Spiders (Eight Legged Freaks)

The Spiders are major antagonists of the 2002 horror-comedy film Eight Legged Freaks. They are normal Arizonian spiders that have become ferocious, gigantic, and eternally hungry due to ingesting toxic waste from a local spill. They are also led by Consuela, the matriarch of the spider horde.

Their vocal sound effects were provided by Rob Paulsen, Kevin Michael Richardson, and Frank Welker.

Origin
The spiders are originally a collection of two hundred arachnids in possession of the exotic spider farmer Joshua. Joshua feeds them crickets he gathered around the river that were spoiled by a barrel of toxic waste that fell from a nearby truck due to attempting to avoid a rabbit. The altered crickets subsequently affected the spiders' behavior and physiology, as Joshua's friend, a school boy named Mike who shared a common passion with spiders in general, noted their unusual growth. The solitary spider farmer is unable to help but pleased by this turn of events and expressed his desire to sell the spiders.

Unfortunately for him, by feeding his spiders altered crickets, Joshua has unknowingly created intelligence and hungry mutants out of them instead of fortune. As soon as Mike left with Joshua tells the boy the estimation of the spiders' size on the next week (which is four times than the present), a red Chilean tarantula named Tank, snuck out of its cage and proceeds to silently climb his back. The sneaky tarantula then bites him on the nape painful enough to force the man dangerously trash around, causing him to break other spiders' cage where some of them overwhelm him to his death whereas another flee in confusion.

Mutation
The spiders run into the town mines, which is next door to Joshua's house, and they live in the mines, presumably eating rats and other animals. The spiders get bigger inside the remains of Joshua's house, and they live off his corpse for a while, and get to the size of dogs. Then the spiders are alarmed by Joshua's phone ringing, when Mike tries to call. So the spiders frantically flee into the mines, taking Joshua's skeletal body with them. Then the spiders get to the size of trucks in the mines. There seems to be a hierarchy, the enormous spiders are like the generals, and then there are scouts, and the smallest spiders in the horde are just under a foot in height, but very venomous.

The spiders begin to meet the miners: One miner has his hose stuck, when he is spraying the mine walls with water, so he begins to suck out whatever is trapped in his hose, only to find to his horror, baby arachnids crawl out into his mouth, then he vomits them up, live, and the spider parent, an enormous creature the size of a car, crawls at him, while he tries to scream but he is dragged to his death by another spider from behind.

Scouting
The giant spiders also begin to scout out the town. The cats and dogs begin to be abducted and eaten, the male sheriff, Pete, sees his cat be dragged up the chimney and electrocuted, then eaten by a huge spider, and his wife leaves him due to this. Pete has difficulty coping with the amount of missing animal calls his office gets, so he eventually calls the Department of Fish and Game for backup but they laugh at him.

Harlarn, a local alien fan, has been broadcasting from his remote radio station in his trailer that the abductions from the spiders are really the work of aliens. But nobody believes him, apart from Chris McCormack's aunt Gladys, whose dog is abducted by a giant spider later on.

Mayor Wade begins to see his pet ostriches are being sucked into pits in the ground, devoured by trapdoor spiders, then thrown up again, but he doesn't know or see the spiders because he only finds the bones, but the giant trapdoor spiders watch him menacingly from their pits. Wade's stepson, Brett, is dating Ashley, the daughter of Sheriff Parker, who has told Ashley because she was raped Brett might rape her. So she gives Ashley a taser for "protection." Ashley does use it when Brett gets forceful but he is only kissing her. So, it turns embarrassing when Ashley confesses her mother was worried and she breaks up with Brett and drives off, but to his shock, Brett sees giant jumping spiders on the dunes watching him. Brett panics and runs off to his biker friends, telling them to run, but they joke that the only one running is him. Suddenly a huge jumping spider kills one of the boys. The others jump on their bikes and flee, but the spiders jump on them and kill all of them, leaving Brett as the only survivor. The spiders caused a communication blackout when Brett causes a lorry to swerve into a few power lines, causing them to topple. Brett is chased by the giant spiders into the mines.

Invasion
Now the giant spiders begin their attack. One giant arachnid attacks Ashley in her room, but Chris and Sam and Mike save her and kill the spider. Then more giant spiders attack due to their nocturnal hunting pattern. Three of them follow Pete when he drives into town. He comes to get Sam but is attacked by the spiders, but he shoots them all. Then he picks up Sam and Chris, Ashley and Mike and they drive to Harlarn's trailer to warn everyone. Harlarn is skeptical but convinced when the giant tarantula ambushes the trailer and turns it over, but they all get out. Pete drives them into town and soon everyone is being attacked by trapdoor, jumping, spitter and orb weaver spiders. The whole town is in chaos and everyone is running all over the place. Sam tries to tell everyone to go to the mall due to its concrete walls and steel doors. Nearly everybody gets into the mall, the confused Mayor is delighted to the mall's sudden popularity, but then he is terrified when seeing the spiders attacking. One spider even stands on a gatepost and beckons all the other spiders in, then hops about in glee while emit voice with laugh-like pattern.

Once inside, Tank tries to punch in, but cannot. The townspeople are told to get silent because the spiders are attracted to noise, to what Mayor Wade says why don't they call the Army. But Sam reminds him the phones are dead. So Harlarn says he could use his satellite phone on the top of the mall to do the call, and Wade cowardly tells Harlarn to "be a hero." When the other townspeople get bats and heavy weapons, Mike gets perfume because the spiders hate strong smells. All the other townspeople meet up but Ashley sees Wade running off. So, everyone defends themselves against the swarm of spiders that attack the mall, but many are terrified about the numbers. Sam gets them into the mines and barricades the place, but the tarantula smashes through.

Meanwhile, on the roof, Chris and Harlarn are trying to get a signal, but a giant swarm of spiders attacks. Harlarn tries to shoot them but his fear of heights proves stronger than his fear of spiders. Chris gets through to the police, tells them of the attack, but they don't believe him. Chris yells "GET BACK YOU EIGHT LEGGED FREAKS!" and finally believes Harlarn that "They're here, they're here!" which Harlarn says "You're damn right! That's what I've been telling you!" Harlarn tells Chris he will defend humanity by luring the spiders away, and taunts them that "You'll never get your anal probe near me!" Then he jumps off the roof and meets Pete, and together they run away from the giant tarantulas who have been moving very slowly towards them.

The townspeople move through the mines, finding many corpses, and suddenly Brett appears, having seen Consuela eating live people. Brett reunites with Ashley and tells her his bike saved his ass that day. The gatekeeper to the mall is lured off by an orb weaver who kills him and then Chris gets informed by Mike that the female of the spiders is three times bigger than any male. Chris decides to bomb the whole place with a bulb from the ceiling and his lighter, because the mines are full of nitrogen and the smallest spark will blow the whole mine. This will also kill all the spiders. Chris tells everyone to get out when he finds Gladys and lights the place. He does find Gladys who had been abducted by the spiders, and they kept her alive, ready for later because they prefer live prey. Wade had also been found wrapped up when he tried to ditch Brett, but the people rescued him from the webbing. Chris gets Gladys out but tells her not to light her cigarettes because of the gas, but then a gigantic, grotesque Consuela appears, angry and hungry. She howls at them and Chris can't shoot, but he remembers the perfume, squirts it at her, and she backs off, irritated. Then Chris and Gladys flee, pursued by the gigantic Consuela, and Chris lights the lighter, causing an explosion. All the other spiders follow Consuela, going back to the mines because it's dawn, and although they chase Chris to the exit, the spiders, Tank, and Consuela are blown up in the resulting explosion.

The Army do arrive because although no one believed Chris or Sam, they do believe Harlarn's story of alien invaders. But somehow they are disappointed that they were just spiders attacking all along.

Personality and Traits
As a result of feeding upon contaminated crickets taken from local spills, these spiders mutated to the point where they were not only able to grow into gigantic proportions that enhanced their strengths, but also had their intelligence enhanced that also affect their means of communication and mindset: They now capable to communicate (normally in form of either roars, growls, limited body gestures and crude laughs) between one and another and also formed hierarchy between them. Each of their role in the formed hierarchy seemed to depended on how big they are and what species they came from.

Hilariously, in spite of their intelligence, many of them actually had much to learn in human environment, given that during the invasion, some of them still have problems differentiating which prey that edible or not and sometimes behave clumsily. For instance, a jumping spider tries to taste a stuffed deer head, only to find tab it deemed not edible and spat it out in dismay. The other jumping spider shown humorously failed to break through the glass when tries to attack a waiter in a diner.

Powers and Abilities
As a result of being fed mutated crickets due to the toxic waste, all spiders possess these powers:


 * Advanced Intelligence: Though mutated spiders came from different species in Arizona, all spiders are shown having their intelligence amplified beyond their natural intelligence as they mutated into gigantic size: spiders in the movie capable in performing impossible feats(at least impossible for their non-mutated counterparts in real life) as well as performing plans such as forcefully opened a car's door so their friends can pull the driver inside, learn from mistakes (ex. a jumping spider managed to bursts in through window glass in a more competent manner after observing one of its allies did a similar thing but embarrassingly failed), and performing ambushes.
 * Speech: Their advanced intelligence enables them to speak among themselves albeit in form of growls or roars. If one observed carefully in the scene where all spiders swarm toward the Prosperity Mall, one of them, who rallies its fellow spiders to attack, performs an Evil Laugh.
 * Hierarchy and Interspecies Eusociality: Thanks to their enhanced intelligence, the mutated spiders are able to form hierarchy among their kind and even put aside their difference for a common goal, which explains why none of them shown fighting each other within their lair and during the invasion. The behemoth of their kind (like Tank the red chilean tarantula) works as second-in-command of the spider army, Consuela as the Matriarch of the spider army, the smaller spiders as scouts/infantries of the spider army and the trapdoor spiders as brute strength of the spider army.
 * Enhanced Physiology: Spiders displayed this with their giant size that enhanced to superhuman level and even able to fire their webs from distance albeit only in close quarters.