oneguyrambling

Despite the fact that David Arquette is the quote-unquote 'star' of this – or any – film and that his name appears before the main title, 8 Legged Freaks is a fairly entertaining albeit instantly forgettable giant creep-crawly romp.

In the small town of Perfection *AHEM Tremors fans* Prosperity, Arizona, a toxic spill in the local water near a spider farm (!) has resulted in a new batch of 8 legged uh-ohs. This means Chris (Arquette) has picked a bad time to come home for the first time in over a decade, even if is for the noble intent of stopping Big Business from trying to buy out the town for some initially unknown (but assuredly fiendish and underhanded) reasons.

This leads to Chris, a young Scarlett Johansson, B movie queen Kari Wuhrer and some bug-loving kid to join forces against an incredible array of over-sized arachnids – 95% of them the CGI variety – who after they announce themselves to the sleepy town jump, crawl, scuttle and leap after, on and over the local population.

It's silly, inane, implausible and full of crappy effects and even worse acting, and the sound effects have to be heard to be (incredulously) believed. Just about everything that you could ask for in your B Movie creature feature really.

The only major drawback to Eight Legged Freaks is the dodgy CGI, this could have been Piranha 3-ish with today's computers and a few better jokes. That aside if you're after a decently atrocious $1 weekly rental you could do a lot worse, if only to see that even at a young age Scar-Jo already had a fair amount of what has made her so famous today. (I looked, she was 18 here, so it's merely creepy, not borderline illegal.)

Final Rating – 5.5 / 10. David Arquette's best film is a silly el-cheapo bug flick? That sounds about right to me.

House of the Devil was an 80 minute build up followed by crushing disappointment, like a virgin who has saved his pennies and after an hour in the waiting room finds he has arrived at an S&M club to have his testicles smacked around.

Despite my lone disapproving opinion director Ti West received great critical acclaim for his throwback aesthetic, long silent scenes and creative camera angles – things my ADD mind found altogether boring.

And because a review cannot betray the ending no-one got to point out that it sucked.

Now a couple years on Ti West brings us The Innkeepers, and even though this latest effort is a long way from great, it boasts a little more in the (still quite slow) build up, and actually has an ending worth hanging around for.

Credible, over-rated Ti West, meet Ti(me to get paid) West.

An elegant but outdated hotel is celebrating its one hundredth anniversary. By closing its doors permanently. With only one long weekend remaining as a functioning entity the hotel – the Yankee Pedlar – is running on a skeleton crew of two staff, Luke and Claire. The duo are two typical 20ish employees counting down the clock and giving the bare minimum effort.

When not winding up the few guests and napping in any of the many unoccupied rooms Luke attempts to cash in on rumours that the hotel is haunted by a female guest alleged to have died horribly in the hotel last century. He runs a website examining the ghostly possibilities and has Claire patrol the hotel of a night time with equipment designed to take readings and identify spectral phenomena.

One of the precious few clientele is an ex-actress – now faith healer / psychic – who warns Claire that she might be better served twiddling her thumbs as the minutes wind down.

Those who seek trouble are often the first to find it.

In a welcome departure from The House of the Devil, which from memory expected me to sit through 80 minutes of bleh before it rewarded my patience with meh, The Innkeepers at least tries sporadically to wake you up. In true commercial horror form though the first four scares are cheap ones, a couple of 'Boos', a dream sequence and essentially a viral email that has been doing the rounds for years in various incarnations.

But while the slow build is interspersed by some clichéd moments at least this film does more than replicate the 70s, more than that it gets to a destination that makes it worth the journey.

It must be hard to make a ghost story, unless you are a true believer in the paranormal it is easy to write off the genre as silly – what with the wailing and people in sheets and all. If you try too hard for a scare a minute you fall into the Insidious trap, only exacerbating the silliness, don't do enough and you're boring.

For the most part The Innkeepers toes the precarious line well enough, it builds tension frequently yet wisely releases the audience just a little through minor scares or moments of levity. In truth there is really only one decent scene in the film where the tension and trepidation are earned, at that point I squirmed on the couch just a little.

That scene alone warrants a look at The Innkeepers. There are thousands of horror films around with most ranging from 'totally sucks' to 'mostly sucks', The Innkeepers has flaws and doesn't make a whole lot of sense at times, but it isn't boring and for those few minutes you are genuinely nervous.

That's why we watch horror isn't it?

Final Rating – 6 / 10. I would like to take the opportunity to thank Ti West for embracing the… ummm… what is it again…? … oh yeah money. Welcome back Ti.

They don't make Westerns like they used to… and by that I mean they just don't make many Westerns period these days. Rotten Tomatoes lists only 33 Westerns in the dubbos with enough reviews to get a rating, and basically half of those were deemed rotten (the chicks with guns flick Bandidas inexplicably gets a Fresh rating, Shanghai Noon is another!).

My Dad grew up on Westerns, still watches pretty much exclusively Westerns and was the only reason behind me plucking Appaloosa from the video shop shelf recently. Having less than 2 films per year in his favourite genre must suck – and by reckoning half of those weren't true "Black hat – White hats facing down at sunup" Westerns.

Less than one a year… Appaloosa was one of the 17 good ones.

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As Appaloosa adheres to the Western tradition of keeping things simple the story has two tough looking gents a-riding into the town of Appaloosa one day as the previous sheriff is now feeding the worms.

These two gents have been hired by the town's big-wigs to keep the peace and basically protect the citizens from a ruthless local rancher Randall Bragg (Jeremy Irons) and his men who exhibit – to coin a phrase – outlawish tendencies.

Virgil is a quick draw and a quick thinker, his main asset is perhaps the fact that he knows that while quick he can't take down too many guns at once, and while a thinker he might not be the most intellectual man in the wild west. To remedy this he rides with Everett, who is similarly quick on the draw but carries a big "Don't argue" shotgun and fills in the gaps in Virgil's vocabulary when called upon. The duo set upon restoring peace to the sleepy town, firstly by letting Bragg and minions know that they aren't having things their own way from now on.

A tenuous stalemate comes to pass for a time… then a woman arrives to ruin it.

My only issue with this film is the fact that the woman who has arrived into Appaloosa by train, Allison French, is played by Renee Zellweger – I know it must have been said but she looks like she's just swallowed a whole lemon at all times – and it's only worse when she *GULP* smiles. With a look like that I am genetically predisposed to detesting every noise or line that she emits thereafter, and I did here. (Even my Dad said "I wouldn't get shot for her" at one point.)

Allison quickly realises that Virgil is the Top Gun in Appaloosa and hooks her claws into him. Bragg equally swiftly works out Virgil's new fugly weakness and arranges for Allison to be taken, and Virgil inexplicably doesn't just decide "Phew, I nearly married it" but decides to head after them.

And then the film proceeds as cowboy films must, with saddle sores, gruff terse dialogue and quick shootin'. To describe more would be a disservice to the film, suffice to say Appaloosa is an entertaining film, the action is scarce on the ground but carries an impact when it arrives, the effortless interplay between chatty Virgil and the more reticent and thoughtful Everett is well written and often amusing, and Irons creates a solid bad guy as Randall Bragg whose larger than life demeanour steals each scene that he appears in.

Being born a little late to fully get into the Western genre I must admit I seldom look them up, but if I see a trailer that looks gritty and realistic I will pick them up at the video shop, if they were all of the calibre of Appaloosa and weren't released so far apart this might happen more frequently.

Final Rating – 6.5 / 10. Westerns don't come along too often these days, good ones even less frequently. This is an solid, efficient and entertaining Western that manages to overcome Zellweger's lamentable cat's a*se of a face.