engineer giant spiders in order to harvest their silk for Department of Defense purposes. The only problem is that one of the scientists tampers with the experiment, the spiders get out, and it's up to a fleet of B-actors to stop them or flap on the ground in a spot where a giant spider will later be edited in killing them trying.

This movie enters a qualitative threshold that I did not know could exist. You see, once a film reaches a certain level of "awful," the people involved start to notice (as evidenced by the tongue-in-cheek extra-low budget Adult Swim shows "Saul of the Mole Men" and "Tim and Eric Awesome Show Great Job"). Somehow, the cast of Ice Spiders was unaware of the lousiness of the film they were making. The only kind of television I've ever seen in my life - which has probably been shortened substantially by the cumulative doses of TV movies I've had over the years - that could rival "Ice Spiders" for quality are commercials made by regional furniture dealerships. Speaking of commercials, kudos to Orkin for their advertising during the world premier of this "film." The computer effects appear to have been designed with software from the 1980s, the acting is beyond awful - and I mean that seriously; some of this comes off like the actors were cold-reading the script - and the overall premise defies description. Thank God I taped it, because somehow I just know that this film can only be enhanced by VHS static lines.