Phillip Ellis
My Rating ****
Genre – Action B – Movie
Run Time – 1 Hr 20 minutes
Year- 2013
Certificate – PG13
Country – U.S.A.
Awards – Wins & Nominations
= = = = = = = = = = = = = =
So Big Ass Spider and as with most B-Movies the title should give away the movie and away you go as tongue-in-cheek horror, special effects, silliness and mayhem splatter the screen in front of you. There is indeed a big ass spider in this.
It’s from a director called Mike Mendez, who has been doing this stuff for decades, judging by his IMDB profile, this his most successful film to date, making number 123 in the top 500 movies of 2013 on Flickchart.com, not the most revered movie chart listing out there but the best for films that the general public actually want to see. You should check it out.
===Cast===
Greg Grunberg … Alex Mathis
Lin Shaye … Mrs. Jefferson
Ruben Pla … Carl The Mortician
Alexis Kendra … Nurse Lisa
Lombardo Boyar … Jose Ramos
Bob Bledsoe … Director Harris
Ray Wise … Major Braxton C. Tanner
Clare Kramer … Lt. Karly Brant
Patrick Bauchau … Dr. Lucas
===Plot===
We meet stocky Los Angeles bug exterminator and general ladies man Alex Mathis (Greg Grunberg), helping a frisky elderly woman with a rodent problem in her house, but bitten by a poisonous spider in the process and so treated at hospital. Deep down below in the same hospital a mortician is bitten by a foot long bodied spider that crawls out of a dead body which has just arrived at the morgue. When Alex finishes chatting up the pretty nurse, and learning of the spider problem, Alex offers to take care of the spider, if they clear his hospital bill, which they agree.
José Ramos (Lombardo Boyar), a hospital security guard, offers to help Alex as they head to the morgue. Alex figures the spider has escaped into an air vent in search of warmer and more humid climes. Being committed to his job Alex squeezes in the vent in pursuit of the arachnid. But he may be too late as the spider has found human meal elsewhere.
Meanwhile the US military has arrived at the hospital in force, led by Major Braxton Tanner (Ray Wise) and Lieutenant Karly Brant (Clare Kramer).in pursuit of the body. It sees a military experiment has gone wrong and the spider, an unforeseen consequence, has been infected. A bigger problem is exactly that, the spider will increase by three times its body mass every 8 hours, if they don’t kill it. With the exterminator and his van in hot pursuit of both the sexy Lieutenant Brunt and the big in the Los Angles sewers it appears the spider has transformed and now the size of a family car and on YouTube and ready to give birth. Time is running out…
===Results===
Funny dialogue, screaming bikini girls in the park, deliciously over the top scenes on the streets of L.A, makes for an enjoyable 90 minutes of B-Movie silliness. It’s not quite as good as 8 Legged Freaks and Arachnophobia but good all the same. I always keep an eye for one of these B Movies that gets decent rating as they are always worth a look.
I have never heard of any of the cast but that’s the point if B-Movies and jobbing actor Greg Grunberg is funny and charismatic in the lead, how Vince Vaughan used to be. The comedy duo double act works well with the bumbling stereotype security guard empowered by the task ahead and some decent totty for our exterminator to bounce flirty gags off.
It’s quick to get going and we have menacing but funny spider action within ten minutes that’s comically gratuitous over grisly. We all freak-out at these hairy monstrosities and who doesn’t want a 50ft spider on the loose in Los Angeles? There are moments when you can see they haven’t quite got the budget to go big on the military side but the special effects are fun and the spider suitably menacing, if not terrifying.
===RATINGS===
Imdb.com – 5.3/10.0 (6,543votes)
Rottentomatos.com – 78 % critic’s approval
Metacritic.com –53 % critic’s approval
===Trailer===
