 An action hero turned washed up, B movie actor, Colton West (Steve Guttenberg) spends his current life forced to fight off giant bugs for big screen entertainment. He hates it, and it makes him miss his glory days in the 90's as a well-known superhero (at least in this universe). However, on his way home after being let go from a project, he suddenly finds himself facing off against a swarm of horrifying, fire-breathing spiders that erupt from a volcano nearby. This ultimately triggers Colton to get himself home to his family.
In the meantime, his family ends up on separate paths. His son, Wyatt (Noah Hunt) ends up fighting his own battle against the flame-spewing arachnids alongside his friends, Jordan (Diana Hopper), Eli (Ben Snowden) and Travis (Zac Goodspeed). Meanwhile, his wife, Olivia (Nia Peeples) soon finds herself taken in by the Army after having a cheesetasticaly bad ass face-to-face with one of the spiders in her own home. While his family survives the arach-attack as best they can, it may be up to Colton to channel his hatred of working with bugs into finding a way to hopefully never do it again. But then, sequels are a thing. 'Lavalantula' actually happens to take place in the same universe as the 'Sharknado' films, as there is some character crossover here. In fact, Colton West eventually appears after this in 'Sharknado 4: The Fourth Awakens' and this film's sequel, '2 Lava, 2 Lantula'. You've gotta appreciate word-play like that when it comes to movies like these. I further appreciate the whole elemental aspect of these films, incorporating one of the four elements with a natural disaster and a creature. It's like they roll a three-sided die. What will they think of next? (and why do I already know I'm gonna be watching it?) Another interesting attachment is that it comes from the same guy who directed last week's Spider Feature, 'Big Ass Spider', Mike Mendez. This is a director who is slowly coming to my attention, and I'm enjoying his work, for the most part. He's about being very self-aware and having fun, realizing you're there for nothing more than a creature feature. He also directed the 'Friday the 31st' segment of 'Tales of Halloween'; a personal underground favorite for the season. Going back to the movie at hand for a second though, I can't say it's not completely without its problems. I never thought I'd see the day, but this actually features Michael Winslow who has been brought back to do a whole bunch of noises and sound effects. It's a lot of fun when he does this stuff to mess with people in the 'Police Academy' movies, or just act like someone who's lost his mind (as seen in 'Cheech & Chong's Next Movie'). But here, I get the feeling there wasn't much of a guideline for him to follow and they just let him do his thing, which unfortunately results in things like stereotypical Kung-Fu voices that don't necessarily fly with people as much these days. Its often kinda cringe-worthy, but I woudn't say he kills the movie, either. Another cameo comes along here that made me do a double-take. Only a select few will remember him, but Patrick Renna shows up here. He would be best known for his role as "Ham" Porter in 'The Sandlot', but ended up in a few things including 'The Big Green', and even an episode of 'X-Files' where he played an obsessive compulsive vampire named Ronnie Strickland. We haven't seen him for a while, but he actually hasn't stopped for all these years. Remembering him as comedy relief in films like 'Sandlot', he's got a similar role here as an obsessive and starstruck fan of Colton's. It's actually pretty entertaining to me how he's so in awe, but casual about it at the same time. He hasn't lost his timing. It's kinda funny that I remember not getting a whole lot out of 'Sharknado', perhaps looking at it the wrong way at the time. I never did bother with anything in the series since then, but this made me second guess myself. One could take both of these series and parallel watch them, looking for some sort of continuity. The best part is, these movies are Syfy originals, so no one's really looking for cinematic quality. It's just some B movie fun, and I would say very similar to 'Eight Legged Freaks' in some of its execution. I had a lot of fun with it, see it for what it is, and once again recommend it lights down with a bunch of popcorn - check for spiders first. 4/5
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