The Giant Spider Invasion

giantspiderinvasion“I saw a star fall from heaven unto the earth and there arose smoke out of the pit, as if a great furnace… and out of this smoke came locusts onto the earth and unto them was given power…”

Gimme that old time religion! A preacher’s sermon means ill portent for a small Wisconsin town in The Giant Spider Invasion.

An electromagnetic space deus ex machina hits the town, causing spiders to grow to larger than normal proportions about twenty years too late for this kind of film to have been en vogue and with dodgy special effects to match.

Black holes cause “a heavy gamma ray shower…an incredibly fast drop in barometric pressure, and an amazingly potent ground level x-ray source nearby.”

Reports that seem “Right out of Ripley” appear, as well as other “freaky stuff from Northern Wisconsin.”

The local farmers aren’t overly concerned at first:

What in goddamn hell was that?
It was a shooting star.
Well, there’s nothing there now…
If you want, you can stand here all night lookin’ at nothing.’

giant_spider_invasion_movieBut then animal carcases start piling up and people start calling the sheriff when their electronics stop working…that’s when the local authorities like the town sheriff step in (he’s played by Alan Hale from Gilligan’s Island and cynically utters one of his catchphrases from the show in his first line of dialogue).

Observatory astrophysicist Dr. Jenny Langer is sprung into action via a healthy dose of 70s sexism: “I’m looking for your father, Dr Langer…your husband…maybe it’s your brother” (“no, I’m the doctor!”)

She makes urgent calls to NASA after being concerned about atmospheric peculiarities and Geiger counter readings.

That is when the ludicrous giant spiders appear, along with more ludicrous dialogue:

Looks like you could use a drink.
they found another body…
Another cow?
A human body…
A person?

(isn’t that implied?)

A grade-A 70s stinker, The Giant Spider Invasion won’t instill fear in arachnophobes.  You might be familiar with this 8-legged natural horror via Mystery Science Theater 3000.

** (out of 5)

[The movie is no Kingdom of the Spiders…please listen to our podcast]

Jonah Lives

Jonah_LivesIt’s tough when a competent throwback like Jonah Lives, garners a mere 3.9 / 10 on IMDb, with external reviews that are similarly tepid.

This is a loving tribute to the men who really catapulted us into horror headlong: the Holy Trinity of Horror, Messers Fulci, Argento and Bava. Sure, the gore isn’t gory enough but for a demon fusion of Ouija and the undead, this one has some life in it.

With a banging thunderclap keyboard soundtrack – some reviewers have said is reminiscent of House by the Cemetery – this Massachusetts production has so much love going for it, and it looks pretty good too, despite being dirt-cheap (and despite what others have said).

Now we’re not nostalgists, the way aficionados of 90s rap are quick to damn anything made now. We’re sent new screeners of all sorts: from the most pedestrian of black eyeball supernatural thrillers to tedious tied-to-a-chair torture epics. We know what we like but we’re game for it all. Jonah Lives is a decent blend of the old and the new.

So…if a Ouija board as a conduit to the walking dead is what it’ll take to get horror heads into the Italians, we’ll take it.

Four dudes, two girls, the former into touch football and cards and the latter not even a little bored on a Friday night, draw out the board and summon demons such as…well, Jonah. Here, jocks who read are a nice and unexpected touch (some reviewers demanded a backstory as to why they were so well-read, as if backstory really mattered one iota in horror).

Jonah runs amok and the rest is history, as are most of them.

Some fun un-PC dialogue such as the Planned Parenthood-approved, “Wrap up that sausage” and “I got this [board] from a gypsy!” There’s also some choice gallows humor at the expense of a few victims (“what do we tell his mom?”).

The performances are highly variable, which for the genre is par for the course — but by no means is this a ball shanked into thick rough.

And director Luis Calvaho is a green filmmaker.

This is his first feature in fact. It’s flawed, but pretty deft DIY.

*** (out of 5)