Camel Spiders (2011)

What else do you need to know about Camel Spiders that isn't made immediately clear by the title? Roger Corman has a producer credit. Jim Wynorski directed the thing (and also co-wrote it with J. Brad Wilke). The CGI is pretty poor but not as poor as the acting from most of the cast. Oh, and the biggest names involved are Brian Krause and C. Thomas Howell. Now you're either dying to see this already or you're already considering hunting down every copy of the movie out there and burning them all. The latter option may be a bit extreme but I can't put up any major defence for the movie. It's pretty bad.

There's a slim plot. Some soldiers (led by Brian Krause) are fighting when a bunch of big-ass spiders end up killing the enemy and inadvertently helping them out. That would all be fine and dandy if the spiders didn't then creep into the body of a deceased soldier and get carted over to U.S. soil. Before you can say "Hey Mr. Charmed, meet Mr. Soul Man" it's a big mess as nasty CGI spiders start killing folk you don't care about while Krause and C. Thomas Howell try to take charge and save the day.

I kinda enoyed watching Camel Spiders for the first 10-15 minutes, I won't lie, and there were moments when I thought "I realise how bad this is but it's also just mindless fun". In fact, as the spiders began to instil more fear into people and jump at every paper-thin supporting character I considered giving this an average to good rating. Then it just kept going and going with no improvement. The script, which had initially seemed amusingly dire and inept, was just dire. The CGI wasn't terrible or good enough to be constantly entertaining. The story was drawn out to feature length when it could barely have made for an entertaining 60 minutes. And then there was the acting. Brian Krause and C. Thomas Howell weren't great but they looked like Oscar contenders alongside some of their co-stars (who I'm just not even going to name).

Jim Wynorski knows how to use a small budget to at least get something made but Camel Spiders is one of his worst outings, it's not even as much fun as the ridiculous Cleavagefield (which a few of you may remember I actually enjoyed). There are a lot of low budget horror movies out there better than this, a lot of spider movies out there better than this and even a lot of Jim Wynorski movies out there better than this. Don't make this one a priority.

3/10

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Camel-Spiders-DVD-Brian-Krause/dp/B0076LAI9Y/ref=sr_1_1?s=dvd&ie=UTF8&qid=1336250258&sr=1-1