Camel Spiders

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!

I had relatively low expectations going into this one (what do you expect with a $500k budget?!), so I'm happy to report I was pleasantly surprised to find a low-budget, fun, monster movie buried in this straight-to-DVD feature.

Granted, there are no groundbreaking special effects or acting, but the writing and story was not nearly as bad (i.e. boring) as some of the other current movies in this league. Paraphrasing, my favorite line: "If sarcasm worked as well as bullets on these bugs, I'd contact you first." My biggest complaint is with the bad CGI effects. Money should have been better spent on spider puppets and buckets of fake blood. The CGI looks like something 15-year-olds create for a YouTube video.

In the spirit of Tremors and Eight Legged Freaks, Camel Spiders should be remembered has one of the better low-budget, Sci-Fi Channel feature.

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-

So, I had mistakenly mixed a batch of Mio energy drink instead of just normal, I don't know, fruit punch or whatever. So, I was up all night. You know you've hit rock bottom when you're watching Syfy at 3:00 in the morning. But there I was, thinking to myself, "Self, I was in Iraq. I've seen lots of camel spiders. Let's give this movie a look." Oh my, where to begin? So many uniform deficiencies and tactical shortcomings, it drove this Army lifer crazy. There's a term called 'flagging' in which one Soldier points his weapon at another. I found myself saying, "Flag. Flag. Flag Flag. Flagflagflagflagflagflagfl.... Oh why am I bothering?" Staff Sergeant whatshernameasthoughitmatters' weapon has had the barrel removed in some shots, but not in others. Sometimes she sports mirrored sunglasses (Not authorized in uniform, by the way.) sometimes they're black aviators. In one shot, the crew didn't even care enough to position themselves so as not to appear in the reflection of her mirrored glasses.

Camel spiders aren't particularly aggressive. The mostly want to be left alone. The idea of them attacking is ludicrous.

The special effects were roughly on par with Tremors 3, that is, about what you could render with a processing power of a Zune.

The acting was elementary... in that it was about what you'd expect from elementary school students.

They didn't seem to bother constructing any sets, just used some abandoned buildings.

I sat through Birdemic. The un-rifftrax version of Birdemic. At least in that movie we got to see Whitney Moore in her underwear, a sight worth the cost of admission, let me tell you. We don't even get that in this movie.

The muzzle blasts were obviously added in post.

Well, enough of all this. This movie isn't even bad in a funny way in the manner of Birdemic. These people seemed to be actually aiming for high drama. Oh boy do they miss. This is a movie that you have on while you're doing something else... in another room.... wearing headphones.

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