cyberia23

I loved this movie when I was growing up in the '80s. I had Knight Rider - Road Warrior - and Transformers on the brain back then, so of course a movie about a "ghostly magical car and it's mysterious driver that kills people" was too cool for me to ignore. I think I payed more attention to all the cool car action than the story line when I watched it. I thought this movie was the coolest ever.

Now, 20 years later, I can say this movie didn't "age" very well and I can't believe how stupid it really is, especially the cheesy dialog of Sheriff Loomis (a.k.a Randy Quaid) and bad acting and directing of the rest of it. The only two characters I think are entertaining to watch were Skank and Gutterboy. I laugh aloud whenever I see the wraith costume, which looks like a paint-ball suit with elbow pads and a motorcycle helmet. Not much thought went into that design. I will admit that the special effects used in the movie looked ahead of their time, for a mid-80's movie, and still look pretty cool today - especially when the wraith car repairs itself after a crash.

Anyway, I gave this movie a moderate 5 out of 10 for nostalgia reasons. I did love it as a kid and I know if you asked me in 1986 I would have given it "20 out of 10" if it were possible. Today I see a low-budget sci-fi movie mixed with a 2 hour of "product placement" for Chrysler.

A movie designed to give you the feel of the cheesy drive-in horror films of the 50's, and director Ellory Elkayem pulls it off pretty well, although I probably would have enjoyed it better had they really made it cheesy. They should have spiders that were rubber puppets as fake as you could make them. However, these spiders are created with the latest and greatest in computer animation so their was no low-budget feel here.

For a movie made dumb on purpose, the plot was good enough... A scientist's collection of a bunch of rare and very deadly spiders gets irradiated by green glowing goo that falls off a chemical truck. They mutate and become gigantic monsters that go on a feeding frenzy through town, and it's up to a few courageous townspeople to improvise a plan and take them out. I believe their first victim was the scientist himself, so a nerdy kid obsessed with arachnids has to take charge in the plans to destroy the monsters before they get to the city.

A great film for DVD rental night (i'd never spend money to buy a copy) and I think the kids would really like it. Adults, might snooze, but if your into random scenes of humans being eaten by spiders you'll like it.