Camel Spiders

A captain and sergeant (Brian Krause and Melissa Brasselle) bringing home the body of their comrade from Afghanistan unwittingly unleash several camel spiders in the Southwest desert that terrorize the people. C. Thomas Howell plays the sheriff, but is unrecognizable.

I'm an unabashed fan of Grade B creature features, but "Camel Spiders" (2011) is Exhibit A on how not to write a script. The movie starts with an action-packed sequence in Afghanistan (shot at Vasquez Rocks, just north of Los Angeles in the high country), but the filmmakers make the mistake of showing the oversized camel spiders right out of the gate, which destroys any sense of suspense. This isn't helped by the cartoonish spider CGI.

How did these creatures get so huge? In real life the largest species grows to about 5-6 inches, including legs (although a rare few might grow larger). They're nonvenomous, although their bite can be painful. Basically, they're relatively harmless to humans. So how did they get so malevolent and fatal? The flick never explains.

The story then switches to the American Southwest wherein the captain & sergeant are curiously delivering the corpse via an Army truck (from the Korean War era). If you blinked you would've thought they were still in Afghanistan. Needless to say, the creators should've made it clearer that they were now in the USA.

From there the story becomes somewhat entertaining for a Grade B monster flick with a dash of black humor. The desolate Lone Pine area locations are magnificent (located in south-central California, about an hour drive from the Nevada border, which I point out because the film looks like it was shot in Nevada). Meanwhile the cast gives their best effort, but the characters are underdeveloped and so you don't know them or much care about them.

Speaking of locations, the characters plainly say the events are taking place in Arizona, but the license plates all read 'California,' including the sheriff's car. Glaring mistakes like this don't make for good movies.

There are a couple good-looking females (e.g. Jessica Cameron as Ashley), but they don't make "Camel Spiders" worth seeing.

The film runs 1 hour, 19 minutes.

GRADE: D+/C-

Based on actual creatures that for years have tormented our armed forces in the Middle East, these creatures have now invaded the southwestern deserts of the United States. The Camel Spiders now freely hunt for prey, unafraid of any predator -- including man.

This film should have some redeeming value -- directed by B-legend Jim Wynorski, produced by legend Roger Corman, and starring my good friends Brian Krause ("Sleepwalkers") and Jon Mack... how can this go wrong? I do not know, but it did.

My biggest complaint about this film is that nothing in it is convincing. On top of the bad CGI spiders (which is to be expected from any Corman production these days), there is just no reason to believe the Middle East shots were in the Middle East. The Army uniforms do not look right, and it is not clear why they are wearing camouflage when not in combat.

The story is thin... giant camel spiders attack. When you shoot them, they die. There is no subtext, there is no intellectual theme here. Just a creature feature gone horribly awry.

This movie should be avoided - the fact that people made some effort with such a terrible movie is really regrettable - don't compound that by watching it!

However if you are going to persist with it make sure you have something else to do at the same time.

The filming is poor, so much so that blood from the spiders splashes on the camera lens on occasion, the special effects - i.e. the spiders - are very poor and the acting is to be honest a waste of the actors' time. They will hopefully get better acting roles in the future.

For any prospective viewers, if you don't like the fun of looking at really poorly made movies, then maybe go for a walk ... just avoid the killer spiders!

"Camel Spiders" was so bad it was actually worth watching just for the laughs. This movie has everything you could possibly want from a cheesy horror movie - bad CGI effects, laughable plot, incoherent story, unlimited ammunition, screaming spiders, bad acting, and much, much more.

The story in "Camel Spiders" is about soldiers in the desert somewhere in the Middle East, fighting someone, when a group of big spiders show up. A soldier is killed, and when shipped home, two fairly small spiders sneak into the box containing the corpse of the soldier. Then back in the US, the box is opened because of an accident, and spiders emerge to wreak havoc on the local residents.

Fairly average storyline that borrows heavily from "Arachnophobia" and "Eight Legged Freaks".

There were two spiders in the box, but suddenly there are hundreds of them in the area in the US, ranging from the size of a man's fist to a coffee table. How did they get to be that numerous and that big so fast? That incoherency in the story was just hilarious. Moving on though, while shooting at the marauding spiders, the people had endless amounts of ammo and never reloaded their weapons. And to make matters worse, most of the time people were not even shooting downward where the spiders were, but they were shooting in hip or chest level, that was just hilarious. And the camel spiders were constantly screaming. Yeah, sure, why not?

"Camel Spiders" was one of the worse spider movies that I have seen, right up there with the likes of "In the Spider's Web" and "Spiders 2". However, the movie is so stupid and cheesy that it is actually worth sitting through it, just to see what bad thing is waiting around the next corner. Just make sure you are sitting in an upright position while watching the movie, I was on a couch and I dozed off once or twice.

Iv never seen anything so poorly made in my life the story line was just a simple rip off of 8 legged freak really appalling as for the special effects you could tell it was all fake even the way they were shooting there guns in the air was really realistic(NOT) and the deaths were even better the way people died was really amusing cant believe they have made a DVD of this i would never recommend this film to anyone, if you want to watch a spider movie watch 8 legged freaks its better than this 99p movie if you do descide to watch this don't say i didn't warn you.

*Try and spot they guy who dies in the bathroom* lmao