Kari Wuhrer's B Roots Are Showing

By: Marc Shapiro
Date: Tuesday, July 23, 2002

Kari Wuhrer has done more B movie/direct-to-video erotic thrillers, action films and psychos-on-the-loose movies than most of us have fingers and toes. But if you think reminding the veteran actress of such less than perfect gems as TERMINAL JUSTICE, BEYOND DESIRE, TOUCH ME and G MEN FROM HELL is going to ruin her day, guess again. Because the star of such big screen Bs as ANACONDA and, currently, EIGHT LEGGED FREAKS is B to the core and proud of it.

"I've done a lot of films that you probably haven't seen," declares Wuhrer, who also numbers being a regular on the TV series SLIDERS and the original MTV game show REMOTE PATROL among her numerous credits. "A lot of people ask me why I do all these B movies? And the answer is I've gotten to travel everywhere, had a lot of great experiences and have had the opportunity to sharpen my tools as an actress. I'm not in it for anyone but me so you can all kiss my ass."



The actress' mock defiance is very much in keeping with her role of small town sheriff and single mother Sam Parker in EIGHT LEGGED FREAKS. And while Wuhrer claims that the film never strays far from a '50s B movie sci-fi mentality, there is much in her character that is very much tied to modern times.


"In a sense, my character is the damsel in distress," she offers. "But I get to tote a gun and I get to blow away giant spiders and I get to be the single mom to teenagers which, to my way of thinking, is pretty brave. So I would say I'm playing a very strong, very modern action woman."

Which, in EIGHT LEGGED FREAKS, meant spending a lot of time facing off against mutated giant spiders that would be CGI'd or added via practical effects into the scenes at a later date. A veteran of numerous genre shows, Wuhrer was not daunted by the prospect of acting to nothing.

"We had a clear picture in our heads of what they were going to look like. We had seen pictures on the Internet and in books and we had seen what the effects were going to look like. The rest of it was just using our imagination, which is what actors do. Having David Arquette on the set made doing those scenes a blast. He's the most childlike actor I've ever worked with. Reacting to nothing was like playing kick the can and running from whomever was it."

Wuhrer is the first to admit that you cannot do a film like EIGHT LEGGED FREAKS completely serious or play it largely for laughs. And that whether or not the movie is a success with audiences depends largely on the delicate balance between horror and humor.



"We didn't want to take you all the way there," says the actress in regards to playing it strictly for scares. "We didn't want to imitate those movies from the '50s because then there's no audience participation factor. We wanted to bring the audience in by having it be as realistic as it could possibly be. So we did want to keep the humor to a certain point. It wasn't really on the page. The jokes that did happen happened more organically. A little bit of it was by accident and came out of the ensemble of actors that we had. We also put a little bit of humor back into it in post but we were aware all the while that we did not want to make this too campy."

A highlight in the largely monster driven EIGHT LEGGED FREAKS is the quite realistic relationship between Wuhrer's character and her daughter Ashley (played by GHOST WORLD's Scarlett Johansson). The actress is appreciative of the acknowledgment of the more character driven moments but has a good laugh at the notion that mother and daughter actually look like sisters.

"It's all about clean living," she chuckles. "We explain that it was a teen pregnancy and, in all actuality, I could very easily be her biological mother. That the kid actually comes across as older and more responsible is kind of a bonus. I don't think too many people will question the relationship between them."

Wuhrer returns to her sci-fi roots when she is reminded that the rumor of a SLIDERS movie refuses to go away and die. Wuhrer wishes it would.

"I don't think there will be a SLIDERS movie at this point. I think that Jerry O'Connell has definitely moved on and I've moved on. We're lucky that the show is still playing around the world and that people are still interested. But it's pretty much over at this point."



Kari Wuhrer, born in the small town of Grovefield, Connecticut, has carved out quite a niche in Hollywood (albeit one that lives primarily in video stores and on late night cable channels) as a no holds barred action hero in a slew of low budget films. But she stops short of predicting that she's ready to take on the big guys in mainstream action films.

"Let's be serious. Nobody is going to pay me $10 million like they're paying Vin Diesel and nobody is expecting me to pick up and be the next Sylvester Stallone. But women are becoming more heroic in films and I think it's great that I have the duality I have in EIGHT LEGGED FREAKS where I can be a babe, then an action hero and finally a mom too. I don't think there's anything more courageous than a single mom. I haven't seen Vin Diesel playing any single moms lately."

Wuhrer, who recently relocated to New York after 13 years in Los Angeles, claims she has returned to The Big Apple to "find my muse again." She hints that her next stop may be the thriving New York stage.

"The big thing is that I need to be creatively challenged and, for me, New York, physically and culturally, is challenging. I feel like I have to get back to my roots right now and reestablish who I am. It's a crazy time. That's why a movie like EIGHT LEGGED FREAKS is so great right now because it is such an escape from reality. I was asked recently which was scarier, giant spiders or terrorists. I was like, 'Are you for real?'"

"We have giant spiders because we have terrorists."

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