Michael_Elliott 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.

bkoganbing 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 nude pictures. She looks more embarrassed in this film than those snapshots of long ago ever caused.And well she should.

doctorsmoothlove I remember playing Bomberman 64 as a child. It was a frustrating video game with indulgent level design and tedious item collecting. One thing I loved about that game was its boss fights. Players would fight large monsters at the end of each stage. One of these monsters was a large spider-like creature called "Cold Killer." That was way back in 1997, but Cold Killer looks better than the CGI rejects in Tibor Takács' Ice Spiders.Imagine body armor made from spider silk. It would be indestructible, but impossible to obtain. Now imagine a government sponsored program to genetically alter spiders so that they can produce silk in bulk. Don't neglect to place this secret government facility next to a ski resort which apparently has no computers or cell phone service. Welcome to Ice Spiders! That's the whole movie, seriously. Random people die from poorly edited spider attacks. The actual "death scenes" occur at a distance, and the only gore visible is the aftermath. I was hoping the movie would devolve into stylized violence but it didn't. Sci-Fi Channel films don't have enough budget to produce lifelike monsters which eliminates suspense. Humor would have given us distraction from the terribly rendered spiders.The DVD case will have you believe that the film follows a pre-Olympic ski team while they train. While mostly true, it's misleading. No one on the ski team dies, not even the stereotypically arrogant youngster. The team arrives, is threatened by a single spider, and becomes irrelevant thereafter. Focusing on a small group would have provided focus to the picture. Instead, only bit characters are killed. Most have no dialog so we have no connection to them.Once they arrive, the story shifts to ski instructor Dan Dashiell and sexy yet unconvincing scientist April Sommers. Both are played by subpar actors Patrick Muldoon and Vanessa Williams who don't act seriously. Muldoon is the worse of the two. He responds to each situation with the same tone, whether he discovers a body in the woods or impales a spider with a deer antler. I also find it amusing that his character suffers from a past skiing injury but isn't affected by it now. Williams changes her voice tone and expression enough to resonate to the plot. Her outfits are unusual, though. She is always (I think) shown wearing pink winter clothes, like your wealth friend's super hot daughter would wear. The movie has no suspense, no gore, and is poorly acted. Is it worse than I've described? No it isn't. Some explanation is provided for the spiders' unusual growth, and April explains how they survive the cold. I didn't expect such detail in the script and it saved the experience for me. The entire experience is blasé but at least some part of it is redeemable. It's like tutoring a group of unruly students, one of whom has a natural talent for the subject. While the group is still disinterested, one doesn't have to struggle as much to instruct that individual student.There are many spider movies out there but not many have been released recently. The last Hollywood one (excluding Spider-man) was Eight Legged Freaks. That movie is this one presented effectively as a comedy. It's difficult to imagine giant spiders eating everyone so why not make it funny? You could make it scary too, like Arachnophobia. Both films had higher budgets than this one but they knew what type of film they were. Ice Spiders doesn't know which type of film it wants to be. The screenplay is full of unintended humor and the visual effects aren't realistic enough to be scary. It's a mess of sappy dialog and poor digital animation.* out of *****

cloudman88 Sci-Fi really outdid themselves with Ice Spiders. First of all, there is a rational amount of ice, and then there are in fact spiders to boot. There's some nice cheesy gore scenes and one really hilarious scene where some idiot stumbles into the spider's horrible forest lair and finds a body in a cocoon. The best thing about this movie is the short bus filled with the rejects from the local high school's special education program. Oh, and while attempting to flee the horrible spiders, they flip and roll the bus into a ditch because one of the mouth breathers decides to floor it on a road that is covered with, you guessed it, ice. And also spiders, surprisingly enough.