Ice Spiders (2007) - I just couldn't hate it

I don't think it's too much of a 'spoiler' to say that this film has (giant!) spider in it.  And it's set in an icy location.  That explains the title.  And it also cements is as a certified 'B-movie,' but I'm fine with that.  I don't mind cheesy films with bad acting and special effects if they keep me entertained for an hour and a half.

No, this film does not have a huge budget, but lately some of the biggest Hollywood blockbusters have been released with terrible computer special effects and have been rightly pulled up on it.  Yeah, the spiders here look a bit CGI-ish, but I thought they were pretty good - at least no worse than you average 2023 superhero film set in another dimension with an army of aliens soldiers fighting a war.

'Ice Spiders' is set in a ski resort which seems to have a military base right next door which also doubles as a facility for splicing the genes of spiders with, er, bigger spiders I guess - do you care?  Either way, the giant eight-legged freaks get loose and a lot of teenagers get more than just a mouthful of snow and a bad landing when they take to the slopes.  The whole 'breeding' giant spiders part of the plot could probably have been left out.  You could have just had it that a load of big spiders arrived and the film would have played out just the same.

You probably won't have heard of any of the cast.  I knew Patrick Muldoon (the lead), simply because he was famous (in my circles!) for getting his brains sucked out in 'Starship Troopers.' I didn't know anyone else, but I hear a couple more were in 'Melrose Place' together. 

So the script may be littered with a few more than clunky lines, the effects - well, you can probably tell the arachnids were added in post production and it's as daft as it is long - and it's not a very long film.  Yet, for all its flaws I stuck with it.  I enjoyed the cheese and the daftness of it all.  It might have been played reasonably straight, but it seemed to revel in all its B-movie glory and for that I definitely don't think I wasted an hour and a half on this one.  Seek it out on a streaming service and watch it for free.

Where else would you get to see a giant, mutant spider stabbed to death by the antlers on a stuffed dear's head?

7/10 if I woke up on Groundhog Day and had to watch this again, I could live with that