The Iowa State Entomology Club’s annual Insect Horror Film Festival is one of the few places you can go where even the snacks have eight legs.

The Entomology Club is hosting their annual event Thursday, which will feature the film “Eight-Legged Freaks.”

The group has discovered many ways to make insects tasty over the years, says Melinda Thede, sophomore in entomology and club vice president.

“This year, we are looking at making suckers with insects inside them,” Thede says.

Such unusual culinary delights as maggot crispies and chocolate-covered crickets have been at past years’ festivals.

Members of the club have even appeared on “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno” displaying their unusual snacks.

“We make the treats ourselves,” Thede says. “We decide on an insect … for this year, it’s mealworms and crickets in the suckers. We generally choose insects that won’t make the kids sick and that we know are edible.”

Some even taste like more common snack foods. Dry-roasted maggots, for instance, taste like dry roasted peanuts, says Terri Howard, entomology club president.

“As for the recipes for the treats, we have some we use that have been around for years that someone who had way too much time on their hands came up with,” Thede says. “This year, we are merely taking a sucker recipe and putting the insects inside of it.”

“In past years, we have had a variety of different snacks,” Howard says.

“We have featured cricket brittle, dry-roasted maggots and maggot crispies.”

This year, the club is returning to their roots as an insect horror film festival by screening “Eight Legged Freaks,” a recent homage to the giant insect movies of the 1950s.

“Something new and different that we are doing this year, which is different than the last few years, is that the movie will be geared toward more of a pre-teen/teenage group,” Thede says.

Thede says the club wants to continue being family-friendly, but they wanted to get back to their origins.

“The insect zoo will also be there with some of their insects and displays,” Thede says.

“We still want the kids to come early, but we wanted to try to get back to the theme of the horror film fest.”