As if New Orleans didn’t have enough problems already, what with the occasional hurricane, frat-boy vomit in the streets and the constant smell of hobo urine, the city has to deal with an arachnoquake — that is, an earthquake that unleashes giant spiders, doy! — in … wait for it … Arachnoquake. It’s one of those made-for-Syfy movies, but you probably knew that.

These eight-legged freaks mostly harass a tour group on a trolley driven by Bug Hall (Alfalfa of 1994’s The Little Rascals). His passengers include a grumpy old man, an airhead woman, her Not LL Cool J hubby, two smirking teens and their asthmatic mom (Tracey Gold of TV’s Growing Pains), whose job as an eighth-grade biology teacher comes in handy to provide exposition during the requisite dissection scene. Elsewhere, her husband (Edward Furlong, Terminator 2) drives a bus of high schoolers that also is menaced.

Spiders are so creepy that the concept doesn’t require a big budget to exploit audiences’ readymade fear. (Take, for instance, 1977’s Kingdom of the Spiders, the greatest depiction of the arac war yet, which sends chills up the spine.) They need only look real, if not be real; Arachnoquake‘s only could look more fake if they were cutouts on sticks. They’re completely computer-animated, with rounded edges and as white as a KKK costume. They breathe fire and dog-paddle in water. They look like cartoons.

On that note, director G.E. Furst (Lake Placid 3) colors his crap with touches befitting a ‘toon, despite Arachnoquake‘s relatively serious tone. Just one example: When one spider traverses a crosswalk, the street sign makes a cuckoo-clock sound for no good reason. It’s as senseless as Furlong’s big wisecrack after taking a baseball bat to a dead spider on the road: “Now that is how you make jambalaya! Yeaaaaahhhhh!”

Nooooo. —Rod Lott