A familiar tale is given a familiar re-telling, a middle of the road monster movie which starts off pretty well before degenerating into the typical action-orientated scenario, where precise plotting goes out of the window, character traits are forgotten and everyone runs around in the jungle trying to avoid getting chewed on by the hungry bad guys. This colourful production at least has a good pedigree behind it: it's the second production from Brian Yuzna's Spanish Hammer-wannabes Fantastic Factory, and the direction is by none other than THE HIDDEN's Jack Scholder. As Yuzna and THE HIDDEN are both established favourites of mine I found myself looking forward to this movie a lot, the second from Fantastic Factory after the failure of FAUST and a more traditional B-movie story. I was disappointed for the most part, but the film is not without the odd moment of interest here and there.
After the opening titles – the longest I've seen, and accounting for about a dozen different production companies – things are looking pretty good in the movie. We get plane wrecks, an invisible UFO and even a weird-looking alien creature making a guest appearance before the plot begins for real. The characters are the usual clichéd bunch but with a definite Hispanic feel, with only four non-Spanish members of the cast. The dialogue is adequate for the movie and there are a couple of interesting characters amongst the native "redshirts" (the extras in STAR TREK who always died), token black character and stereotyped macho types. The first is the tetchy doctor, Leon, not a villain but sometimes close. Then we have Ravil Isyanov (OCTOPUS), once again amusing as the scientist member of the party, and Alex Reid (complete with gratuitous underwear scene) as the feisty female lead. Although I didn't personally care for Reid's sullen performance, it's certainly the best in the movie and miles above Chris Potter's bland male hero.
The film is colourful throughout and makes fine use of the jungle locations. The first half is reminiscent of the old-fashioned jungle adventure movie, complete with plentiful dangers and lots of big guys shooting machine guns around into the bushes like in PREDATOR. We're awarded with some cool attacks by mutant creatures – a huge centipede/salamander thingy, some horrible ticks, and warnings of a nastier creature, a giant spider. They also throw in a predictable nightmare sequence and some unwanted sentimental guff to keep it going. At this point, Yuzna and crew (including SFX ace Steve Johnson) throw in the film's highlight, an ultra-gory death involving a man's body getting invaded by ticks which then pop out of his mouth, chest and finally his eyeball in an ultra-splattery moment of graphic gore. Anyone who's seen Yuzna's previous TICKS will know what to expect – this guy truly loves bodily intrusion and destruction.
Once the spider makes an appearance, the film takes a downward turn and loses what little intelligence it possessed in the first half (attention to detail, personalities, realism, etc.). The latter half of the film consists of cast members getting picked off one by one by the barely-seen menace, which itself is a pretty poor creation. Aside from a gruesome moment with a guy being cocooned, the deaths are all quick and precise and disappointingly tame. They make up for it with gobbets of gristle and slime, so insect-haters take care. The end of the film is incredibly contrived and not all that interesting, as the indestructible spider finally meets its maker and the survivors stagger off into the horizon. ARACHNID is worth watching for the first half of the film and the truly nasty tick death scene, but needs switching off when the spider makes an appearance and it just becomes a tame embarrassment.
After the opening titles – the longest I've seen, and accounting for about a dozen different production companies – things are looking pretty good in the movie. We get plane wrecks, an invisible UFO and even a weird-looking alien creature making a guest appearance before the plot begins for real. The characters are the usual clichéd bunch but with a definite Hispanic feel, with only four non-Spanish members of the cast. The dialogue is adequate for the movie and there are a couple of interesting characters amongst the native "redshirts" (the extras in STAR TREK who always died), token black character and stereotyped macho types. The first is the tetchy doctor, Leon, not a villain but sometimes close. Then we have Ravil Isyanov (OCTOPUS), once again amusing as the scientist member of the party, and Alex Reid (complete with gratuitous underwear scene) as the feisty female lead. Although I didn't personally care for Reid's sullen performance, it's certainly the best in the movie and miles above Chris Potter's bland male hero.
The film is colourful throughout and makes fine use of the jungle locations. The first half is reminiscent of the old-fashioned jungle adventure movie, complete with plentiful dangers and lots of big guys shooting machine guns around into the bushes like in PREDATOR. We're awarded with some cool attacks by mutant creatures – a huge centipede/salamander thingy, some horrible ticks, and warnings of a nastier creature, a giant spider. They also throw in a predictable nightmare sequence and some unwanted sentimental guff to keep it going. At this point, Yuzna and crew (including SFX ace Steve Johnson) throw in the film's highlight, an ultra-gory death involving a man's body getting invaded by ticks which then pop out of his mouth, chest and finally his eyeball in an ultra-splattery moment of graphic gore. Anyone who's seen Yuzna's previous TICKS will know what to expect – this guy truly loves bodily intrusion and destruction.
Once the spider makes an appearance, the film takes a downward turn and loses what little intelligence it possessed in the first half (attention to detail, personalities, realism, etc.). The latter half of the film consists of cast members getting picked off one by one by the barely-seen menace, which itself is a pretty poor creation. Aside from a gruesome moment with a guy being cocooned, the deaths are all quick and precise and disappointingly tame. They make up for it with gobbets of gristle and slime, so insect-haters take care. The end of the film is incredibly contrived and not all that interesting, as the indestructible spider finally meets its maker and the survivors stagger off into the horizon. ARACHNID is worth watching for the first half of the film and the truly nasty tick death scene, but needs switching off when the spider makes an appearance and it just becomes a tame embarrassment.