Tibor Takács has always been a reliable name in the field of DTV movies. He started good, with The Gate 1 and 2 plus the very underrated I, Madman. All three is gorgeous-looking movies with fine stop-motion and atmosphere so thick you could kick it in the head. Takács quickly turned to television and less original movies after that, which I find a bit strange - he clearly had a future as a top-notch genre expert. That might have been the reason, he wanted to try something else - I guess.
He later became a steady director for Nu Image with a lot of disaster films and creature features on his resumé, hardly the most expensive on the field - but always very stylish and a little bit more ambitious than what his collegues usual come up with. Maybe it's time for Takács now, because here we have Spiders 3D - which I saw under the title Spider City in 2D on a wonderful German blu-ray, a very glossy, "big budgeted low budget" creature feature starring Patrick Muldoon and Christa Campbell (plus William Hope in one of his traditional military roles).
Like all films shot in Bulgaria they've used the Nu Boyana Film Studios and their now famous New York set, check it out here on their official homepage. I love seeing the same sets and locations showing up in movies. It's something familiar, almost like you're home. Anyway, this movie is placed almost entirely in these sets, including underground tunnels and something I can swear is a medieval set they've just dressed up as some ancient factory enviroment deep down under New York. They've used it to maximum and it looks bigger and braver than other uses I've seen.
The story is quite simple. Patrick Muldoon works as some subway supervisor and is the man in charge when a Russian satellite crashes in New York, right down in the subway system! One of his collegues die mysteriously, maybe of a bite, and soon all the rats escapes the tunnels - which leads us to his ex-wife, who works for the health department. They both start to investigate the mystery, to the anger of the evil militaries who guards the area. When their daughter disappears and huge spiders show up, they must together go into the area and save her - and stop the spiders!
It's a very basic story. It's a monster movie ABC, but it's also so well-made that you forgive the generic script and gets entertained by it instead. The spiders looks extremely good, especially being in a cheaper movie like this (and produced by Nu Image for the home video market), both the animated critters and the animatronics. It makes me happy to see how ambitious there where doing this film, with a lot of spider action (during the last half, the middle is quite slow) and introducing a giant spider at the end, which makes the film look like Cloverfield mixed with American Godzilla + a huge dose fifties sci-fi monster movie. Not a bad combination, and don't worry - it's just the New York setting that reminded me of American Godzilla. It's a lot better than that movie!
I also love how they have a lot of different set-up's. It's not just spiders down in the subway or on the street, we have a lovely cat and mouse game inside a toy store also, which manages to be both funny and tense. I also like the scene when one of them is chasing Muldoon on the wall of a house, Muldoon on the ladder and the spider directly behind him. Fun stuff!
Spiders 3D doesn't deliver anything new, but it's well-made and well-acted. It has great effects, some gore and lots of action. An ambitious piece of monster cinema, well worth watching for those who wants to relax their brains a bit.
I really look forward seeing this one, sounds great!
Posted by: Jesper | March 13, 2013 at 11:14
"Tibor Takács has always been a reliable name in the field of DTV movies. He started good, with The Gate 1 and 2 plus the very underrated I, Madman."
I only seen The Gate(1987) so far.
"Takács quickly turned to television and less original movies after that, which I find a bit strange - he clearly had a future as a top-notch genre expert. That might have been the reason, he wanted to try something else - I guess."
Yeah...or maybe the paycheck got bigger......there are some softporn TV movies, etc, in his entry on IMDB.
"I love seeing the same sets and locations showing up in movies. It's something familiar, almost like you're home. Anyway, this movie is placed almost entirely in these sets, including underground tunnels and something I can swear is a medieval set they've just dressed up as some ancient factory enviroment deep down under New York. They've used it to maximum and it looks bigger and braver than other uses I've seen."
When producers are chasing tax credits it usually ends up being very low quality co-production.
But seems this is different.
"It's a very basic story. It's a monster movie ABC, but it's also so well-made that you forgive the generic script and gets entertained by it instead. The spiders looks extremely good, especially being in a cheaper movie like this (and produced by Nu Image for the home video market), both the animated critters and the animatronics."
I´m glad to hear that......even syfy channel seem to beef up their SFX departments.....but they still rely to heavily on CG.
"Spiders 3D doesn't deliver anything new, but it's well-made and well-acted. It has great effects, some gore and lots of action. An ambitious piece of monster cinema, well worth watching for those who wants to relax their brains a bit."
Sounds like flick for me, good review and thanks.
Posted by: Megatron | March 13, 2013 at 15:53