My Love Letter to Eight Legged Freaks (2002)

Whuzzup, Eight Legged Freaks!

YES! I LOVE YOU, EIGHT LEGGED FREAKS! I love you so freaking much! I get so ecstatically happy when I think about you and your silly good fun. Giant spiders! Giant. Freaking. Spiders. And David Arquette. And self-aware humor that is actually funny. And giant spiders. I couldn't ask for anything more.

Your movie is a love letter in and of itself to the classic giant bug B-movies from the '50s - not as if you are making fun of them, of course, but you're honestly paying tribute and still having a great time in the process. I think your title more than anything proves this and your knowledge of just how silly you are and not giving a shit. Look at your poster, at the pose that Kari Wuhrer is giving - it's exaggerated and funny, but all in a good way, just like the rest of the movie.

Oh my gosh, okay, I'm so stoked to be talking to you and about you and your awesomeness. Like many people in the world, I don't consider spiders my particular favorite animal if you know what I mean, so I thought it would freak me out to see spiders bigger than people in this movie. But the way you presented the situation made it less scary (but still gross and freaky) and way more fun. I think even the biggest arachnophobe could watch you and still laugh their asses off.

Your story is a classic in itself. A multitude of spiders at Taft's Exotic Spider Farm in Prosperity, Arizona are exposed to toxic chemicals and soon grow to enormous size. A female sheriff, a smart kid, and a prodigal son become the ones who rally the townspeople into fighting the beasts, for their lives and for their town.

Okay, so the spiders are your biggest star, Eight Legged Freaks, and what I love most about them is all the different kinds that get represented. You got huge tarantulas, trapdoor spiders, jumpers, spitters, and Consuela, the biggest and baddest bitch of the bunch. What's also great about these spiders is the fact that they freaking talk throughout the movie! I've never heard a spider make any kind of noise before, but you've got them screaming and screeching and growling. It's hilarious.

One thing I like about you as well, is that a good deal of your story is about the people of Prosperity. The main focus for the first 40 minutes is on setting up all the characters of the people, the town's financial problems, and the budding love story between Sam the sheriff and Chris. It makes you more than just a giant bug movie - we love these people's personalities and they are not just fodder for the spiders, we want them to succeed. And though you could definitely be classified as horror, I think people love you more for just watching all the crazy antics of the giant spiders and not so much for the kills, which are actually quite tame. Probably why you got a PG-13 rating. All you PG-13 haters, remember Eight Legged Freaks! Sometimes the rating isn't such a downer after all.

I seriously don't have enough time here to talk about all of the wonderful individual scenes and gags that you have during the spider attacks. The murder of Zeke the cat, the cocooning of the guy in the barbershop, the tarantula attacking Harlan's trailer, all the little in-jokes and funny lines... These are all fantastic and ingenious ways to give not only the horror fans what they want out of a movie like you, but also give the comedy fans something to get a kick out of as well.

I love your music! At times slightly serious but mostly just campy and upbeat, your music no doubt helps keep the tone of the movie light-hearted and comedic. And, oh my goodness, I love that "Itsy Bitsy Spider" song that plays over the end credits so much that I have to play it all the way through every time I watch you.

Seeing as how giant spiders don't really exist (well, at least not as big as you present them), I'm totally down with all the CGI work done. It's not exactly seamless at some points, and the spiders do a lot of unnatural things - biting the moose head and then spitting it out, for one (HAHA) - but all that was completely welcome and a real joy to watch. I don't care if nothing you say or do here is scientifically accurate, that's not why I or anyone else watch you over and over again.

Really, Eight Legged Freaks, I have so much more to say about you and it could take all day. To me you are an instant B-movie classic and I don't think I'll ever get tired of you. Director Ellory Elkayem created something really special with you (BTW, the short film he made that inspired you, "Larger Than Life," is pretty awesome too. Fans should check that out) and he should be proud! You are a crazy good time, absolutely hilarious, and one of my personal favorites of all time. Stay cool, bro.

Your bestest best bud,
Michele


P.S. "Lose the face fuzz before you go. It makes your mouth look like a stripper's crotch." BEST. LINE. EVER.

My Love Letter to Wrong Turn (2003)

Dearest, dearest Wrong Turn,

This letter is long overdue, Wrong Turn. I've held such a torch for you ever since I saw you all those long years ago... Okay, it's only been eight years since you released your awesomeness on the world, but that's still a long time. And after all these years, after all the times I've watched you, I still love everything about you and what you have brought to the horror genre.

See, here's the thing about you that I don't think the haters get. You are exactly what a true horror movie should be and you smartly stay away from those things that usually detract from the main point of the film, which is HORROR. You are just straight-up gore and violence the whole way through. You have fantastic actors, no sex, and no attempts at lame comedy at any point in your movie and those are just a few of the reasons I love you so much.

Let's talk about that lack of sex, which I really admire. You don't have any boobs in the movie, which as a woman makes me very happy because I have my own boobs to look at and therefore it doesn't really do anything for me to see them in movies. Consequently, you also don't have any sex scenes which puts you in a class above all the other hot-young-people-go-into-the-woods-and-get-killed movies. Sure there is an implied oral copulation scene between Evan and Francine but you cut that off before anything is shown, so thank you for that. Let's focus on the horror, not the tits - that's always been my motto.

You take yourself seriously in a way that your sequels did not, even though mutant cannibal hillbillies is a subject that is easy to make light of. Despite a funny reference to Deliverance in one scene, you stray from cheesy one-liners and keep the situation serious and terrifying, like it should be.

And though this is mostly a trivial reason for adoring you, Wrong Turn, I can't ignore the fact that you star two amazingly hot people in your lead roles. I'm talking of course about the sexy bad boy-looking dude known as Mr. Desmond Harrington, and the girl to whom I freely admit to having a mad girl-crush on, Ms. Eliza Dushku. I fell in love with Eliza on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and it was you who introduced me to Desmond the first time. Sadly, I've not seen his handsome ass in many other films since then, so I thank you for immortalizing those wicked good looks in at least one fantastic movie.

And your gore... oh, your gore. First of all, the Stan Winston effects on the mutants are amazing and they look so real for being so fake, you know? It's explained to the audience at the beginning of the film, through pictures and newspapers, that these guys are the result of inbreeding with all that genetic mutation shit. So then we get guys with bulbous flesh, hunchbacks, really bad teeth, and just all kinds of nasty shit going on. I love it.

Secondly, you've got some great kills, you know you do! The blood and guts are fantastic and though there is nothing really inventive about the style or way people are killed, it is still done in an amazingly beautiful and effective way. Let's see... you've got some barbed-wire-chain mouth-gashing,  an arrow straight through the eye, some arrows through the chest, and various hack-n-slashing. Probably the best one is when beautiful Emmanuelle Chriqui is running from the mutants high up in a tree and gets an axe to the mouth, severing the top of her head from her body - which then falls gracefully to the ground in a very cool overhead camera shot. Oh, it gives me shudders just thinking about it.

I have a small nitpick, Wrong Turn... something that never fails to make me laugh-slash-get-slightly-annoyed. Chris Flynn (Harrington) seems to cause a lot of the problems in the movie, the main being wrecking his car and Eliza's friend's car. He looks away from the road for a second and WHAMMO! But what gets me about this scene is that he looks away from the road to get a better look at a dead deer on the side of the road. I mean, who does that? You see a dead animal and you go, "Ew. Dead possum," and you move on. You don't adjust the rearview mirror and freaking crash your car and somebody else's because of a dead deer. Just sayin'.

Wrong Turn, your sequels and imitators (even though you are kind of an imitator yourself - don't deny it) just do not do you justice. I truly believe that you are one of the best horror films of the past decade and I love you so much. You are a bloody good time from start to finish, and that is why you are one of my favorites.

Sincerely,
Michele




P.S. I seriously want to %#&* Eliza Dushku. Like, not even kidding.