In the Spider's Web

I have a guilty pleasure for terrible, but fun horror films. This doesn't fit that as well as some films, but it was pretty enjoyable. There was tones of cheesy lines, ridiculous deaths, a totally not suspicious spider shaped cave. Is this film good? No. Will you have fun? Probably!

The spider cultists are amazingly bad, with spider web bags over their heads. But don't worry they some how donate organs to the locals. The spider venom juicing organs not thought about at all. It's all good. It's like a big operation with more than one group involved.

I'm sure it's a perfectly legit business. Oh and the cultist have matching nails too. It's glorious.

In India, the backpackers American friends Gina (Emma Catherwood), John (Cian Barry), Stacy (Lisa Livingstone), Geraldine (Jane Perry) and Phil (Michael Smiley) hike in the woods with their guide Brian (Mike Rogers). When Geraldine is bitten by a poisonous spider, the group decides to seek an American doctor that lives in the jungle in a tribe. Dr. Lecorpus (Lance Henriksen) treats the girl and while Gina, John and Phil return to the village in the civilization, Brian and Stacy stay with the native. They decide to visit a temple in the forest while waiting for the recovering of Stacey; however, they find a dark secret about the evil Dr. Lecorpus.

"In the Spider's Web" is a silly, but very entertaining adventure. It is funny to see the short clothes that Gina wears in the jungle, very adequate for a place with vegetation, mosquitoes, bugs and spiders; or to discover that spider's web is combustible, and a torch provokes fire with explosion; or that a person should shout in a cave while chased by men armed with daggers. But in the end, this movie was better than I expected and I liked it. My vote is five.

Title (Brazil): "Aranhas Assassinas" ("Assassin Spiders")

This film was OK for a film of its type if you do not expect to much. The Film has some good CGI of the Spiders and they look OK. Lance is a good choice for the doctor so he can do his made man thing again and is a good star name for the film. The rest of the cast are good for mostly young teen actors. The locations are good some island some ware but it looks good and makes a change from a lab or boring warehouse that you normally get in these kind of films. The Direction was OK if a bit slow moving. The sound is also good for Small movie and really helped the film along. The film is good for a small just don't expect to much from a small TV movie.

Every year around Halloween, my kids decorate our front yard and postal box with enormous cobwebs. I just want to say the woolen webs and ridiculous fake plastic spiders they use look a lot more realistic and frightening than the special effects used in this movie.

Spiders are scary creatures to many people, but truly good spider horror movies are rare. My expectations for "In the Spider's Web" were not set very high, but since it was released in the "Maneater" series, I was at least hoping for a fun and undemanding creature feature. Other titles under this label were gory and entertaining (like "Croc", "Eye of the Beast", "The Hive", "The Sea Beast", ...) and that's all I wanted from this one as well. Alas, the only suitable words to describe "In the Spider's Web" are dumb, tame, boring, and unmemorable.

Lance Henriksen is the type of actor who adapts himself to the film he's starring in. If the script is good, Henriksen can easily give a great performance. If the script is lousy, like the case here, Lance is also visibly uninterested. He stars as a supposedly genius doctor/scientist, specialized in spider venoms and living amongst a secluded tribe deep in the Indian jungle. When members of an expedition seek his help because one of them got bitten by a dangerous spider, it quickly becomes obvious Doctor Lance isn't very kosher.

It's the type of bad B-movie where nothing makes any sense. Characters that are presumed dead reappear out of the blue, the police are beyond incompetent, the supposed heroes are people you couldn't care less about, etc. The special effects are pathetic. Authentic big spiders crawl over the ground, but as soon as the fake specimen attack people, or capture and roll them in their webs, it's pure amateurism. Nothing to recommend here, it's not even bad enough to watch in a fun-with-friends kind of way.

Take a pretty run-of-the-mill film, add Lance Henriksen in - at least - a prominent role and it instantly elevates it to at least 'watchable' status. In case you hadn't guessed by the title, 'In the Spider's Web' is about a team of, er, I don't know what they were doing, but it doesn't matter, let's say they're scientists, or something. Anyway, a diverse team of spider-fodder are mooching around a north Indian jungle when one of them gets bitten by a spider. They take her to a nearby village where they soon discover that the creepy-crawlies aren't the only thing they have to worry about.

There are a few establishing shot here and there to denote that at least the production went to a real life jungle to get some of the footage. Otherwise, they seem to save a lot of money by putting a few plant pots around a sound stage and let the audience do their best to believe that the actors are really deep in a jungle. Apart from that, the special effects aren't that bad. The spiders are - for the most part - real (with the possible exception of the arachnid 'crowd scenes') and the worst effects in the film were when a couple of characters fell down a long drop and you could almost see the green screen behind them.

If you're already not a fan of spiders (who is?) then you'll find some of the scenes quite creepy and did I mention Lance Henriksen is in it? Sometimes he's good and sometimes he's bad. In this film he has long nails on one hand and a brother who walks around wearing a sack on his head making him look like a cross between the elephant man and an 'engineer' from the 'Alien/Prometheus' franchise. I'll let you guess if Henriksen's motives are pure here - either way, he steals every scene.

It's hardly a classic, but it's a decent enough little watch if you're in the mood for some sort of cheesy B-movie and/or you're a fan of Lance Henriksen which crosses 'Arachnophobia' with 'Temple of Doom.'