A small southwest town finds itself under siege from a lethal array of ferocious camel spiders. While veteran B-flick director Jim Wynorski keeps the familiar, yet still fairly enjoyable story moving at a brisk enough pace and manages to pick things up a bit in the reasonably exciting last third, he alas crucially fails to generate much in the way of tension or creepy atmosphere, stages the spider attack set pieces in a disappointingly flat fashion, only delivers a decent sprinkling of gore, and, most damagingly, doesn't provide any of his patented engaging tongue-in-cheek humor that usually makes his low-budget movies so much cheesy fun to watch. Moreover, the CGI spiders are incredibly shoddy and unconvincing, there's some painfully obvious green screen work throughout, and the annoyingly ridiculous "what the hell?" ending set at a drive-in feels like it was lifted from an altogether different picture, plus the fate of two teenage girls never gets properly resolved. Brian Krause as the rugged Captain Mike Sturges and C. Thomas Howell as drawling good ol' boy Sheriff Ben Beaumont both do okay work. In addition, the presence of several attractive ladies prevent this film from being a complete wash-out: Diana Terranova as the snarky and sarcastic Patty, Rocky DeMarco as the tough Sgt. Shelly Underwood, GiGi Erneta as feisty diner owner Reba, and Jessica Cameron as the spunky and resilient Ashley. Chuck Cirino's bouncy score and Andrea V. Rossotto's competent cinematography are both up to speed. A passable time waster at best.
Review of Camel Spiders
