Nasty Little Thing Productions

It's an Arac Attack!

Watched Eight Legged Freaks last night on HBO.  It was a pretty awesome little movie, lots of fun.  The story is pretty typical, a drum of some toxic waste falls into a river near the town of Prosperity, Arizona, and mutates spiders to giant size.  Soon the arachnids terrorise the town, and it's up to Sheriff Sam Parker (Kari Wuhrer) and her family to lead the town to face the titular creatures.  It's an old-fashioned monster movie, only done with modern (excellent) visual effects, which make the creatures very convincing on screen.  I thought the humans in the movie (including David Arquette and Scarlett Johansson) gave very good performances as well, and I liked the way their characters were written.  Directed by Ellory Elkayem, this movie also had a great rendition of "Itsy Bitsy Spider" by Joey DeLuxe during the end credits.  The original title of this movie was Arac Attack, but according to a post on the IMDb Forums, it was changed to avoid confusion with "Iraq attack".  I like the original title better then the final one.

I got the CD of Mindhunters a couple of days ago.  This movie was also very good, it is directed by Renny Harlin (Die Hard 2, Cliffhanger and most recently Exorcist: The Beginning), and is about a group of FBI agents who find themselves on a remote island, undergoing a test that will qualify those successful to become profilers.  However, once they arrive on the island, they start getting killed off one by one (the movie contains many nasty but well thought out murder sequences), and it becomes apparent that there is a killer in their midst, and it will take all of their profiling skills to find out who it is.  Very tense movie, I especially loved the way Harlin set up each murder sequence (one scene in particular — the one with the "electrified" water — is so well filmed that I was practically holding my breath for the entire length of that sequence!) to have maximum effect, apparently he tweaked the editing of the film a lot to get the pacing just right.  It shows.

Finally, I did watch Big Trouble in Little China as I mentioned, a few days ago.  It has been a long time since I watched this cult film and it was a total blast this time around.  It's a very entertaining film about pig trucker Jack Burton (Kurt Russell) getting involved with some nasty Chinese sorcery.  He goes to the airport with his friend Wang Chi (Dennis Dun) in order to pick up Wang's girlfriend Miao Yin (Suzee Pai) — but the girl (and eventually his truck as well) gets kidnapped.  Soon, it becomes apparent that Miao Yin was abducted by David Lo Pan (James Hong), who is a cursed centuries-old sorceror, who must marry a girl with green eyes to lift the curse and gain ultimate power.  With a little assistance from local sorceror/tour bus driver Egg Shen (Victor Wong), nosey reporter Grace Law (Kim Cattrall) and a few friends, Jack and Wang set off on a rescue mission.  Superb adventure/comedy movie from director John Carpenter that really lives up to it's title.

posted by Karthik Abhiram @ 12:08 PM