Le mort dans le filet

Words can barely describe the genius of Horrors Of Spider Island. Fritz Boettger's crap classic embodies everything I love about Z-grade movies: ingenuity, innovation, ridiculous special effects and a complete disregard for anything as boring as logic or reason. Horrors Of Spider Island will resonate in your mind long after the final credits have rolled.

I think I'm going to start using IMDb's bottom 100 as my official viewing guide. There seems to be more quality product clogging up that list than the overwhelmingly insipid top 250. Horrors Of Spider Island basically owes its place in the bottom 100 to MST3K and their followers who automatically assume that a film is atrocious if MST3K have deigned to make a mockery of it. Forget about those failed comedians and out of work actors. If you want to fully enjoy the brilliance of this movie, watch it without MST3K's incredibly unamusing voice-over.

Horrors Of Spider Island begins like a raunchier version of "King Kong". Sleazy Gary is auditioning ladies to join his "dance" troupe, which is about to embark upon a tour of Singapore. The audition scene is a delight. These girls are a bunch of hardcore skanks. Linda doesn't even bother with the pretence of dancing; she simply walks into the audition and whips off her dress. Unfortunately for the men of Singapore, Linda and her colleagues never arrive. Instead, a plane crash leaves Gary and his ladies stranded on a remote Pacific island.

The film really comes into its own on the titular "Spider Island". We are treated to the hilarious arrival scene in which the women walk along the sand in high heels and then drench themselves under a pretty dubious looking waterfall. Our stranded friends soon find an abandoned house and do not appear to be overly concerned about finding a corpse hanging in a giant spider web. These women have more important things to worry about, like fighting over Gary and determining who looks the best in rags. Unfortunately, this idyll is ruined when Gary is attacked by a giant spider and transforms into a murderous spider hybrid.

The spider effects are adorable. I'm convinced that Gary is attacked by a fluffy toy and the mechanical giant spiders are a sight to behold. The inherent ridiculousness of these effects is kept under control but some wonderfully evocative black and white photography. Once Gary has transformed, the focus of the film returns to the lovely ladies. The scene where Babs, the buxom super-bitch, attacks Nelly with a belt surely belongs to the cinematic highlights of the 1960s. The film becomes increasingly lewd as help arrives in the form of two scientists. Before you can blink, these girls are falling over themselves to grab a man. Barbara Valentin deserved an Oscar for the scene where Babs tries to steal Gladys' lover.

Horrors Of Spider Island is a great 81 minutes of entertainment. The film has an inherent camp appeal but there is more to this film than its technical failings and ludicrous plot. Boettger's film is taunt, tight and terrific. The photography is great and the actors are charming. I can not recommend Horrors Of Spider Island highly enough. A fully restored, uncut version of the film is long overdue.

When I watched and later reviewed "The Sinister Urge", I made the comment that pornography, as was defined by Ed Wood, consisted of women in non-revealing bikinis. I must amend that statement. Pornography in the case of "Horrors of Spider Island" consists of women wearing furry bikinis, as well as prancing, preening, and stripping at the drop of ANY hat.

Our story concerns the "tragic" plane flight of a group of dancers and their manager on their trip to Singapore. I guess the nice people of Singapore needed evidence of a morally bankrupt society before they went with their fundamental Islamic state. Anyhow, the girls are more seriously threatened by one of the guys who comes to rescue them. There's a dead professor, some uranium, and this mutant spider that's about the size of the Taco Bell dog who tries to strangle people. The only problem is, there's more scenes of women wiggling than there is of the spider that's causing all the "horror".

It's obvious what the real purpose of the movie is when one of the dancers says, "Ohhh, it's SOOOOO hot!" and then begins to strip for the camera. Notice also that the dancers come in every flavor from tall to short, meek to wild, and from non-athletic to athletic; all the better that every man find at least one of the ladies he likes. Be sure to keep your eyes on the very athletic one; she's a cross between Steffi Graff and "Chyna" from the WWF.

This is a German movie -- the dialog is dubbed, and not well in some places. It is quite racy even for the early 1960s. It's obvious that this bomb never was shown in America.

Sterno says this movie is number one...I just can't show you the digit that says so.

Oh God, was this painful, the most deepest of Deep Hurtings.

The plot seems to have been improvised. Actually, the plot was only partially concealed in those dancer's slit skirts, (some of which were more slit than skirt!) That is to say, scenes were mere contrivances to film the girls in various states of (un)dress as they lolled about this deserted cabin.

All female voices were obviously dubbed by one actress. She'd simply change her accent to differentiate. One line, she changed accents three times on the same actress! Just beautiful!

Many scenes were filmed murkily. The two fight scenes ivolving male cast members were laughably ridiculous. Watch as one guy, holdinga a chair over his head, WAITS for the other guy to get out of the way before he throws it!

Again, I digress. I realize this was just a thinly transparent effort for voyeurs. It's interesting to note what the concept of beauty was 40 years ago. It was different than today, because, like it or not, those grls had more meat to them than the anorexic models of today!

Oh yeah, I think there were spiders on the island, (plastic models, of course.)

Silly, stupid, bad acting, worse dubbing, non-existent plot...I liked this movie!

Manly and ruggedly handsome Gary and his sweet and shrewd girlfriend Georgia are taking a team of dancing girls down to Singapore. Too bad their plane catches fire and slams into the ocean at full speed. Miraculously, Gary, Georgia and most of the dancers survive this horrific accident with not a broken limb or even a bruise in sight. They wash up on an uncharted desert isle and find a cabin containing a corpse hanging in a giant spider web. Momentarily upset, they soon shrug it off and strip down to their underwear while a sultry sax plays. Gary wanders off into the stormy night after Georgia catches him playing tongue wars with one of the sluttier dancers. He never returns. Georgia and the other girls are now alone on the island...or are they? Some unknown menace strangles the slut and then disappears again, leaving the rest of the girls to go skinny dipping and wrestle each other in their underwear. When a small boat arrives, carrying the partners of the dead man in the web, there's time for a wild dance party and lots of making out before sailing home. Unfortunately, Gary has been waiting all this time (having done nothing but hide inside of a tree for the entire middle of the movie) and makes his appearance on this last night, ready to wreak bloody carnage! Gary has been bitten by a mutant spider and is now one himself...sort of. Actually, he looks kind of like Neanderthal Man with glue- on vampire fangs but we're supposed to believe that he is now a spider monster!

The horror elements of this film seemed almost an afterthought, thrown in to attract a larger crowd. Really, this is just an exploitation film, featuring lots of curvy young women gadding about in their underthings, dancing, cat-fighting, swimming, bathing and seducing the young men who find them. It's a terrible movie, but it's amusing nonetheless. If you like cheap exploitation and aren't picky about things like plot, then you'll enjoy this one. It's a really poor man's Russ Meyer film...with spiders!

It doesn't take you long to suspect that this movie was made quickly and cheaply, and the opening scenes with the 'dance girl' auditions is definitely a large signpost which says "Bad Movie Buffs Only".

As you might expect from the title, there needs to be a way to quickly get our girls (and guy) to Spider Island, and the obligatory plane crash helps. It's the highlight of the film, as the stock footage suggests we are no longer watching a DC-3, but rather a Kamikaze plane in a ball of fire rapidly dropping from the sky into a raging sea. The fact that they all manage to survive almost confirms the amazing optimism expressed by the girls manager back on shore, where he tells a distressed relative on the phone "No need to fear the worse, all we know is the plane caught fire and we lost radio contact".

OK, I think its best come clean and reveal that the real horror of Spider Island is the appalling overdubbing of the voices. In fact, after a while, you start listening to the secondary sound effects, to see if they are as equally bad. I particularly like a scene where someone is showering in a waterfall, but the actual sound effect is that of someone gargling water. So, the film does manage in this way to keep your interest.

And, in a strange way, as the plot and women begin to be revealed, you begin to wonder what will happen next, only because you know it will not be logical, and probably will involve women fighting. And the women are great, a flash back to when buxom was in, women could really cat-fight, and they had no trouble in throwing themselves shamelessly at an ordinary man.

So overall, a few agreeable moments for the bad film buff. In particular, I suggest you watch out early on for the logical jump when they find an extended-handle hammer, and the guy concludes: "Ahh, an extended-handle hammer, they must be mining uranium". Now, as well known in bad film land, uranium is the universal cause of giant nasty animals, so you are ready for big spiders to start appearing. Yet, in this film, uranium also seems to be an aphrodisiac, making the extended-handle hammer metaphor even more poignant.

This movie was on the Treeline 50 sci-fi classics compilation – I suspect it is not readily available as a single release. The type of film you wouldn't seek to watch, but if you are stuck on the lounge after a heavy pizza and it came on, you probably would end up watching it.