What do you get if you cross Spider-Man with The Fly? As I discovered when viewing it last night, the answer is an entertaining super-hero/monster movie mash-up entitled Earth Vs. The Spider.
Directed by Scott Ziehl, this film was the first in a series of modern-day Creature Features made for television and co-created by Academy Award-winning special effects expert Stan Winston. Earth Vs. The Spider premiered on Cinemax in 2001, and as a tribute it took its title from that of a 1958 cinema-released film, although the latter has a totally different storyline. Winston's Earth Vs. The Spider is a decidedly kooky, offbeat addition to the super-hero genre but one that I found unexpectedly engrossing – despite the fact that notwithstanding its title, the threat posed by this movie's featured creature does not extend beyond the reach of a single city precinct, let alone the entire planet!
Earth Vs. The Spider introduces us to one Quentin Kemmer (played by Devon Gummersall), an avid comic book-reading geek who works as a security guard at a classified research laboratory. Quentin dreams of becoming a super-hero equipped with super powers, like his favourite comic book character, an eight-limbed human-spider hybrid named the Arachnid Avenger, but he is viewed by others as vapid and ineffectual. One evening, after Quentin and his fellow security guard Nick, who is also one of his only two friends, spy on some research involving transferring body fluid from one spider into another one to make the latter as strong and injury-resistant as the donor, intruders burst into the laboratory, hotly pursued by two police officers seeking to restrain them. In the resulting melee, Nick is killed, as is one of the two cops. The other one, Officer Williams, blames Quentin for his partner's death and attacks him, but is sent away by the arriving Detective Inspector Frank Grillo (Dan Aykroyd).
Quentin blames his own perceived uselessness as being responsible for Nick's death, and vows vengeance, especially when instantly sacked from his job. Inspired by his obsessive reading of Arachnid Avenger comics and his conversations with his only other friend, Han, owner of comic book store Hero Worship where he buys his comics, Quentin sneaks back into the laboratory room where he and Nick had earlier spied upon the spider research, sees a syringe that still contains some body fluid from the powerful donor spider, and injects it into own arm.
Meanwhile, Det. Insp. Grillo is striving but failing to track down a serial killer dubbed the Midtown Murderer who has attacked and killed several women locally. Unbeknownst to him, however, the killer is staking out his next victim close by – none other than a young woman named Stephanie Lewis (Amelia Heinle), who is Quentin's next-door neighbour in an apartment block, Quentin is attracted to Stephanie but is far too shy to ask her out on a date, resigning himself to a few chats with her here and there. The killer sees Stephanie enter the block, follows her, and throws her to the ground, where her screams alert Quentin, who is returning home after injecting himself with the spider fluid. Enraged, he seizes the killer and, with incredible newly-obtained strength from the injection, hurls him through a nearby door with such force that the killer's neck is broken, killing him instantly, but Quentin then swiftly leaves before Stephanie can identify him.
Later, however, after Quentin defends her very forcefully and confidently from the unwanted attention of two layabouts outside their block, Stephanie is immensely grateful to him for saving her, seeing him in a whole new light thanks to his surprising bravery and his unexpected strength. Suddenly, everything is looking good for Quentin…but not for long.
As the days progress, Quentin becomes shocked, and scared, by the series of physical and behavioural changes that he begins to experience, including a web-like tattoo that spontaneously appears on one of his arms, an insatiable hunger that cannot be satiated by his normal foods, and, most bizarre of all, a hole that appears in his belly and from which he can shoot forth a stream of thick, all-enveloping spider-web gossamer. No longer able to consume solid food, Quentin finds himself uncontrollably drawn towards living prey – other humans – which he kills and then sucks dry of all body fluids just like a spider does (how he physically achieves this is mercifully never revealed, as all such activity occurs off-screen, with only the web-enwrapped carcases subsequently shown, hanging down from the roof inside the apartment block's dark, dingy basement where no-one but Quentin ever goes).
Eventually, Quentin finds himself unable to halt his metamorphosis into a human spider, and hides himself away from the unsuspecting Stephanie, who cannot understand why he refuses to let her see him. However, it's not long before his killings of vagrants and ne'er-do-wells to sustain himself attracts the attention of Grillo. He soon suspects from the discovered spider webs and other arachnid clues linked to the murders, as well as from information reluctantly provided by the head of the research laboratory (revealing that their top-secret investigations concerned transferring spider attributes to humans), that Quentin may be the mysterious miscreant. And so, very aptly, like a brave – or foolish – fly venturing forth into the spider's parlour, Grillo resolves to track Quentin down and discover the truth, however terrifying it might be…
Despite its DVD rating a 15 Certificate in the UK, Earth Vs. The Spider is not a blood-and-gore movie by any means. Only in the climactic scene do we finally get to see the horrific man-spider that Quentin has ultimately transformed into, but even then it is fully shown for no more than a few seconds. Also, as noted earlier, none of the killings by Quentin are shown on-screen. Instead, like all of the best thrillers, such grisly details are left very much to the viewers' imagination, and in my opinion this movie is all the better for it, because such a ploy very effectively creates an ongoing compulsion to see what happens next, never letting the viewers' attention flag or wander.
I bought the DVD for Earth Vs. The Spider purely on spec, not being at all sure whether I would like it, but as it was priced at only 50p I was willing to give it a chance – and I'm very glad that I did, because I thoroughly enjoyed this film, and can wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone who loves super-hero movies, monster movies, or both.
And if you'd like a sneak preview of what to expect from Earth Vs. The Spider, click here to view an official trailer for it on YouTube.
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