On a notably hot afternoon in Los Angeles’ San Fernando Valley, there’s a bigger problem than the heat... Giant, magma-powered spiders are attacking! Okay, sure, none of these giant spiders are in sight – they’ll be added later – but still, the cast and crew of Syfy’s Lavalantula -- debuting this Saturday night on Syfy -- are hard at work battling fearsome, lava-spewing, eight-legged death. But don’t worry, help is coming, as washed up movie star Colton West (Steve Guttenberg), a tourist named Chris (Patrick Renna) and a man who calls himself Pirate Jack (Ralph Garman) race into action in a convertible to help save the day.

One of the title characters in Lavalantula.

The Appeal

Now personally, I feel like you have to say yes when you’re offered a movie like Lavalantula. And the cast said they pretty much felt the same way, including Guttenberg, whose character – the star of a 1990s superhero movie series now struggling with his career – lends the movie a bit of meta material and Garman, appearing in his second Syfy movie after Sharktopus.

Ralph Garman and Steve Guttenberg in Lavalantula.

The Right Tone

So how do you find the right tone when you’re making a movie like Lavalantula, especially in terms of the performance you’re given?

Steve Guttenberg in Lavalantula.

Patrick Renna and Steven Guttenberg in Lavalantula.

In the midst of it all, director Mike Mendez is in familiar territory. After all, he directed a previous Syfy movie, Big Ass Spider! As he said to me on set, with a chuckle, “Yeah, apparently I have the most specific niche in Hollywood of doing spider movies that attack Los Angeles!”Big Ass Spider! was well received, garnering decent reviews, a nomination at the SXSW film festival for the Audience Award and a win at the Saturn awards for best DVD/Blu-Ray release. Still, Mendez was wary of jumping back into a similar realm.“It was strange, I mean you know it’s not a thing I set out to do like, ‘Oh, can I do another giant spider movie!?’ If anything I was kind of tying to avoid doing that." Still, Mendez said once he was personally asked by both Syfy and the production company CineTel he reconsidered. "As an independent filmmaker who’s always struggled to get his films made, to have a network asking for you specifically and asking you to kind of do your thing, that had never happened before. So I kind of felt like well even though yeah I want to feel like, 'Oh no, I’m above this. I shouldn’t do it," I felt like it’s hard to get movies made period so I’d feel like a fool if I passed up the opportunity to do it. So I embraced it and here we are.”Lavalantula’s cast includes Guttenberg (Cocoon), Nia Peeples (Pretty Little Liars), Renna (The Sandlot), Garman (Ted) and many more – including several of Guttenberg’s former Police Academy co-stars. During my visit to the set, I spoke to the cast, Mendez and executive producer Lisa M. Hansen about what it’s like making a movie of this sort.I’ve got to tell you, when I first read the breakdown I was like “oh god, what is this?” And when I started reading the script I thought, “Okay, this is really funny, and it’s fun. I really want to do this.” It’s the perfect combination because you don’t get it that much where it’s fun and physical - right up my alley.! For some reason my career, it’s been a lot of dramatic stuff and I’m just naturally kind of funny so it was so delightful signing up for this.I was on a flight to New Orleans for my wife’s family reunion. They sent it to me and I checked out Mike Mendez and was like, “Oh, this guy’s awesome!” I heard Steve was in it and I kind of went, well, yeah an actor needs to do this at least once in his life! Why not. It’s sci-fi. Everyone loves sci-fi.It’s hysterical. It’s absolutely hysterical to have a movie where you’re poking fun at the film industry is a hoot. Everybody’s loving it. The crews having a great time. It’s fun all the way around. Lots of hilarity on the set.It’s just a blast. I had a great time doing Sharktopus. I kind of talked my way into that one. Mike Mendes, the director of this one has been another listener of the radio show for a long time and knows I’m also an actor, he wrote this part for me for this thing. So he said “Do you want to kill giant spiders with Steve Guttenberg?” And I was like, “Hell yeah, I do!” I think that for so long, mass entertainment, mainstream entertainment, especially big budget films were sort of so dark and serious and gritty that I think it’s fun again to go back to the kind of movies we used to watch when we were kids that have a sense of humor about themselves and are sort of goofy and sort of tongue and cheek. It’s enormously fun. It’s lighter fare. No one is taking themselves too seriously and everybody’s having a good time and hopefully the audience does too.If you’re lucky enough in a movie and have a smart enough filmmaker, he sets the rules right away. So he tells the audience, “This is the world we’re working in and this is what we want you to believe.” Mike has done a great job in that and that’s what all good movie makers do is in the first two minutes they tell you okay, this is a science fiction movie, this is a horror movie, this is a comedy movie, this is what you’re supposed to do, this is how you’re supposed to think. So if you see a scene at a party, a drama has a certain tone to it, a comedy has a certain tone to it. The first five seconds of 40 Year Old Virgin are him walking around the apartment and you see him having a hard on and right away you see that that’s the tone of the movie. So he does that with this movie right away. He shows you that this is an action star who is waning in his career and is doing one of his last action movies.[Finding the right tone] is a real trick. I think that the humor has to come out of reality so I think that really helps. So instead of being “Isn’t that a funny thing to say!?”, it comes out of what’s happening. It’s kind of a natural instinct, I think, to some degree.I think it is interesting doing that and I think it’s something that Mike and Steve have been really concentrating on because it’s a fine line. You don’t want to be laughed at. You want to be laughed with. To me, some of the best comedy is always the most realistic comedy and all the comedy greats are sort of like that. Even in Monty Python - it’s totally out there and whacky but there’s still something truthful about it. I feel like that’s what we’re finding in this and it’s turning out really well because there’s the humor in what we’re going through.Not to sound too actory but the secret to doing anything funny is you have to believe it in the world that you’re playing. So the stakes are very high for our characters. I mean these are giant spiders who are trying to kill us and they’re trying to destroy Los Angeles! So you just have to play the reality of that and if you play that straight, if you just play the reality of that then everything around you is so ridiculous that everything becomes funny. You can’t play the jokes. You can’t wink at the camera. You have to play the scene.

Continue to Page 2 as the Lavalantula team discuss that title, the Police Academy reunion and more.