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93 reviews in total

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55 out of 59 people found the following review useful:
There were giants in those days., 2 February 2000

Author: gein from Seattle

I try to watch this movie every year or so. It reminds me of my youth when I didn't have any preconceived notions about what a film should or shouldn't be. A time when I had total suspension of disbelief.

I remember when my ten-year-old eyes first caught a glance at the greatest horror movie poster that ever hung in the hallowed foyer of our local movie theatre, The D&R in Aberdeen, Washington. The poster featured a gargantuan spider bearing down on a group of terrified people. Suspended in the air above the monster were three helicopters and lying crumpled at the spider's legs were a couple of burning cars while spotlights filled the sky. One of the terrified was a busty young blonde wearing only a negligee. I was sold.

Every kid in town must have seen the `coming soon' poster because the next day in school all halls were abuzz with nervous anticipation of what was going to be the greatest cinematic experience of our young lives: THE GIANT SPIDER INVASION! Our local newspaper (The Daily World) had a beautiful half-page advertisement featuring the glorious poster art. I cut it out and hung it on the refrigerator so my mom wouldn't forget.

After a torturous week of school, the opening day finally arrived. Packs of kids, with parents in tow, rushed to secure a place in line at the D&R. The line wrapped around the block. Aberdeen hadn't seen this much excitement since Jaws played there the previous year.

Once inside the lobby, ushers showered the crowd with little black plastic spiders. Kids scrambled everywhere – clawing and climbing over each other to get their hands on these rare collector's items. I snagged a few off the ground and then rushed into the theatre to secure a seat for my Mom, my brother and me.

The theatre was filled to capacity. Those who did not make it in for the first show were forced to wait until the 9:00 p.m. show. Back in the seventies there were only two show times during the weekdays: 7:00p.m. and 9:00p.m. It was truly Darwin's `survival of the fittest' in action.

At precisely 7:00p.m., the theatre grew dark and the screen was illuminated with the coming attraction: Squirm! The theatre was filled with whoops and screams as slime-coated killer worms with fangs tore into flesh, but soon a collective kid-groan could be heard as the rating `R' flashed after the preview. Thankfully, our attention was focused off the fact that most of our parents would not permit us to see the `R' rated film when the title: The Giant Spider Invasion filled the screen.

For the next 85 minutes, we were treated to a town exposed to a `miniature' black hole' that creates a `space warp' inviting in alien-spiders that grow to mammoth proportions. The film really delivered the goods! A grungy farmer discovers a half-eaten body whose rib-cage is partially exposed, a girl comes out of the shower baring her breasts and, in a glorious shower of blood, the spiders suck up a couple of people into their puckered-festering mouths! Cries of horror and disbelief could be heard throughout the auditorium. A couple of ushers had to remove a bawling friend of mine after he saw the partially eaten remains of one of the victims – too much for his delicate sensibilities. I sat transfixed. This was the greatest movie ever made. The next day, I dragged a few of my friends to watch the matinee – we stayed for the remaining showings and returned the following day. The movie played in Aberdeen for only a week, but I must have seen it a dozen times.

Years later, I found The Giant Spider Invasion at a video store and immediately purchased it. I watched it with the same glee I did back in 1975 and the fond memories I held came flooding back.

Watching it now I chuckle as Alan `The Skipper' Hale delivers lines like, `He's a strange man and he's building up a big head of steam.' But, seeing the spiders, which seemed so real back in the good old D&R, crawl over the beautiful Wisconsin countryside, still gives me a small thrill. Even though it's obvious the spiders are badly made up VW Beetles, it still takes me back to a time when all movies I watched were magical.

There were giants in those days.

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18 out of 20 people found the following review useful:
What did you expect?, 29 July 2005

Author: kinojunkie from United States

Giant Spider Invasion is a low budget monster movie reminiscent of the giant bug invasion pictures of the 50's but it was actually shot in the 70's. It's all very predictable, these giant spider eggs travel to earth on board some meteorites and land in a small Wisconsin town. People start disappearing, cattle are found mutilated and things just aren't quite right. Needless to say, it's up to the local Sheriff, astronomer and out of town NASA specialist to find out and ultimately confront the source of the strange things going on. Of course it's all being caused by these giant spiders that are running amok, devouring everyone in sight. The effects are pretty bad and the acting is very hammy but it's all part of the fun. Amazingly, they actually built full sized giant spiders for this film and although they look terrible, it's wonderful to see these massive creatures roaming the Wisconsin country side wreaking havoc where ever they go. Giant Spider Invasion is good mindless fun that's better than 90% of the horror/sci-fi films being made these days.

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14 out of 15 people found the following review useful:
Red Dwarf or Red Giant? Tarantula or Station Wagon?, 9 May 2004

Author: GroovyDoom from Haddonfield, IL

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

Early on in "The Giant Spider Invasion", Dr. Jenny Langer (Barbara Hale) is lecturing a group of bored students about different types of stars. What she doesn't know--and really, how could she?--is that an unprecedented celestial event has just taken place where she lives in Wisconsin: a black hole has come crashing down to Earth! Even worse, the black hole has opened a doorway to another dimension, and thru this doorway has emerged...a horde of malicious spiders of varying sizes! And it's all going on right in her back yard!

Well, actually it's going on in the back yard of a common dirt farmer who presides over a household of lowlifes who give new meaning to the term "white trash". They find some of their "cow" partially eaten (it seems that interdimensional spiders chew their food instead of the traditional sucking of vital fluids). A bunch of normal-sized tarantulas emerge from geodes that also contain diamonds, but nobody really notices the spiders until one medium-sized spider jumps out of a sock drawer, and really, how did it get in there in the first place, we wonder? Then we get a peek at the purveyor of our titular "invasion": a giant-sized tarantula that looks suspiciously like a motor vehicle covered in furry carpeting and legs. In one fell swoop, Wisconsin has become a dangerous place to live. It's enough to make a decent spider become a recluse! (har har)

NASA's answer to this unprecedented phenomenon is one Dr. Vance, a mildly sexist scientist who investigates the strange disturbance with Dr. Langer. You'd think a horde of giant spiders would be pretty easy to spot, but somehow our heroes manage to avoid the reality of large hairy arachnids until they run smack dab into one coming up the other side of a large grassy hill. The spiders seem to have no trouble at all acclimating to our dimension, and begin doing what giant spiders do--spinning webs and trapping people. One unfortunate guy is foolish enough to try and drive his car right through a giant web--talk about a bug splattering on your windshield!

I don't understand the problem some sourpuss people have with this movie. What in the cosmos did you think you were getting into by watching a movie called "The Giant Spider Invasion"? It is a cheap drive-in movie with a goofy title. This isn't a James Cameron production. It has very little budget to speak of and no first-rate actors, but the actors here really do enjoy hamming it up. The filmmakers clearly understood that they were in "B" movie territory (well, actually it's more like "T" or "U" territory), and the dialogue is appropriately hilarious.

The truth is, I think "TGSI" deserves to be in its own category. Although it is a poor film on almost every level, it does not deserve to be considered a truly awful cinematic experience. Nay, this film actually did a great deal of box office business in its day, and for good reason, too. There are truly well-made films that are nowhere near as entertaining as this one. Although the "MST3K" commentary is also hilarious, you don't really need it, I'm confident that you will not need anybody else to point out what's funny in this movie.

By now you probably know that this movie also stars Alan Hale Jr, aka Skipper from "Gilligan's Island"--and yes, there IS a reference joke in the film. Leslie Parrish makes a big impression as the boozy farmer's wife who finds the black hole on her property. Unfortunately for her, this black hole leads to a dimension full of giant spiders, and she becomes spider chow early on (after enjoying a delicious tarantula-flavored bloody mary).

A few other actors you might recognize are caught in this webby mess (hey, ya gotta pay the bills somehow, ya know?), but it's Barbara Hale who delivers the goods. Steve Brodie plays her male cohort scientist, but he simply looks bored. Barbara really gets into the part and plays it to the hilt, doing the faux intellectual bit, screaming in mock horror at the tarantulas, and dashing left to right in some cockamamie plan to undo the junk science that has turned Wisconsin into a smorgasbord for cheesy spiders. At one point she lets out a banshee-howl that will make the hair on the back of your neck stand on end. She's even game enough to roll down a hillside for real. I bet she looks back on "The Giant Spider Invasion" and giggles. A lot.

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15 out of 17 people found the following review useful:
Invasion of the giant alien spiders, 17 November 2005

Author: Chris Gaskin from Derby, England

The Giant Spider Invasion was one of the many 1950's type movies (giant bugs, animals etc) that was made in the 70's and I enjoyed this despite reading a lot of bad reviews.

A strange meteor lands in a small town in Wisconsin and a load of strange looking eggs are found by it. Some of the locals take them home with them and spiders and tarantulas start hatching from them. Rather small at first, these creatures grow into giants and to make matters worse, are radioactive. After eating several people including the town's Sheriff, the hole where the meteor landed is blown up and the spiders are killed.

This movie gets going after a fairly slow start and is clearly done on a low budget.

The cast includes Barbara Hale (Perry Mason), Steve Brodie (The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms), Alan Hale Jr. as the Sheriff and Leslie Parrish.

The Giant Spider Invasion is a must for all sci fi and bad movie fans. Fantastic.

Rating: 3 and a half stars out of 5.

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11 out of 13 people found the following review useful:
A multi-faceted gem of 70's B-Horror!, 21 October 2004
Author: darth_paul-1 from Detroit

The Giant Spider Invasion is a superb piece of 1970's B-Horror. Of course, by today's synthetic, digitally enhanced, multi-billion dollar, pseudo-artistic, technologically dependent standards it is a poor film, but remember that 'Spider Invasion' only cost $250,000 to produce.

It is full of small, creepy spiders, developing into mega-bohemoth spiders and laying waste to anything that gets in their way!

Oh sure you can label it cheesy! You can label it hokey! Label it sub-par! B ut isn't that why people watch B-horror? And is not 70's B-horror the true pinnacle of the genre? And did not Mystery Science Theater think it a worthy piece to cover on their show? Me thinks in the affirmative on both questions!

This movie is a worthy effort...dealing with such diverse topics as Alien Invasion, to greed & evil in the social context...to even what Camus referred to as the Existential Dilemma (or something like that)...oh you can find almost anything in any piece of art, but my point is that this is a good movie! It's cheesy, but good; and when I saw it at the age of 6, I thought it was very horrifying!

I still...to this day...cannot drink tomato juice...Thank-you Giant Spider Invasion!

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5 out of 7 people found the following review useful:
"This movie hates us, doesn't it?", 20 September 2007

Author: Kristine (kristinedrama14@msn.com) from Chicago, Illinois

I saw The Giant Spider Invasion on an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000, like most of the users on this IMDb page. You know the funny thing about this movie is that as weird and stupid as it was, it actually told the story. So at least it had that going for it, but the problem is that the story really doesn't get itself across to where everyone could understand it, but mostly I would say that it was the lousy shooting of the movie, not to mention that the acting was just horrible. But I don't know about think it was totally bad for what it was, I mean it was just a typical low budget horror, despite how ridicules that giant spider looked.

Basically in Wisconsin, WOO, GO PACKERS, WOO!, there is a crash from an asteroid. The asteroid contains little rocks that have little spiders in them. The two residents that live right next to where it landed, Ev and Dan, take advantage and try to take the diamonds that are also in the rocks, but it may not be to their liking when the spiders take over the house and the whole town! But don't worry, Dr. Jenny and Dr. J.R. are on the case and are going to save Wisconsin from the giant spider that is attacking young girls in their underwear.

The Giant Spider Invasion is your typical low budget horror that reminds you more of those old 50's movies with the sci-fi action. While this is a bad movie, it's a fun like drive in type of film and has a few silly laughs here and there. Not to mention that it did make for a funny episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000. I loved how Jenny's line of screaming the doctor's name at the end turned out and the whole scene of the giant spider attacking the young girl in her undies in her house, that was just classic how fake the puppet was. But please watch the MSTK3 episode, I guarantee you'll have a lot of fun.

2/10

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6 out of 9 people found the following review useful:
All Spiders Great and Small, 15 December 1998

Author: Gislef from Iowa City, IA

Filmed on the kinda budget that Ed Wood might have envied (but not too much), half of this film is devoted to the mini-Spider Invasion, and there are a few mildly chilling moments. Why they're coming out of a black hole is anybody's guess, but no doubt it made sense to someone at the time. But then the giant spiders/badly-disguised cars start pouring forth, and you find yourself not-so-inexplicably cheering for them to chow down on the bunch of Wisconsin "rednecks" that infest this film more thoroughly and foully than the poor aggrieved spiders. Only for those with a strong stomach. Not for spiders, but for poorly sketched one-dimensional characters.

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2 out of 2 people found the following review useful:
It's impossible to keep a straight face, but it's entertaining cheese., 16 January 2006

Author: AngryChair from Brentwood, USA

Meteor lands on Wisconsin farm, opening up a black hole that unleashes giant spiders into a hick community!!

Oh boy. Legendary horror cheese filmed in Wisconsin by B movie director Bill Rebane is the perfect example of a film that's so bad it's good! The Giant Spider Invasion is best remembered as the movie in which a VW Beetle was used for the monster spiders! The special FX consists of live tarantulas, unconvincing puppets, and of course those VW's complete with long furry legs. Between those amusing FX, a ridiculous premise, and some funny dialog this cheap horror film never has a dull moment.

Yet as poor as the quality of the film is the cast (which has a number of veteran actors) isn't that bad. In a way it's their serious, well semi-serious, performances that make the occurrences even more humorous.

The Giant Spider Invasion is one of the most unintentionally hilarious horror films ever made and whether you like it or not, you can't deny that it's entertaining! A definite must-see for fans of campy B horror.

** 1/2 out of ****

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2 out of 3 people found the following review useful:
Pretty bad, 25 November 2008

Author: Wayne Malin (wwaayynnee51@hotmail.com) from United States

Ridiculous 1970s sci-fi movie. It takes place in Wisconsin. Some spiders from another dimension (don't ask) get to Earth and grow to gigantic size. They attack a small town and panic ensures. Dr. Vance (Steve Brodie) and Dr. Langer (Barbara Hale) try to figure out how to destroy them while the sheriff of the town (Alan Hale badly miscast) tries to keep things in order. There's also redneck Dan (Robert Easton), his alcoholic wife Ev (Leslie Parrish) and their jail bait daughter Terry to provide some wholly predictable and boring "human interest".

I heard this was bad but I didn't realize that it was THIS bad! Bottom of the barrel stuff here. It was made on no budget with a giant spider that is (pretty obviously) a puppet. The sound recording is poor (I had to keep turning the volume up and down) but--considering the dialogue--that's no great loss. The film has absolutely horrible cinematography--some scenes were so dark I couldn't make out what was happening! Also Alan Hale bulldozes through his scenes to an embarrassing degree--it makes his acting as the Skipper on "Gilligan's Island" look restrained. There are a few good parts--the acting by Barbara Hale and Steve Brodie isn't bad and there's a nicely gruesome scene where you see a man devoured by the giant spider. Still this is mostly boring and pointless. A 2.

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4 out of 7 people found the following review useful:
Along Came a Space Spider, 6 February 2005

Author: BaronBl00d (baronbl00d@aol.com) from NC

One of the truly bad science fiction films of all time. The Giant Spider Invasion tells the story of some kind of space rocks landing in Wisconsin and then opening up with spiders and diamonds inside. Some how a giant spider(bigger than a truck) is created. But that is the only giant spider. Director Bill Rebane does interesting work if not good work. Despite the many, many, many flaws of this film, Rebane make a film that, for me, was very watchable and entertaining. I do understand that most of my entertainment value came at the lack of competency behind the camera, virtually no special effects, a spider that looks and acts like a cheap machine moved by stage hands, the stoic, wooden acting, and the amazingly awful script. This is definitely one of those "so bad its good" films that can be little diamonds in the rough to film lovers like me. I knew things were going to be bad when the first scene we see with actors(after that pitiful space sequence)had Alan Hale the Skipper himself call another character "Little Buddy." From there on things got worse. Robert Easton plays this incredibly unsavory man in long johns half the time who lives near the place where the rocks landed. He has a very dysfunctional family with his wife and teen sister-in-law. The wife is a lush and Easton sees another woman on the side when not making overtures to his teen relation. Instead of calling this The Giant Spider Invasion(let's face it - one spider does not make an invasion!), maybe they should have titled it "The Redneck Hillbilly Vs. the Giant Spider" or some other like title. A pair of scientists have scenes throughout tracking the space anomalies and finally arriving in town. Barbara Hale (Della Street from Perry Mason) and Steve Brodie play them. These guys are there for a little credibility along with Alan Hale. They don't do too well. Ms. Hale does a fairly workmanlike job and Alan Hale actually isn't too terrible(though he looks way too jovial for being the sheriff of a town under attack). Brodie is ridiculous with his mock seriousness. One other interesting casting note is Christiane Schmidtmer, the lovely, blonde, buxom, Teutonic actress from such films as Ship of Fools. She has an inexplicable role(as well as thankless one) playing a waitress in town. If you are looking for thought-provoking sci-fi or suspenseful action, you won't find any traces here. The Giant Spider Invasion will only be appreciated by the patrons of le bad cinema.

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