Le mort dans le filet

Leering, lecherous manager Gary Webster (Alexander D'Arcy) and his troupe of brain-deprived, female dancers find themselves stranded on a seemingly uninhabited island, after their airplane crashes into the Pacific ocean. However, before reaching land, they must first moan like a sack full of cats, while floating on their life raft.

Once on land, their moaning turns into sighing, murmuring, and a mass case of the vapors. All except for Webster. Luckily, his manliness saves these sighing, moaning, vaporized dancers. Without him, they couldn't have found the waterfall that was ten feet away! Watch those high heels, now!

Happening upon a deserted domicile, Gary and the moaning murmurers enter. Love and partial disrobing commences.

Uh oh!

They're not alone after all. Something else is on the island. Something hideous! Something... spidery! Gary is affected negatively, and the burning question becomes: "Will he ever put his shirt back on?"

Meanwhile, among the dunderheaded dancing girls, moaning gives way to screeching. Jazz plays, as much sauntering occurs, and two strange men arrive on the island. Can more moaning be far off?

HORRORS OF SPIDER ISLAND (aka: BODY IN THE WEB) is an insanely inept, absolutely enjoyable hunk of gooey Limburger! A must for the ultra-schlock enthusiast!...

The HORRORS of being trapped with lovely women for days and days! One cannot imagine the terrible, horrible, mind-blowing pressure that must have been gnawing at Gary's very soul...oh, who am I kidding? Character depth is all three dimensional here, as in "I wish this movie had been filmed in 3D". Girls in ripped dresses, towels, bikinis, and floral panties, and is there a downside? Well, yes, there is the terror of bad dubbing, and the fear of back story being told in a painfully ungainly way. Thank God for MST, and it is a crime they are gone. I miss them.

Anyhoo, if ya get the chance, and can take the intense heat, check out this rockin' flick.

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.

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!

Those that put too much thought into this movie are missing the point. It was made for a few reasons; one to make a buck, and two, to bring in guys to watch scantily clad, exotic European women try to act, and I guarantee they weren't there to watch them act. They were there to watch the actresses run around in their bikinis and garter belts. Think about it, the ultimate male fantasy. To be alone on an island with several beautiful (and presumably willing) ladies.

Is it cheap? Sure. Is it poorly done? Perhaps. But this movie is no different or worse than the other B-grade European sexploitation or even American films of the same genre.

It's good for a laugh and the women were certainly enticing then as they would be now.

Unless you're Leonard Maltin or Roger Ebert, I say watch it and enjoy. Don't try to figure it out.