Number 82: Body in the Web (1960)
Time for some German horror now with Body in the Web. Or at least it’s listed as Body in the Web, the opening title card clearly calls it The Horror of Spider Island which would
make more sense. Body in the Web sounds
more film noir.
The film starts with an agent called Gary hiring a group of
girls for a dance troupe touring in Singapore. The audition process seems to be
mainly about seeing if the girls have nice legs. It’s actually all rather
pointless since the girls who ‘failed’ all get taken anyway.
Their plane crashes and they wash ashore on a remote island.
Dan is now facing every man’s worst nightmare: being stuck on a desert island
with nothing but eight beautiful women for company.
They find a cabin with the dead body of a man inside, hung
from a spider web. Another woman turns up and reveals he had been conducting
experiments with uranium, which we are to take as explanation for the large
spiders.
When the spiders do turn up, they actually look kind of
cute. Like big cuddly toys. One of them bites Gary and he turns into a man-like
spider creature. A spider-man if you will but with no cool spider powers. He
turns up every now and then to swipe at the women, more just to remind us he’s
there than anything.
It then fast forwards four weeks and two new guys arrive on
the island. Apparently they brought supplies in for the old professor. What
follows is a party scene with awkward attempts at romance that goes on so long
I’d forgotten this was supposed to be a horror movie. From the notes I made, it
was 27 minutes before Spider-Gary (or anything spider-related) turns up again. That’s
a long time in a movie that’s only 75 minutes long to begin with.
When he does come back, he kills one of the new guys and one
of the girls but then drowns in some quicksand. A boat comes and they all head
back home.
The film was made in 1960 but everything else seems like it’s
from the 40’s right down to the soundtrack. The dancing girls are all very
interchangeable apart from one who seems to be more…forward…than the others. That’s
as far as we get in character development but with so many of them, what do you
expect?
Apart from some attempts at titillation there isn’t much to
hold your interest. Spider-beast doesn’t even come across as particularly
threatening.
And that’s Horror of
Spider Island. Sorry, Body in the Web.
Number 81: Gigli (2003)
It’s turkey time. Gobble-gobble.
Now that’s out the way, here’s a question: if this film had
starred anyone other than Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez, would it have got the
same level of hate? Here’s the background, back in 2003 Affleck and Lopez were
a real life couple and to my mind the originators of the amalgamation of
celebity couples names into one, in this case ‘Bennifer’. For whatever reason
they weren’t too popular so the film seemed doomed before anyone had seen a single
frame. But is Gigli really that bad?
Well, the first time we see Affleck, he’s trying to torture
a guy by stuffing him in a washing machine. He should have just shown him Pearl Harbour. At this stage in his
career, Affleck had the gormless look down to a tee. Coupled with a crappy
Italian accent and these two and a bit hours will just fly by.
Affleck’s character Larry is hired to kidnap an autistic kid
called Brian, who is the brother of a federal prosecutor and from there on the
movie threatens to turn into Rain Man
at any moment. J-Lo arrives as another, well the synopsis says hit-woman but
she never kills or even hurts anyone, so let’s call her a glamorous babysitter
called Rikki. She’s hired because the guy in charge thinks Larry is too stupid
to do it on his own. Which begs the question, why didn’t he just hire her to do
it to begin with?
So, J-Lo is the smart one who likes to spout philosophy
while Affleck is the dumb guy (really stretching yourself there, Ben) who doesn’t
own any books. Attempted romance ensues but oh no, she’s a lesbian. Not that a
small detail like that will put Larry off and this is the moment I realised
this was the second movie I’d seen with Ben Affleck where he falls in love with a gay woman (Chasing Amy was
the other). I don’t know if that really means anything but it seems a weird
coincidence.
So, what else? Larry does eventually turn Rikki straight, or
bi, I don’t know, she comes across a little sexually confused, the important
thing is they have sex and everyone gets to laugh about turkeys. They become
surrogate parents to Brian and even defy their orders to protect him.
There’s an odd cameo from Christopher Walken. I usually
enjoy Walken cameos, he has them down to an art (see Pulp Fiction) but in this one, he just seems weird. Al Pacino has a
cameo as well (turns out he’s the one being prosecuted and Brian was kidnapped
as leverage) and just for a fleeting moment the movie threatens to become good.
Luckily, our Ben and Jen are there to stop that happening.
Bennifer give Brian back to the authorities and drive off
into the sunset. Yeah, there’s not really much more drama to it than that.
So, that’s Gigli.
Is it bad? Yeah. Is it really bottom 100 of all time bad? Not really. It’s a
car wreck no doubt but it is at least an enjoyable one, which is more than I
can say for some of the other films I’ve watched on this list so far.
Sure, it’s got its problems. It’s a common complaint I have
with bad movies but it’s too long. There is not enough going on to justify it’s
140 minute run time. It doesn't seem to quite know if it's a serious crime piece or a feel good comedy.
A lot is made of a lack of chemistry between the actors
and I can see the point. Every scene with Affleck and Lopez seems like their
only meeting for the first time. In a weird way, though probably not
intentional, that works in the films favour. Rikki is supposed to be a lesbian,
so it makes sense she would seem stand-offish to Larry’s obvious advances.
There are some amusing scenes, such as when Larry describes
the evolution of the penis (which was probably meant to be funny) which Rikki
counters with her description of the vagina while performing yoga (which
probably wasn’t meant to be funny but still is). Though I’m sure it doesn’t
have the same meaning in America, Affleck describing Lopez as a cow is quite
funny too.
And that’s all I’ve really got to say about that. Gobble-gobble.
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