Hidden Flick: In The Court of the Spider King

All right, take the foot off the pedal (or is it pedals?). Put the vacuum cleaner down, and listen up, forgetting the circus music offered by a board chairman. Alas, the intro to a song that will not get played tonight is side-stepped as we take a look at our little treasure directed by first-time New Zealand director (Wait! Come back! We’ll finish the set.”)…

Piper>Ghost – 10/31/98

…so anyway, as I was saying…helmed by Ellory Elkayem…who directed…(O.K. YOU try to write while listening to Wolfman’s from 10/31/98)…a short film called Larger Than Life that won some prizes and got the attention of Dean Devlin, who helped produce it, along with executive producer Roland Emmerich, who both have been responsible for killing humanity numerous times over in Independence Day, Stargate, The Day After Tomorrow, and…wait for it…the new end of all that is calendar-y, 2012.

Why would your keyboard player introduce a song with a lot of lyrics during a long instrumental passage when there is NO WAY that Big Red is going to remember the words? Why, indeed, and how this has anything to do with either an arachnid attack, or our film is beyond me, but you think of these things when you’re a head, man.

David Arquette stars in the directorial feature film debut of the young bugger, Elkayem, and the actor is good because a) he isn’t playing his usual two-legged freak role, b) he is somehow believable as the hero, and c) his aunt is played by Sean Penn’s real mother (don’t ask me to look up these things; I’m listening to the slow build-up to Piper)…uh, Doug E. Doug. Yes, that is Penn’s mother’s name. Huh. Cool. Didn’t know she was e) a rapper, and 3) an African-American. Wait. Wrong name from the credits. Eileen Ryan.

A very young (uh, isn’t she still kinda very young in the sense of the phrase “very young”—I mean she was in Woody Allen films so she must be young. I keed. I keed. Love the Woodman!) Scarlett Johansson co-stars along with an American Harry Potter type that is neither wizard-y, nor really talented with a wooden stick. But hey, he knows a lot about science, and is routinely reciting his [insert lesson-y letter beginning with ‘r’ to complete the alliteration]. (A complete bug-loving science kid at what…10?! Is that possible? I mean…what kid like that knows enough to get him sitting next to Stephen J. Hawking at Cambridge? I know. I know. Physics and Bug Hunts (Paxton in Aliens?) are two different things, but yeah, awoke last night to the sound of the storm; the words are the words I sailed upon and science is as good as biology to a blind bat. Or Python, too.)

Where were we? Is the monkey asleep, yet (“Don’t tweeze me, brah!”)? Kari Wuhrer also stars as the cop (?!), and eye candy/potential hook-up for Arquette. As this is a family site, I will not mention that my legendary HT editor said that Wuhrer can be found at least ten times in various clips on the net doing things that even a bug may find offensive.

Granted—not in this movie, of course. This is, after all, an old school horror cinema homage filmed in Arizona where only desert rats, sexless cowboys, oddly blonde Scottsdaleans who breed with their own, third tier jambands, and ex- Cali novelists spend their time finding the pearl before heading back east to the Home Away Home.

And what the hell did that have to do with anything? Progress was being made in this Fun House full of mirrors, little Halloween piece, and I had to start talking about where the movie was filmed…oh, yes—locations are tumbleweeds, abandoned malls, and antennas. All throughout the movie, the giant, massive, HUGE eight-legged freaks jump and scare the non-Californian Arizonians (hey, if this was a Bergman film I’d be more scholarly). Somehow, Arquette rides a motorcycle with Penn’s real life mother on the back, and all the bugs get blown up but good until the sequel which has never arrived yet. 2013? Oh…and if you rent, be sure to catch Elkayem’s short Larger Than Life, which inspired this week’s Halloween pick, and the little homage to the era of 50s Bug! Shock! Horror!

In the Court of the Crimson King…audio imagery fades back into the Vegas headphones.

Big Red sets down his guitar, and a loop slowly drifts off into space before dying out. All the Spiders from Mars have been interrogated with one question remaining: “What next?”

Randy Ray

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