The Giant Spider

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!...

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.

He is a fan of all things cheese. The 50s b movies were cheese. With the lack of technology Hollywood took a chance on movies like plan 9 and the day the earth stood still, war of the worlds and other aliens, giant bugs, etc. Christopher Mihm is a name you should always remember if you like 50s bugs, aliens, and space travel. He uses most of the same main cast. Mike Cook, Dan Sjerven, and his family, and a few from the Kaiser family. A few movies are tied together: the monster from phantom lake, terror from beneath the earth and the giant spider. He does one about every year or two, as it's low-budget. They are all black and white. Generally good family fun. Some of the kids may not get the references. Amazon has a lot of his movies. You won't be disappointed if you like cheese from the 50s. They look terrible by today's standard.

I can see the attempt to make this a 50's style film, but it doesn't work. Now I have seen movies of the 1950's including the nature on the rampage ones. This isn't that. There are many jokes throughout poking fun at 50's life, and that joke wears thin really quickly. The movie, simply, is too self aware to be a real throwback. Maybe I'm being too critical of the film but...it's a good attempt but just doesn't work. Stop trying too hard.

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