The Giant Spider

Spider A+, acting D-. I had high hopes for the Giant Spider, being that I love old black and white horror movies. Sadly this did not live up to those expectations.

The is the 8th movie made my Christopher R. Mihm, all of which pay loving homage to those wonderful B 'monster' movies of the 1950's. Well, except one which is really a murder mystery. If you love watching Them or Robot Monster, seeing actors like John Agar and Richard Carlson on the screen, being amazed at the world of 50's style special effects (only better I think), you can't help but love Mr. Mihm's movies. The Giant Spider is his best one yet! There is drama, humor, action, love and thrills to satisfy all. It is obvious that everyone involved with the making of this movies truly loves what they are doing. Be prepared to laugh out loud, to cringe in 'fear', and to just enjoy a little over an hour of fun!!!!! This is a must see!

Christopher R. Mihm's THE GIANT SPIDER is another of his purposefully cheeezey, intentionally hokey, terminally low-budget, 1950's sci-fi homage / parody films. As such, it's almost as stellar as his THE MONSTER OF PHANTOM LAKE.

The characters -military, scientist eggheads, reporters, etc.- are funny, the story is suitably silly, and the titular, superimposed tarantula is a hairy horror, especially its close-up "face", which is a nice nod to the awesome arachnid in THE BLACK SCORPION! Toss in the catchy, opening theme song and this is great Saturday night entertainment. Recommended for all of the other Mihm-iacs out there!

P.S.- Also contains some stupendous stock footage during the final conflict!...

The movie category for this is Incorrect, it is a 'Comedy, horror, Sci fi'--with Comedy coming first

A viewer has to get past the first 5 minutes or so, Mr. Mihm, (the guy who put this thing together along with his wife), put their son in it, and his short acting stint is pretty non believable and not funny at all, but after his character meets up with the mom, it starts to get funny, and pretty much stays that way for the rest of the movie

I got a lot of chuckles out of this. A lot of times with this kind of movie it has a lot of good looking young people, and it ends up being pretty flat.

This particular movie has adults for the most part, and U can tell they got a kick out of portraying their characters, and got into the spirit of the thing

Thoroughly enjoyable PG comedy horror movie

I've been following Christopher R. Mihm's film career for a couple of years now, and The Giant Spider is easily the best, most accomplished film he's made. Mihm has made a career of mounting reverent homages to 50's horror/sci-fi films, and the polish of each of his films (this is his eighth!) grows with each film. The pacing, acting, special effects, directing, and technical achievement of The Giant Spider is pretty darn impressive for an independent film-maker - some stand out elements for me: The "spider" simply puts all other film beasties to shame - compare it directly with 1955's "Tarantula" and you can see how much better this one is filmed and presented. The puppetry is AMAZING! The close-up of the spider's face is really, really first rate. And the theme song has been stuck in my head for days! Love, love, love it. A film that made me laugh out loud several times (not AT it, WITH it), and left me with a great big smile. Perfect film for fans of the genre.