50 Movie Pack: SciFi Classics: Part 7 - Horrors of Spider Island

Are you fucking kidding me? I’m on Horrors of Spider Island? Do not fret, dear readers, I checked the box multiple times to confirm that I am indeed about to watch a film entitled “Horrors of Spider Island.” Considering Karl Pilkington’s past endeavors on the Ricky Gervais podcast to describe a real-life Spider Island, I can feel only excitement in anticipation of this viewing. A quick IMDB search yields that after being filmed in Germany with the title “Ein Toter Hing Im Netz,” translated to “A Corpse Hangs in the Web,” the film was released to the U.S. with an Adults-Only rating in 1962, only to have its nude scenes removed and re-released in 1965 as “Horrors of Spider Island.” The film features the “German Jayne Mansfield,” Barbara Valentin – here credited as Barbara Valentine – in one of her first roles. And with bated breath, I begin my journey.

The credits are already titillating. “Introducing Barbara Valentine as Babs.” Sexy. The film opens in L.A., with visions of palm trees and classic cars until the barren German set is revealed as a car pulls up to a bleak building front. Mike Blackwood is the talent finder of a pin-up studio, wherein the girls discuss a journey to Singapore and the “30 nightclubs down there,” as well as their burgeoning racism. “Listen up, girls, when they take those turbans off they’re just the same as any other man.”

Gary Webster is the manager of this operation, and he’s ready to check out the dancers. He and his assistant, Georgia, enter Blackwood’s office and begin to select girls for their dance troop trip to Singapore. He rejects almost every girl who actually dances for him, but takes the exotic dancers and strippers, and chooses them by the crossing of his legs. I assumed Mr. Webster had no interest in seeing the girls dance until he hires a jazz dancer. For some reason he explains his leg-crossing trick to his underling, Blackwood, which at this point had become completely fucking obvious to the viewer.

And they’re off to Singapore by plane. Quickly, the plane calls mayday and attempts an emergency landing, by falling out of the sky in a fiery death crash. The girls scream as they plunge into the Pacific Ocean. This is pretty much the plot of LOST. Put a bunch of attractive women on a plane and let them crash into the ocean. On the life raft, the girls cry as they await their rescue. The discussion of rationing is broken off when they discover a bird and soon enough land. They paddle their way to the rocks, and disembark from their raft. The film is now about Gary Webster manning it up and keeping nine questionable women in line. This film is already getting tons of points for misogyny.

Webster finds a hammer and immediately surmises that it must be used for mining (most likely uranium). I didn’t know they used tiny hammers for that, but I’m also no uranium miner, so I won’t stay on this. They find a cabin, and inside the German titular corpse hanging in the web. The women run off, but Georgia and Webster investigate. They carry the man off and make the cabin corpseless and hospitable. As the women walk back into the cabin, a 2-foot-wide spider is seen scurrying in the bush. TERRIFYING! By rifling through the corpse’s belongings, clothing, and diaries, they discover that the man living in the cabin was a professor searching for uranium with one tiny hammer.

Cabin life begins to resemble The Real World as the women get ornery about food, dishes, clothing, and the heat. As Gary is seduced by one of the women, Georgia walks onto the scene, and chastises Gary. He complains of the heat, and of not knowing what he’s doing anymore, and walks off into the jungle to let off some steam. The spider-thing follows him. It attacks from a tree and strangles him. Gary is able to remove the spider and shoot it with the professor’s revolver. But it’s too late! Gary has been bitten, and begins to resemble a spider. The next day, Georgia grabs some of the women and they begin to scour the island. She forces Gary’s seductress, Linda, to stay behind at the cabin. As two of the women search, Gary watches from the jungle, his spider face scowling. He nearly grabs one of them, but she pushes his claw away from her hair, not noticing it at all. Back at the cabin, Linda enjoys some cool water, and is attacked by spider-Gary. She is found drowned in the pond. The women bury her and become concerned about their safety and the month-long supply of food they have found in the cabin. Eventually, they make it for a full month on the island, apparently surviving by merely standing around in bikinis and giggling.

Two men arrive on the island, who identify themselves as the professors’ lackeys, and grumble about their lot in life. While one drinks a bit from their supply of whiskey, he hears the survival-necessary giggling of the women while they swim. What I don’t understand about the women is that there is an obvious spider-thing scouring the island, and they still swim around and goof off. I know they’re upset that they haven’t been rescued after a month, but shouldn’t they be engaging in more useful activities? I guess I have a lot more to learn about survival on an abandoned island. One of the women screams, and is apparently grabbed by whiskey grumbler, and while the other women search for her they find the location of Gary’s spider shooting and transformation. Eventually they discover that whiskey grumbler a.k.a. Bobby was the reason for her disappearance. Soon enough they find his partner-in-crime, Joe, and they tell them their sad slightly spider-related, but much more bikini-related failed sojourn to Singapore.

With these two men comes the promise of rescue. And as a ship is contacted by the men’s radio, the women decide to throw a dance party. As they cajole and cavort, there is only a feeling of foreboding dread. Why do people insist on having dance parties on an island inhabited by Spider-Gary? Why not just wait until you are ON the boat? These are the kinds of questions that won’t be answered. Bobby, the whiskey grumbler, intends to head off into the woods with one of the women to make time, and it’s obvious that only trouble is in his future. His buddy, the quiet one, falls for one of the women, Anne, and flirts with her near the cabin. He informs her of his feelings, an almost love-at-first-sight situation. Bobby hardly has time to make time with any girl, as he is continuously distracted from one to the next. So apparently the only trouble befalling him is too many women.

Bobby and his friend eventually fight over his friends’ love for Anne, something Bobby sees as silly, and though I have to agree with Bobby - considering they’ve been on this island with the women for less than 24 hours - I can understand how his words upset his friend. They fight for a bit, until they decide how silly it is for them to be fighting, and Bobby goes off to find Gladys, the girl he “really wants.” Gladys finds Bobby, bitten on the neck, with Spider-Gary nearby. Spider-Gary grabs Gladys and drops her off a cliff, and Joe chases after Spider-Gary, confronting him, until he has time to run back to the cabin. He uses Georgia as bait, who for a time is able to soothe the beast, until Joe makes a sound and Spider-Gary chases him around a table. Joe grabs a flare and chases Spider-Gary out of the cabin.

They chase Spider-Gary into the jungle, and surround him with the frightening flares. They are able to push Spider-Gary towards the quicksand, and he drowns in it, with Joe muttering, “He’s not dead, he’ll continue living.” I’m no biologist, but I’m pretty certain that Joe is wrong. The film ends as a boat is seen sailing towards the ocean, and yet another terrible movie has wasted my time for a little over an hour.

Before I grade this movie, I must admit that it probably would have been better with nudity, though there were plenty of embarrassing scenes left. The 15 minute dance party was completely pointless, and any of the points that may have been made about love and women’s rights were completely negated by the fact that they were ON A FUCKING ISLAND WITH AN EVIL HUMAN-SPIDER HYBRID LURKING IN THE JUNGLE. The five-minute long catfight that takes place at one time during the film was so embarrassing, that added nudity could have only helped. At least it eventually ended, and I was able to forget the “Horrors of Spider Island.”

Rating: 1 out of 9 Whores of Spider Island