Came a Spider (UK: Futura, 1978)
Tagline: "A chilling masterpiece of many-legged horror..."
Ah, spiders, the mother of all atavistic nightmares,
stalking their prey on eight hairy legs. Let's face it, very
few of us are comfortable with them. Some of us are
terrified of them. Most are offended by their presence.
It's all very silly, of course, for most spiders (yes, even
the big ones) are perfectly harmless and eat many times
Tagline: "A chilling masterpiece of many-legged horror..."
Ah, spiders, the mother of all atavistic nightmares,
stalking their prey on eight hairy legs. Let's face it, very
few of us are comfortable with them. Some of us are
terrified of them. Most are offended by their presence.
It's all very silly, of course, for most spiders (yes, even
the big ones) are perfectly harmless and eat many times
their own body weight in mosquitoes and other pests every summer. But that's
spiders in the real world, in the shadowy world of horror fiction it's a little bit different.
Came a Spider was Edward Levy's first book and was even a New York Times
bestseller...pretty damn impressive for a pulp horror novel! His second book, The
Beast Within was made into a pretty cool cult horror film and bears looking at
another time. But for now...spiders. Let's put Came a Spider under the magnifying
glass and see if it's got legs:
"Across his face, in his hair, and down his back onto his chest was a multitude of
small, black, hairy spiders. They were everywhere. Some were glistening wet,
leaving little blood-red smears as they crawled across the boy's face and down onto
the pillow. Some were obviously feeding on his blood.
Interesting, though not terribly evocative. Let's look a little closer:
She could feel the creatures moving and biting and tearing at her. She could hear
them; hear the horrible sucking sounds they made; knew they were feeding--on her!
I have to admit, the descriptions could be a bit better, a little more 'wet' to ground the
reader in the organic horror of what's happening. But I am a stickler sometimes. Let's
get to the plot. A kid named Lee Miller goes out hunting in the desert with his new .22
and discovers a huge spider near a government facility with a high chainlink fence
around it and NO TRESPASSING signs posted everywhere. The spider bites him. He
gets sick. His dad finds him and brings him home. He continues to get sicker and
sicker and the local sawbones does everything to make the kid well (except put him
in the hospital where he belongs). Then one day, they find Lee in a pool of blood on
his bed with spiders all over him. Bad news. An autopsy reveals that when the spider
bit the kid, it injected its fertilized eggs into him and they settled into his kidneys
where they ate their way out. Ouch. Soon, the spiders are swarming everywhere.
They attack a zoo, infest a movie theater, feast on two boys in a cave, and,
ultimately, descend upon LA for some real feeding, making the storm drains beneath
the streets their lair...kind of like the giant ants in Them did. The only ones who stand
in their way is an overweight, fatigued homicide detective and a couple scientists, Dr.
Harold Benjamin and Dr. Christine Selby (the former who developed them
accidentally as part of a secret government project). After several attempts at
spraying the sewers with pesticide fail (the exterminators become spider food), a
new attempt is made to kill them by leading cows infected with a virus down into the
sewers and letting the spiders feed on them.
Pros: Great characters. I loved poor overworked cop McNeal. And Dr. Benjamin and
Dr. Selby falling in love was just the perfect touch, the arachnologist and entomologist
coming together with sort of a geeky, easy love separates the depth of this book
from the pack. Well done.
Cons: I hate to compare this one with Spiders by Richard Lewis, but I'm afraid I
must. Spiders had much better gruesome spider attacks (except for the spiderlings
swarming out of the kid's mouth), but the characters didn't have the depth of Came a
Spider.
Overall: This is a good book. Very readable, Levy keeps things moving and although
he dishes out minimal gore, the pacing and dead-on characterizations make up for it.
Nowhere near perfect, but fun all the same.
Four bloody skulls out of five.
Next month's Guilty Pleasure:
"They're back from the grave and ready to party!" (huh??)
spiders in the real world, in the shadowy world of horror fiction it's a little bit different.
Came a Spider was Edward Levy's first book and was even a New York Times
bestseller...pretty damn impressive for a pulp horror novel! His second book, The
Beast Within was made into a pretty cool cult horror film and bears looking at
another time. But for now...spiders. Let's put Came a Spider under the magnifying
glass and see if it's got legs:
"Across his face, in his hair, and down his back onto his chest was a multitude of
small, black, hairy spiders. They were everywhere. Some were glistening wet,
leaving little blood-red smears as they crawled across the boy's face and down onto
the pillow. Some were obviously feeding on his blood.
Interesting, though not terribly evocative. Let's look a little closer:
She could feel the creatures moving and biting and tearing at her. She could hear
them; hear the horrible sucking sounds they made; knew they were feeding--on her!
I have to admit, the descriptions could be a bit better, a little more 'wet' to ground the
reader in the organic horror of what's happening. But I am a stickler sometimes. Let's
get to the plot. A kid named Lee Miller goes out hunting in the desert with his new .22
and discovers a huge spider near a government facility with a high chainlink fence
around it and NO TRESPASSING signs posted everywhere. The spider bites him. He
gets sick. His dad finds him and brings him home. He continues to get sicker and
sicker and the local sawbones does everything to make the kid well (except put him
in the hospital where he belongs). Then one day, they find Lee in a pool of blood on
his bed with spiders all over him. Bad news. An autopsy reveals that when the spider
bit the kid, it injected its fertilized eggs into him and they settled into his kidneys
where they ate their way out. Ouch. Soon, the spiders are swarming everywhere.
They attack a zoo, infest a movie theater, feast on two boys in a cave, and,
ultimately, descend upon LA for some real feeding, making the storm drains beneath
the streets their lair...kind of like the giant ants in Them did. The only ones who stand
in their way is an overweight, fatigued homicide detective and a couple scientists, Dr.
Harold Benjamin and Dr. Christine Selby (the former who developed them
accidentally as part of a secret government project). After several attempts at
spraying the sewers with pesticide fail (the exterminators become spider food), a
new attempt is made to kill them by leading cows infected with a virus down into the
sewers and letting the spiders feed on them.
Pros: Great characters. I loved poor overworked cop McNeal. And Dr. Benjamin and
Dr. Selby falling in love was just the perfect touch, the arachnologist and entomologist
coming together with sort of a geeky, easy love separates the depth of this book
from the pack. Well done.
Cons: I hate to compare this one with Spiders by Richard Lewis, but I'm afraid I
must. Spiders had much better gruesome spider attacks (except for the spiderlings
swarming out of the kid's mouth), but the characters didn't have the depth of Came a
Spider.
Overall: This is a good book. Very readable, Levy keeps things moving and although
he dishes out minimal gore, the pacing and dead-on characterizations make up for it.
Nowhere near perfect, but fun all the same.
Four bloody skulls out of five.
Next month's Guilty Pleasure:
"They're back from the grave and ready to party!" (huh??)