Ice Spiders

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source: Ice Spiders

Ice Spiders is set in the Lost Mountain skiing resort in Logan County in Utah where hotshot skier Dan 'Dash' Dashiell (Patrick Muldoon) works as a ski instructor, local ranger Rick Dickerson (K. Danor Gerald) ask's Dash for help in searching for two missing hunter's on a nearby mountain range which Dash dutifully agrees to. They find one of the hunters dead, horribly mutilated & the other cocooned in what looks like Spider's silk. Then they are attacked a giant genetically created Spider that has escaped from a nearby Government laboratory, with six deadly giant Spider's on the loose in total no-one is safe as it's up to ex-marine & all round hero Dash to go way beyond the call of duty to save the day... Directed by Tibor Takács this is yet another 'Creature Feature' Sci-Fi Channel original that is far from original & is pretty standard stuff from start to finish. The script features everything any seasoned 'Creature Feature' lover would expect, there's the young teenage cast, the all American hero who has to overcome some sort of fear to save the day, genetically created creatures of some sort developed for military purposes, bad CGI computer effects, an isolated location for the Spider's to attack & the human cast to get stuck in, a corrupt scientist who only cares about the experiment & not human life, a military presence & of course a love interest for the lead hero. It's all here in abundance. Ice Spiders is far from the worst of it's kind that I have seen, it's still not a particularly good film by any stretch of the imagination but I did enjoy it to a certain extent more than I thought I would. The pace is good & from the opening Spider attack scene right through to the end the film never slows down & I can't say I was bored although what I was more than aware that what I was watching was still pretty average stuff. The character's are alright & aren't as annoying as usual, the plot is fairly standard stuff & it's clear not much thought went into other than to hang the basic 'genetically creature giant creature on the loose' plot around & there's a few amusing scenes here if your in the right mood I suppose. The dialogue is of often unintentionally funny & the film doesn't seem to take itself too seriously & while I would hesitate to describe Ice Spiders as a good film I certainly don't think it's a terrible one either. There is no build up to the revelation of the Spider's in Ice Spiders & one is seen in it's full CGI glory within the first three minutes, the cheap looking CGI computer effects range from the strictly average to the absolutely awful. There's no real build up of tension to any of the attack scenes either so the film lacks any scares or any atmosphere & the entire thing takes place during the day which makes things easy to see but setting a horror film about giant Spider's in broad daylight cuts down the options for suspense sequences & as such the film lacks any. There's some minor gore here, someone is seen ripped in half, there are a few mutilated bodies, some blood splatter & some mutilated animal bodies too. With a supposed budget of about $2,000,000 the production values are alright, the mountain wilderness scenery is nice enough to look at & poor CGI computer effects apart it's reasonably well made. The acting is mostly poor from people who look like they don't want to be there, Patrick Muldoon in particular looks to be putting zero effort into things. Even though Vanessa Williams was forty three when she shot Ice Spiders she looks about nineteen in it. Ice Spiders is a slightly better than usual Sci-Fi Channel 'Creature Feature' although that in itself isn't saying much & is certainly no recommendation. Not bad for it's type but since it's type is usually so awful it's still nothing worth busting a gut to see.

Ice Spiders (2007) ** 1/2 (out of 4) A rundown ski resort comes under attack by large, genetically engineered spiders. It turns out that the government was using a place close to the resort to do their experiments but the spiders broke loose and now they're chewing on people. It's now up to a former Olympian skier (Patrick Muldoon) to try and stop them. Back when this "nature" sub-genre started we would get classics like THEM! and then bad but fun camp movies like EARTH VS. THE SPIDER. This film here certainly falls into the campy category and I'm sure a large number of people are going to hate this film but I thought it was goofy enough to be enjoyed on a "B" movie level. I think one of the biggest pluses are the actual CGI spiders. Yes, they're obviously fake but there's just something about them that appeals to the Ed Wood lover in me. I thought the spiders were rather charming and I must admit that I found it fun watching them pick off people in a wide range of ways. There's a very good sequence early on when they attack some hunters and one of the men gets wrapped up in the spider's web. Another good sequence has a bunch of skiers going down the slopes to get away from them but the spiders pick them off one by one. The death sequences aren't overly violent but fans of the red stuff will be happy to see that there's some small amounts of gore. The performances certainly aren't anything ground breaking but I enjoyed Muldoon in his role. His hippie-like character is charming enough and the actor manages to make the role at least entertaining. I also enjoyed Vanessa Williams as the doctor. Stephen J. Cannell is also fun as the resort owner. Those who only want high art are certainly going to hate this movie and I'd be willing to bet that a large number of horror fans will as well. I think those who can enjoy camp will probably get some mild entertainment out of this thing as long as they don't take it too serious and can plant their tongue firmly in their cheek.

OK, another giant spiders flick; but wait...this one is not totally bad. The CGI is really pretty smooth and the spiders do look cool. A young ski team is training for the Olympics and arrive at a nice ski resort in Logan County Utah run by Stephen J. Cannell. The young squad is thrilled to meet a ski instructor(Patrick Muldoon)that is a retired Olympic star. Things no longer focus on training when a scientist(Vanessa Williams)working at a government lab arrives with the horrifying news that a project has gone wrong. Giant spiders with accelerated growth are loose in the Lost Mountains and killing anyone they can pounce upon. Also in the cast: David Millbern, Matt Whittaker, Carleigh King and Thomas Calabro.

All the spiders are different species and colors so of course they have the scientist say that they all basically look the same. Ugh. The only good thing about this movie is that a guy has his entire lower body eaten and an hour later we can still see him clearly breathing. The ending may be the worse ending of any movie ever.

Anyone associated with this movie should be lucky enough to get the same treatment that the victims in this movie received! Great for lots of laughs but only if you spent less than a nickle to watch it and had nothing better to do than clip your toenails. Just my opinion. I unfortunately rented this title and wasted an hour and a half of my life. Lousy acting by everyone,lousy plot, CGI not too bad but please! do not make a sequel! Not even VW could save this one. Best part of the movie was the closing credits but not soon enough. Great, now I think my DVD player is mad at me! I can't believe I am wasting even more time commenting on this flick.

The federal government is at it again in Ice Spiders. In the mountains of Utah where only a few skiers are having a great old time at a resort, our government has a big old giant laboratory where scientists Vanessa Williams and David Milbern have been breeding some ancient giant spiders with a technique that was first mentioned in Jurassic Park. It's also a plot idea that was used in the Lou Diamond Phillips movie Bats where Milbern goes as batty as the scientist who created those creatures in that film. Your tax dollars at work. The hunters and the skiers are being chewed up, stored and eaten by these critters, the usual mayhem that giant anythings cause among the human population in these films. The guy who takes it the most seriously is ski instructor Patrick Muldoon, once a US Olympic hopeful. He and Vanessa see eye to eye on the giant spiders and each other of course. I guess the idea was breed these things and then loose them on North Korea or Iran or any other country that was giving us problems. As is usual in these films, the critters get out of hand. The whole cast walks around with embarrassed looks on their faces. Vanessa Williams lost her Miss America crown over those embarrassing * pictures. She looks more embarrassed in this film than those snapshots of long ago ever caused. And well she should.

This movie is typical clichéd Sci-Fi channel stock plot. Secret Government Lab creates monsters and unwittingly unleashes them on unsuspecting people. Nice Scientist (who happens to be a babe or a hunk, depending on Gender) assists survivors in fighting off monsters while shadowy government agents proceed to make matters worse. I am almost positive this has been used about 100 times. So scoring a "0" for originality, we are left with scoring the other elements. The acting is mediocre. Patrick Muldoon, who seems to have graduated from the "Shatner School of Acting", is about as wooden as you get. Vanessa Williams (Not the Ex-Miss America) isn't much better. Steven J. Canell is actually the best thing in this movie, and that's like being the leper with the most fingers. The spiders are obviously fake CGI, and don't really look all that good. I guess you have to give the extras some credit for tromping around in the snow and pretending to have giant spiders jump on them. You know, there is so much good Science Fiction out there, and the Sci-Fi channel makes this kind of crap because it's cheap.

The Sci-Fi Network is known more for churning out monster movies in quantity rather than quality. Even by Sci-Fi standards, though, this is low-quality. Sci-Fi takes the top-secret animal experiment genre and rehashes it for the 674th time. Except that you really never get a good concept of what the top-secret experiment was, outside of "we were injecting spiders to make them larger; apparently the experiment was top-secret to the writers as well. The movie star Vanessa Williams -- not the "Soul Food" movie actress/singer/former Miss America/* model Vanessa L. Williams, but the "Soul Food" TV show/bad movie actress Vanessa A. Williams. She's part of the experiment crew, as well as some guy Dr. Barnes, who looks like the lead singer from the '80s band "Devo," both physically and with his black outfit on; all he needed was the kooky red hat and I could see the whole gang breaking out in an impromptu karaoke of "Whip It" to try to keep the spiders at bay. The spider effects are pretty bad, and since the spiders are all colored a tropical green/black or orange, yet the movie takes place at a Utah ski resort, you'd think the spiders wouldn't have the ambush factor going for them. Yet somehow they still sneak up on hapless skiers throughout the movie. In its defense, "Ice Spiders" does have a laugh-ability quality to it that allows it to fall into the "good-bad" movie category, as opposed to other monster movies that are both bad and painful to watch, which is why I have enough sympathy to rate this movie a 3 instead of a 1 or 2.