THE comedy-horror Eight Legged Freaks opens at Knutsford Studio Cinema this week.

No forthcoming attraction of 2002 has created as much buzz as its trailer did, with the excellent tagline, "Do you hate spiders? Do you really hate spiders? Well, they don't like you either."

And the film delivers everything the promo promised, sneaking in under the radar and emerging as the best unpretentious genre movie in many a month.

While the similarly-themed Arachnophobia stuck too close to reality with its regular-sized villains, this goes the whole hog by spilling enough toxic waste to bulk up the spiders to sizes ranging from four to 20 feet.

The plot follows the expected lines - an escalation of attacks as the mutated spiders strike first in the desert by day, then invade the town by night, driving the survivors into a failing mall and a played-out gold mine.

Unassuming hero David Arquette and cute sheriff Kari Wuhrer rise to the occasion by providing a nicely thrown-away romantic sub-plot in between the cobweb crises. But this isn't a people movie. It's a spider movie, and its web-spinners are on great form.A horde of giant, leaping spiders pursue teenagers on dirt-bikes, trapdoor spiders suck townsfolk under the street, human victims are liquidised, and hordes of the things crawl over the roof as Arquette tries to get a mobile phone signal. The computer generated spiders work well on screen,splatting with satisfying bursts of green goo. With a witty score that keeps playing variations on Itsy Bitsy Spider and a title likely to enter the language, this is a real scream from beginning to end.

Eight Legged Freaks (12) shows daily from Friday at 8pm. Also showing from Friday is Scooby Doo at 1pm and 3.30pm daily and Austin Powers in Goldmember at 6pm daily.