“Walking out of a movie means something,” writes Chicago Tribune critic Michael Phillips. “It means a filmmaker has crossed a personal line in the sand. We ‘ankle,” as the show business publication Variety likes to put it, for different reasons. A walkout’s significance depends largely on the pace of the exit (fleeing in revulsion versus schlumping out, bored beyond recognition) in relation to the crimes up on screen.” I’ll never forgot being bawled out by three or four journos at the Westwood Bruin for walking out on Eight-Legged Freaks. As if I’d done something wrong. Who, today, would stand up for Eight Legged Freaks? Hell, who remembers Eight Legged Freaks?
