PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
On the kinetic level these three
arachnophobic outings are decent timewasters, though the spider-FX
are ordinary and the scripts show no real fascination with the
cosmological nature of spiders (though one mad scientist comments
that the critters don’t get a lot of diseases).
Though all of the films take place on
present-day Earth, the shadow of ALIEN engulfs all three of them. The
first film asserts that some American intelligence-operation got
ahold of alien DNA and for some reason decided to crossbreed the
genetic material with that of Earth-spiders. Naturally, this results
in some really big bugs who can’t be contained by secret scientific
installations—or, for that matter, an experimental station on a
space shuttle, where the spiders take over, laying their eggs in one
astronaut before the whole megilla crashes to Earth. The
initelligence-spooks take custody of the evidence, but local
alien-conspiracy reporter Marci (Lana Parrilla) tips to the operation
and infiltrates the installation with two other aides. The aides are
of course there to be Red Shirts, but Marci makes friends with a
friendly spook who helps her against the nasty one. After an
hour-and-a-half of derivative ALIEN hijinks, the climax does deliver
an impressive scene with Marci, reporter-turned-Rambette, destroys a
King Kong-sized spider with a bazooka.
Maybe the production company blew their
budget for two films on the first one, because SPIDERS 2 stays
confined to a couple of ships out in the briny blue ocean. Young
marrieds Jason and Alexandra have problems with their boat, and get
ostensibly rescued by a bigger craft, one that has its own mad doctor
(Richard Moll, always a welcome villainous presence). I didn’t
catch any linkage between this rather limited experimental endeavor
and the more ambitious one from the first film, but I suppose someone
might’ve harvested a few alien spider-eggs for fun and profit.
Jason becomes suspicious of the doctor and the rest of the crew, but
for half the film Alexandra just thinks he’s being paranoid. She
finally does have to stand by her man, not least because Crazy Doc
wants to make him spider-bait, and she gets the honor of blowing away
the last surviving arachnid at the climax.
We’re back to big, quasi-governmental
conspiracies for SPIDERS 3D, and this second sequel had much better
production values than the first one. However, though most of the
action takes place on planet Earth, once again it all starts with a
space station, though it’s a Russian one, crashing to Earth in the
vicinity of the Big Apple. Some of the alienated spiders find their
way into New York’s subway system and start looking for victims, so
American spooks shut down the subway, much to the chagrin of subway
administrator Jason Cole (Patrick Muldoon). When Jason investigates
the mysterious happenings, both he and members of his family are
targeted for abduction by the military, who all apparently report to
another mad doctor, this one by the name of Darnoff. Apparently
Darnoff, being Russian, had some extra intel on the Russian
experiment—which may or may not have been connected with the one
from the first flick—and he’s just salivating for the chance to
breed spider-human mutants. The conspiracy aspects of the film are
more entertaining than all the lame giant-spider tropes, and the
performances are generally better, though Darnoff registers as the
least interesting of the mad scientists.
Of the three films, only SPIDERS
qualifies for the combative mode, but the series as a whole would be
subcombative.
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