Today's Movie Lives Up To Its Name... "Big Ass Spider!"

Big Ass Spider! (2013)

Rated PG-13 For Language, Violence, Gore-ish...

Starring Greg Grunberg, Clare Kramer, Ray Wise, Lombardo Boyar

Directed by Mike Mendez

The Story:

Alex (Grunberg) is an exterminator who gets bit by a brown recluse spider.  He goes to the hospital for his shot, and learns that there is something very sinister roaming the hospital grounds.  He teams with Jose (Boyar) the head of security and the two begin looking for something that is on the loose. Meanwhile, the Army shows up to wrangle an experiment gone wrong.  To stop this spider, the Major (Wise) and Lieutenant (Kramer) may just need Alex's help to stop...

The Big Ass Spider!

Loved it.

A B movie horror comedy that takes itself seriously enough, but still has fun with the premise.

Add a buddy cop movie with great interplay between Alex and Jose, that elevates the picture even more.

That they are able to attempt to squeeze a romantic angle in to boot?

Well done.

The CGI effects on the spider are actually pretty good as well.

Forget Sharknado and all the other SyFy garbage films, we need more like this.

Final Grade: B+

Rewatchability/Purchase Factor: I would be willing to do either, and both.

Need A Holiday From Lame Sequels? Then You Might Want to Skip "Lake Placid: The Final Chapter"

Hands up everyone that believes this is truly the Final Chapter?

The Story:

The sequel that nobody demanded, from the franchise that never should have been a franchise, continues with killer crocs of ginormous size running amok and eating people.  This time, all of the crocs are killed, and the local area is saved.

Right.

The more sequels to this franchise that comes out, the more the original Lake Placid looks like the Citizen Kane of giant crocodiles that eat people movies.

:)

That said, if you're going to watch any of the sequels, this is one of the better ones to endure.  Way better than the 2nd, not quite the cheese factor of Hasselhoff in the 3rd, but this one is tolerable enough. 

Robert Englund makes a glorified cameo as an evil poacher, but even he can't raise this one into pure camp or awesomeness.  It simply exists to cash in on whatever goodwill the fans have for this franchise.

The stilted movement of the fake CGI crocodile is mostly dreadful.  I'm not sure if it's low budget films that can't get movement down, but it's just sad.

Hopefully the studio will take their own advice, and let the franchise truly end.

If they stick with the Friday the 13th style of naming their sequels, then we know we are in for at least 5 more... : /

Final Grade: C- --- I'm trying to be nice guys...

Rewatchability/Purchase Factor: Nope, makes me long to see the original though. :)