User Reviews

This movie is typical clichéd Sci-Fi channel stock plot. Secret Government Lab creates monsters and unwittingly unleashes them on unsuspecting people. Nice Scientist (who happens to be a babe or a hunk, depending on Gender) assists survivors in fighting off monsters while shadowy government agents proceed to make matters worse.

I am almost positive this has been used about 100 times.

So scoring a "0" for originality, we are left with scoring the other elements.

The acting is mediocre. Patrick Muldoon, who seems to have graduated from the "Shatner School of Acting", is about as wooden as you get. Vanessa Williams (Not the Ex-Miss America) isn't much better. Steven J. Canell is actually the best thing in this movie, and that's like being the leper with the most fingers.

The spiders are obviously fake CGI, and don't really look all that good. I guess you have to give the extras some credit for tromping around in the snow and pretending to have giant spiders jump on them.

You know, there is so much good Science Fiction out there, and the Sci-Fi channel makes this kind of crap because it's cheap.

The Sci-Fi Network is known more for churning out monster movies in quantity rather than quality. Even by Sci-Fi standards, though, this is low-quality. Sci-Fi takes the top-secret animal experiment genre and rehashes it for the 674th time. Except that you really never get a good concept of what the top-secret experiment was, outside of "we were injecting spiders to make them larger; apparently the experiment was top-secret to the writers as well. The movie star Vanessa Williams -- not the "Soul Food" movie actress/singer/former Miss America/nude model Vanessa L. Williams, but the "Soul Food" TV show/bad movie actress Vanessa A. Williams. She's part of the experiment crew, as well as some guy Dr. Barnes, who looks like the lead singer from the '80s band "Devo," both physically and with his black outfit on; all he needed was the kooky red hat and I could see the whole gang breaking out in an impromptu karaoke of "Whip It" to try to keep the spiders at bay. The spider effects are pretty bad, and since the spiders are all colored a tropical green/black or orange, yet the movie takes place at a Utah ski resort, you'd think the spiders wouldn't have the ambush factor going for them. Yet somehow they still sneak up on hapless skiers throughout the movie. In its defense, "Ice Spiders" does have a laugh-ability quality to it that allows it to fall into the "good-bad" movie category, as opposed to other monster movies that are both bad and painful to watch, which is why I have enough sympathy to rate this movie a 3 instead of a 1 or 2.

As far as low-budget, Sy-Fy channel movies go, I thought this one was pretty fun. Some giant spiders get loose from a secret military research base located near a ski resort. The ski instructor, "Dash," was a former Olympic hopeful who had to give up his dreams after an injury. He is interested in Dr. Sommers, a pretty researcher that stops by the resort from time to time. As the movie begins, a team of young skiers checks in to the resort for two weeks of intense practice. There is almost no one left, as the resort is in its last weeks of the season. (B-movie fans may recognize Connie Young, who played Holly in Troll 2. Actually, they probably won't recognize her, they'll need her pointed out). Eventually, the spiders are running wild and killing skiers left and right. Will Dash be able to redeem himself by rising to the occasion and defeating the mutant threat? Spoiler: he does. The resort-goers band together and hold the spiders off until the military captures them. Dash orders the spiders to be killed, and several of them are, but one final specimen is taken away by the soldiers. Then everyone has a laugh like it was the end of an episode of Scooby-Doo, apparently already having forgotten the bloody mutilation that took place only moments ago.

Never site a ski resort next to a research facility which is experimenting on giant spiders for military purposes. Or vice versa, I'm not sure which. And, if you do, make sure one of the scientists doesn't decide to spin the research off in his own perverted direction. Because, if you do, you'll get this film, and it really isn't worth it.

I will make a point which I have made before elsewhere - this is NOT the worst film I have ever seen: the camera-work is very good, the location work is good, the sound is crisp and clear, so the production team has done its job well (there are plenty of films out there which are almost unwatchable due to technical ineptitude).

But the story is trite and predictable, the script is obvious, the acting is no more than adequate, and the CGI spiders fail to convince. This is, at best a time-passer.

I still can not believe I sat and wasted an hour and a half of my time to actually sit through this awful movie. What a waste of time. Bad acting, bad cg, this movie reminds me of a class project for the AV club. The scene with the two hunters at the very beginning should have tipped me off. It was more than predictable. Two buddies hunting, they spot the trophy-to-be, one sees the giant spider, and they run around screaming. While one of them tries to kill the spider with a cross bow. Then there was the little fact that they've designed the spider to have two eyes. Forgive me for paying attention in school, but I'm pretty sure most species of spiders have 8 eyes. If you chose to sit through this one, more power to you. Good luck making it to the credits.

Prehistoric spiders, found in Afganistahn, are used in a DNA splicing process with live spiders from this age with their growth secretly altered by a governmental scientist(David Millbern)for their strong silk..a notion conceived by our brain-trust in the secret portion of the government believe this silk can equip soldiers with bullet-proof armor among other things. The spiders are ravenous & bloodthirsty and obviously break free from the secret installation in the mountains where a ski-resort is located. Those tourists, and a team of skiers training for the Olympics, and the ski-resort personnel's lives are in grave danger as these different looking deadly monstrous spiders attack with a vengeance devouring their victims intensely. It'll be up to a past ski-pro(Patrick Muldoon), who trains clients of the resort(..and in charge of teaching the ski-team,as well) how to ski for he seems to be the only levelheaded person around. He befriends Dr. April Summers(Vanessa Williams)who works at the installation, but keeps their work there confidential. But, when she returns to the installation and finds her colleagues' body parts strewn throughout, and one webbed to the wall with his legs removed, she will have to break her wall of silence to save lives. With Muldoon, Summers will have to find a way to stop the spiders which have them barricaded in the lodge, with only a matter of time before the things find a way in. Meanwhile, the ski-team, and the proprietor of the ski-resort(Stephen J Cannell), are stuck in a school bus after an accidental crash, with a black widow spider slowly webbing them inside. The military are trying to find a way to keep from killing the spiders because of specific commands/codes they can not break, but will need Muldoon and Summers assistance. Muldoon and Summers wish to kill the spiders so that their threat to the outside world will be purged. But, our cunning slimy scientist Millbern will do whatever it takes to see his spiders back in the laboratory for more experimental testing.

This is simply another clichéd monster movie where the government screws around with nature leaving the end result of dead innocents attacked by creatures of immense size. The computer effects are as mediocre as always since Sci-Fi Channel productions often do not create realistic enough effects to satisfy. There are some gory bits where limbs lay in cakes of blood as Summers looks at the carnage that ensued from their attempts at merging the DNA of two very different species. These government people will never learn. This contains the same clichéd heroes going through the motions and the same evil scientist who gets his comeuppance. Nothing new here to report, just same-ole-same-ole. The climax with Muldoon being chased down a slope with one hand while the other is carrying a torch producing heat to antagonize the spiders so that they will become trapped by the military waiting down hill is preposterous. And, the twist with a possible cover-up after all that has taken place is pure rubbish. I mean, there's no way anybody could cover up that much carnage.

OK, another giant spiders flick; but wait...this one is not totally bad. The CGI is really pretty smooth and the spiders do look cool. A young ski team is training for the Olympics and arrive at a nice ski resort in Logan County Utah run by Stephen J. Cannell. The young squad is thrilled to meet a ski instructor(Patrick Muldoon)that is a retired Olympic star. Things no longer focus on training when a scientist(Vanessa Williams)working at a government lab arrives with the horrifying news that a project has gone wrong. Giant spiders with accelerated growth are loose in the Lost Mountains and killing anyone they can pounce upon. Also in the cast: David Millbern, Matt Whittaker, Carleigh King and Thomas Calabro.

This is a warning to all the other elderly people who thought they were getting a nice, relaxed romantic comedy when they sat down to watch the misleading-named "Ice Spiders." This is not a walk through the charming world of ice carving, as I had hoped. No, this thriller set off my pacemaker and almost killed me through pure adrenaline. One of the most fantastically heart-pounding films of the last half century by far.

Patrick Muldoon is a heartthrob and nearly impregnated my infertile wife just through sheer testosterone levels exuding from the television. There should really be a warning of some sort for that kind of thing. Also, I read later that his female co-star and even some of the spiders were impregnated too.

My children continue to tell me that the movie is "fake" but that hasn't helped me sleep for the past six weeks. I have recently been released from the hospital after being tenuously convinced that ice spiders are not real. Unfortunately, I live next to a ski resort (which is also next to a secret lab) and I'm pretty sure I've heard spider mating calls recently. I know what they sound like thanks to the movie. (spoiler) I've started carrying fire extinguishers with me, as I know that they are the most generally accepted form of giant spider protection. I hope to recover from the trauma someday.

Even though the Ice Spiders are hunting spiders, they put a red hourglass, ala the Black Widow Spider, on the bottom of the second spider in the movie. Black Widow Spiders don't hunt, and certainly aren't of the Wolf Spider variety that the Ice Spiders are probably supposed to be engineered from.

Giant spiders is pretty much overdone in sci-fi movies...and this one doesn't do a very good job of it. First, these aren't ice spiders, they're giant hunting spiders trying to live at a ski resort. It would have made far more sense if the movie took place in the Arctic or Antarctic, to call it Ice Spiders...

The acting quality is pretty terrible. The special effects are almost as bad. The locations chosen for the movie don't even remotely resemble what they're supposed to be... a world-class ski resort wouldn't have dirt showing through the snow.

ICE SPIDERS is the typical kind of nonsense from the Sci Fi Channel, with a fun 1950s-style B-movie premise let down by horrid direction and execution. The script and performances are the worst culprits here; every character manages to be both vapid and annoying, shallower than a stream throughout. Patrick Muldoon's protagonist is a case in point: for some reason, he's made exceptionally stupid and annoying, and Muldoon's performance hardly adds to the experience. The rest is the usual silly concoction involving secret government experiments and CGI critters running around chewing people at a ski resort.