Horrors of Spider Island (1960)

Touches You

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

A Gaston Hakim Production. Not copyright 1960 by Intercontinental Film/Rapid Film. U.S. release through Pacemaker Pictures: March 1962 (original 86-minutes version under the title It's Hot in Paradise), November 1965 (re-edited 75-minutes version). Released in West Germany in 1960 as Ein Toter hing im Netz. Alternative U.S. titles: Hot in Paradise, Girls of Spider Island, The Spider's Web, Body in the Web.SYNOPSIS: After their plane crashes into the ocean, a Hollwood talent scout, his secretary and six showgirls are stranded on a remote Pacific island. NOTES: A German movie, filmed on location in Nicola, Yugoslavia. COMMENT: It's sad to see a fine actor like Alex D'Arcy (How To Marry a Millionaire, Soldier of Fortune), reduced to acting in a German girlie movie that has now hit the airwaves as a somewhat tamer horror flick. Mind you, by the humble standards of both dubbed (D'Arcy at least provides his own voice) and "B" films, this entry in the monster cycle (cf. Wasp Woman) is not too uninteresting. In fact, the director manages to utilize his real locations to bring off a few adventurous effects. True, production credits mostly vary from typical Poverty Row shortcuts to merely competent craftsmanship, but at least there are plenty of showgirls to distract one's attention. In fact, it could be argued there are too many girls, for at least five of these young ladies look so alike, it's impossible to tell them apart.

Here we have a German black-and-white film from over 50 years ago, which managed quite an achievement. It is bad enough to make in to the list of the 100 worst films in film history on the biggest movie website of the world. Yes it is German, even if there are copies with English language out there and even if the director and some of the cast used American pseudonyms. The director is Fritz Böttger and it was his 3rd and final film behind the camera. He wrote many more though.The cast is predominantly female. A group of dancers has a plane crash, but (what a miracle!) they all survive and are just hungry and thirsty. So they reach an island, but sadly they are not alone. One of the very few males in this film is bitten by some kind of spider monster and transforms into a spider human himself afterward. But not the Spider Man hero kind. A furry, scary looking creature which is out there to kill.This 75-minute film could have been fun actually, if the spider monster would have killed the girls one by one, but the actual outcome is not so bad that it's funny, it's so bad that it's real bad. The girls keep (cat)fighting for no reason really and the males fight too, but then all of a sudden in a scene near the end it was just harmless fun. But the worst thing in this film is probably all the sexual bait. Literally, every third scene we see one or more women making suggestive gestures obviously aimed at getting male audience members horny and thus tricking them into believing this was not a complete rubbish film. From the female cast, one actress died shortly afterward when she fell out of her apartment's window, while another (Barbara Valentin) actually had a great career working a lot with Fassbinder. The other actresses aren't particularly known and did not appear in too many films and those that they appeared in were all fairly forgettable.I do not care about what MST3000 did with this movie as they are idiots and don't know a thing about quality movies, only possessing the (lack of) ability to put down films. However, I have to say that this film here is not a good watch at all. Pretty much exactly the opposite. The writing is bad. The acting is even worse. Stay far far away.

Goodness, where to start!? The makers of this movie took a German horror-porn film, edited out all nudity and sex scenes, and repackaged it as a horror film aimed at children. The result is everything you would expect from a movie that has had its very reason for being cut out.There's no real plot, no character development, and no budget to speak of. The monster costume is absolutely pitiful, and the monster is so slow moving that only a geriatric, a blind person, or a complete moron would be in any danger from it. Of course these bimbos, in addition to being annoying and poorly dubbed, are idiots, and are imperiled by the spider/wolf/man thing. Not that it ever comes close to being scary.Frankly, the parts that were removed were probably the only ones anyone would have found worth watching, but there's still far too much sleaze for me to be remotely comfortable with the idea of children watching this trash. It was so pathetic that I stopped watching halfway through. And that was the MST3K version!

This film (also known as "Horrors of Spider Island") starts off with a manager by the name of "Gary Webster" (Alexander D'Arcy) and his assistant "Georgia" (Helga Franck) hiring some attractive female dancers to perform in Singapore. On the flight there the plane crashes in the Pacific Ocean and the group ends up stranded on an island. When Gary is bitten by a large radioactive spider he becomes transformed into a monster which seeks to kill the women one by one. Now, while some might consider this an intriguing concept this film never really capitalizes on it in any meaningful way. Instead, rather than providing any horror or significant action, all the viewer gets to see are interpersonal dynamics between the women which is amplified when two men arrive by boat. The acting wasn't very good and none of the actors or actresses really stood out in any way. Also, because it was originally filmed in German and dubbed in English the dialogue seemed rather basic and clumsy. In short, this movie may have had some potential but it never achieved it.