Mike Blackwood (Walter Faber) owns an employment agency. Gary Webster (Alexander D’Arcy) and his assistant Georgia (Helga Franck) are there looking to hire eight girls for a dance troupe that will be touring different cities. Their first performance will be in Singapore. Of the twelve girls auditioning Gary picks May (Gerry Sammer), Babs (Barbara Valentin), Linda (Elfie Wagner), Kate (Helma Vandenberg), Nelly (Eva Schauland), Gladys (Dorothee Parker) Ann (Helga Neuner) and Doreen (who we never see again).

Gary, Georgia and the girls head off for Singapore. Somewhere over the Pacific their plane catches fire and the crashes into the ocean. They manage to get aboard a rubber raft. After floating in the ocean for five days they spot an island. The group manages to paddle toward it. Once they land Gary finds a water source. Further investigation of the island turns up a cabin. When they open the door they find a huge web with a dead man caught in it. Panic ensues. Everybody runs.

Gary takes the dead man out of the cabin. He finds a diary that says the man was Professor Green and that he found Uranium on the island. He also had a premonition that something bad would happen to him. He also heard strange hissing noises that he couldn’t identify. Keeping that information from the girls Gary and Georgia inventory the place and decide they have enough food to last a month.

That night Gary goes off for a walk and is bitten by a fuzzy spider creature. Gary turns into a giant spider monster. The next day everyone goes looking for Gary. While everyone is out looking for him Gary comes back to the cabin and strangles Linda. With everyone’s nerves on edge cat fights ensue.

After about a month a rowboat shows up with two men who worked for the professor. Bobby (Rainer Brandt) and Joe (Harald Maresch) end up in the middle of a bevy of sultry women. Dog fights ensue. Everybody’s having a great time until monster Gary crashes the party.

“The Horrors of Spider Island” was originally released in 1960 in Germany as “Ein Toter hing im Netz” and was directed by Fritz Bottger. The film was released in the U.S. in 1962 as “It’s Hot in Paradise” at 86 minutes long and again in 1965 as “The Horrors of Spider Island” at 75 minutes long. It is a West German horror film and probably one of the worst movies ever made. Sometimes you can tell how bad a movie will be based on how many titles it’s had. For example, this film has also been released as “The Spider's Web”, “Body in the Web”, “Girls of Spider Island”, “It's Hot in Paradise”, and “A Corpse Hangs in the Web”.

The film was originally made as a mild nudie sex romp movie. It was later trimmed of all its nude bits, which weren’t many anyway, and released as the science fiction, horror film “The Horrors of Spider Island”. That should tell you something. The only plus a sex movie has is the nude scenes. Other than that they all have bad acting, bag dialogue and bad just about everything else. No exception here. Our friends at MST3K lampooned it in 1999. The dubbing was more horrible than the horror of Spider Island.

As for the monsters, well, I always have a fondness for crappy monsters. Monster Gary was not too bad considering the movie was only meant to be a sexploitation film. Apparently, spider monsters have three fangs and furry faces. Good to know. The giant spider was, in a word, adorable, with big black eyes, a pointy nose and fingers. Cute as a button it was the only spider on Spider Island. As crappy as the movie is there is still a cult following that seems to be enchanted by it. Silly monsters, half naked women and unintentional humor. Sometimes that’s all you need.

Horrors of Spider Island

Ein Toter hing im Netz

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