{"id":6765,"date":"2024-10-25T22:28:53","date_gmt":"2024-10-26T02:28:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=6765"},"modified":"2024-10-25T22:29:10","modified_gmt":"2024-10-26T02:29:10","slug":"the-giant-spider-invasion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/10\/25\/the-giant-spider-invasion\/","title":{"rendered":"The Giant Spider Invasion"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"The Giant Spider Invasion<\/strong> (1975)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Group 1\/Sci-Fi-Horror\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 84 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG (violence, gore, brief nudity)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Bill Rebane\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Robert Easton and Richard L. Huff\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Bill Rebane\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Jack Willoughby\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: October 24, 1975 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Steve Brodie, Barbara Hale, Alan Hale Jr., Leslie Parrish, Robert Easton, Kevin Brodie, Dianne Lee Hart, Bill Williams, Tain Bodkin, Paul Bentzen, Christina Schmidtmer, J. Stewart Taylor, William W. Gillett Jr.\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Box Office: $15M (US)<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ***<\/p>\n

\u00a0You know a movie\u2019s bad when it\u2019s targeted by both RiffTrax and MST3K. Such is the case with The Giant Spider Invasion<\/strong>, a supposed horror movie so inept and so goofy, it wouldn\u2019t even scare the biggest arachnophobe. Hell, the scariest thing in this movie isn\u2019t even the eight-legged freaks that overrun the small rural Wisconsin town, but the human freak with an unnatural attraction to his underage sister-in-law. Thankfully, he becomes spider chow along with a lot of other folks.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The spider disaster begins when a large meteorite crashes on the property of Dan Kester (Easton, Pet Sematary Two) and his alcoholic wife Ev (Parrish, Crash!). When they go to investigate, they find a bunch of his cattle slaughtered and several geodes containing diamond-like gems. They also contain spiders of varying sizes. They\u2019re the spawn of one giant mother of a spider. They proceed to kill and devour townspeople until a pair of scientists, Drs. Vance and Langer played by Steve Brodie (Out of the Past) and Barbara Hale (Perry Mason), can find a way to close off the interdimensional gateway through which they came to our planet. Apparently, it\u2019s the only way to kill the space spiders.<\/p>\n

\u00a0When we\u2019re not being subjected to a lot of scientific talk from the only intelligent lifeforms in The Giant Spider Invasion<\/strong>, we\u2019re witnessing the stupidity and ignorance displayed by the others. The town sheriff (played by Skipper himself, Alan Hale Jr.) is particularly dumb. When Vance shows him a Geiger counter, he says, \u201cWe don\u2019t have any geigers around here.\u201d The Kesters are a nightmare couple. She\u2019s a lush; he\u2019s a creep who tells her things like \u201cYou\u2019re so dumb you wouldn\u2019t know rat turds from Rice Krispies.\u201d He cheats on her every night with a local woman. He tries to seduce teenage sister-in-law Terry (Hart, The Pom Pom Girls) on several occasions. I guess perversion runs in his family since his sleazy cousin Billy (Bentzen, Invasion from Inner Earth) also makes lewd remarks about the girl.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Terry is going out with Dave (Kevin Brodie, The Night of the Grizzly), a young reporter for the local paper. He doesn\u2019t get to do much other than save Terry from a spider attack. There\u2019s also this fire and brimstone preacher (Bodkin) holding revival meetings in which he warns of the hellfire that will rain down on sinners. While he says this, the meteorite approaches. There\u2019s also a friendly local bartender named Dutch played by Bill Williams (Hell\u2019s Horizon) who was married to Barbara Hale in real life. I think that about covers the human characters in The Giant Spider Invasion<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\u00a0As implied in my opening statement, The Giant Spider Invasion<\/strong> is a laugh riot. It can\u2019t be taken seriously, not even for a second. I think that\u2019s partly what director Bill Rebane (Monster-a-Go Go) has in mind with certain scenes and lines of dialogue. Take the scene where we first meet the sheriff. When Dave walks into his office, he refers to him as \u201clittle buddy\u201d. This is obviously a reference to the show that made him famous, Gilligan\u2019s Island. It\u2019s my understanding that the two writers came at The Giant Spider Invasion<\/strong> with different approaches. Huff wanted to make a serious film while Easton went for a more comical tone. We can see how that turned out. Calling it uneven would be inaccurate since it\u2019s impossible to take any of it seriously. It\u2019s about a giant spider from space, for crying out loud! It\u2019s not exactly Bergman, is it now?<\/p>\n

\u00a0The special effects are the epitome of cheap and cheesy. The outer space shots are clearly a backdrop with poorly rendered light streaks representing the meteorite\u2019s slow descent to Earth. The landing is nothing more than a bad light show seen from a distance. The scenes set at NASA (where Vance is sent from) are stock footage. They keep using the same shots of nerdy scientific types staring at consoles. The giant spider is really a Volkswagen Beetle covered in black fur and fake legs. This explains why it leaves tread marks rather than spider tracks. However, the makers did a good job with the scenes of people being devoured by the giant spider. They\u2019re nice and bloody, especially for a PG movie. Speaking of which, I was surprised to see a boob shot albeit a quick one.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Do I even need to tell you the acting in The Giant Spider Invasion<\/strong> is uniformly terrible? I would guess not. What I\u2019ve already told you pretty much speaks to that. I\u2019ve also given you samples of the dopey dialogue so no need to go there either.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Let me end by saying that The Giant Spider Invasion<\/strong> is a movie of supreme awfulness. That\u2019s what\u2019s so great about it. It thinks it\u2019s a horror movie, but it\u2019s really an unintentional comedy about idiots, geodes and giant space spider. It\u2019s a movie to be made fun of with its bad (oh, so BAD!) special effects, nonsensical plot and behavior befitting morons. This is why I LOVE plunging the depths of exploitation movie entertainment. There\u2019s no shortage of trashy treasures like The Giant Spider Invasion<\/strong> to be discovered.\"\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Giant Spider Invasion (1975)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Group 1\/Sci-Fi-Horror\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 84 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG (violence, gore, brief nudity)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Bill Rebane\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Robert Easton and Richard L. Huff\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Bill Rebane\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Jack Willoughby\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: October 24, 1975 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Steve Brodie, Barbara Hale, Alan Hale Jr., Leslie Parrish, Robert Easton, Kevin Brodie, Dianne Lee Hart, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7469,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,9,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6765","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-b-movies","category-guilty-pleasures","category-horror"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/The-Giant-Spider-Invasion-P.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6765","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6765"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6765\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7471,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6765\/revisions\/7471"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6765"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6765"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6765"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}