Today’s program continued this month’s Halloween theme with a look at movies about creepy crawly creatures.
Ants
The nuclear age and the fear of nuclear war gave birth to a whole genre of movies about mutated animals that had been made intelligent or gigantic or both. Among the most famous of these films is 1954’s Them! in which giant ants exposed to nuclear tests come out of the New Mexico desert. Killer ants made a comeback in the 1970s with two films based on H.G. Wells’ story “Empire of the Ants.” The first of these was 1974’s Phase IV which was directed by Saul Bass, best known for creating advertising and designing the title sequences for Alfred Hitchcock. “Empire of the Ants” was brought to the screen again in 1977 by American International Pictures which previously had success with adaptations of Wells’ stories The Food of the Gods and The Island of Dr. Moreau. That same year, the made-for-television movie Ants! was released, sometimes marketed under the alternate title It Happened at Lakewood Manor.
A Tale of Two Bugs
A lot of killer bug movies are also mad scientist films. 1975’s Bug is about a scientist who discovers a new species of insect and crosses it with a cockroach, creating a new and dangerous creature. Bug was the last film produced William Castle and it was directed by Jeannot Szwarc. The success of Bug helped Szwarc get the directing job on Jaws 2.
An unrelated film also titled Bug was released in 2007. An adaptation of the stage play by Tracy Letts, 2007’s Bug is about a woman who shacks up with a mysterious military veteran in a rural Oklahoma motel. The two of them become convinced that their bodies are infested with microscopic bugs. Whether that is reality or a delusion is kept ambiguous. Bug plays on the fear of infestation and infection in a brilliant way. This is an extraordinary film about paranoia and belief with great performances by Ashley Judd and Michael Shannon. Bug was directed by William Friedkin, who previously directed The Exorcist and Sorcerer and Bug belongs in that company.
Snakes
Anaconda is an animal attack series produced by Sony Pictures. The original film was released in 1997 and it starred Jennifer Lopez, Ice Cube, Jon Voight, and Eric Stoltz. The cinematographer was Bill Butler who was also the cinematographer on Jaws. The sequel Anaconda: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid followed in 2004. From there the series went direct to video with a couple of very cheap productions including the crossover sequel Lake Placid vs. Anaconda which pitted the giant snake against a giant crocodile. Anaconda was remade by Chinese filmmakers in 2024. A new Anaconda film was released to theaters in 2025, this one a satirical comedy starring Paul Rudd, Jack Black, and Thandiwe Newton as filmmakers who make a reboot of the 1997 film and end up pursued by a giant snake.
2026’s Beware Boiúna is very similar to the Anaconda films but Beware Boiúna is better than the average killer snake movie. The story centers on aid workers who run afoul of precious metal prospectors and they all struggle for survival against a giant snake. It’s very well made. The giant snake in convincing and scary and the characters have some depth and complexity.
Del Toro and Argento
Mimic is an early film by director Guillermo del Toro. The movie is about a genetically modified insect that’s created to address a cockroach infestation but it begins hunting humans instead. Mimic was produced by Dimension Films and Bob and Harvey Weinstein insisted on edits for the theatrical cut. Del Toro has disowned that version but he did approve a director’s cut running eleven minutes longer which was issued of Blu-ray.
Another insect-related film from a well-known director that was heavily cut and later restored was 1985’s Phenomena. Directed by Dario Argento, Phenomena stars Jennifer Connelly as a young woman who can communicate with insects. This was an Italian production and when it was released in the United States, Phenomena was retitled Creepers and twenty minutes of footage was removed. Phenomena is a bizarre and beautifully made film and the 4K editions include Argento’s original version.
Willard
The original Willard was released in 1971 and it’s about an isolated young man who opens his home to rats. He eventually amasses an army of rodents who Willard unleashes on the people tormenting him.The film’s use of rats is interesting. Rodents have a complicated cultural meaning. Rats are often associated with pestilence but people do keep certain kinds of rodents as pets. The filmmakers use our contradictory feelings to their advantage. Allowing a character to bond with or show compassion for a furry creature is a quick way to create sympathy. Willard’s bond with the animals eventually sours and set up the 1972 sequel Ben in which the leader of the rats leads his army of fellow rodents in raids of stores and homes. When it focuses on the rats, this is an exceptional sequel but less so in the human-centered scenes. A remake of Willard starring Crispin Glover was released in 2003.
Spiders
There seems to be a formula for contemporary spider movies. Sting and Infested and now Crawlers are all about arachnids set loose in an apartment building. The filmmakers of Crawlers understand what makes spiders scary and they play on that effectively. Crawlers includes closeups of the arachnids walking and pouncing and several sequences exploit common fears such as spiders crawling in the mouth or laying eggs in the skin.
Arachnophobia was a 1990 killer spider movie. Jeff Daniels plays a big city doctor who relocates to the country just as the town is invaded by a very aggressive and very poisonous spider from South America. The movie is a successful combination of scares and laughs. The horror and the comedy are both done earnestly. A remake of Arachnophobia was long in development but never went into production. It’s interesting that the Arachnophobia remake was abandoned while very similar films got made and had some success.
1955’s Tarantula is one of the classic killer spider movies. As in a lot of creature features from that time, a spider is exposed to experiments that cause it to become enormous. Tarantula was well received and it’s regarded as one of the best of the giant insect films from that time. The movie stars Leo G. Carroll and it’s referenced in the song “Science Fiction Double Feature” in The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Clips from Tarantula often appear in other media, including 2026’s Crawlers.
Ironic Schlock
Snakes on a Plane was a 2006 movie in which a passenger jet is besieged by poisonous snakes. The movie stars Samuel L. Jackson and for a hot minute it became a cultural phenomenon because a bit of Jackson’s dialogue went viral. The film was an attempt to manufacture a cult film which rarely works and Snakes on a Plane disappointed at the box office.
The Asylum production company has produced a lot of monster films. They are best known for the Sharknado series but The Asylum has also produced a lot of movies about giant mutated reptiles and sharks. Almost without exception, the movies are bad. The Asylum’s output is intended to be the equivalent of the monster pictures that played in drive-ins in the 1950s. Many of those movies were also bad. The difference is that The Asylum’s pictures tend to be made with irony. The filmmakers know what they are doing and the audience is in on the joke. This is to mixed effect. What was so charming about drive-in monster pictures and direct-to-video shlock of the 1980s was the earnestness of those movies. The irony of The Asylum’s films sometimes comes across as a deflection. We get a sense that they’re not really trying to make a good film and we’re all supposed to enjoy being part of that inside joke. That may work for a few movies but the irony shtick gets exhausting very quickly.
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