The 1960 German film Horrors of Spider Island (Ein Toter hing im Netz, or “A Corpse Hangs in the Web,” among its many titles) is famously terrible – it was deservedly included in the tenth season of Mystery Science Theater 3000 – but I can’t see how anyone could possibly be let down by it. It’s primo drive-in nonsense: on a remote island targeted by uranium hunters, a mutated spider bites a man and turn him into a half-spider fiend who stalks his fellow castaways, bikini-clad, promiscuous club dancers en route to Singapore. Girls are draped throughout this movie like Oriental rugs – because it’s humid, and they need to lie down – while cocky, randy men leer from above and fend off the raging humanoid spider monster. That’s it. I just described the entire film. This semi-legendary psychotronic movie is now on Blu-ray thanks to Severin Films, who have included both a later U.S. cut called It’s Hot in Paradise as well as its original, uncensored German version, which includes surprisingly plentiful nudity: a cat-fight in which clothes are ripped free! – a skinny-dipping scene in awkwardly shallow waters! – a numbingly prolonged topless dance so darkly lit that you’ll get eye strain! Severin typically goes the extra mile with their limited edition pre-orders, and as a website exclusive they include a reproduction of a 1962 French photo-comic adaptation, as well as (now sold out) a resin figure of the clawed, snaggle-toothed mutant spider, which now glares at me on my desk. This is the right approach to selling a gloriously cheap and sleazy picture like Spider Island.
Alexander D’Arcy, as the doomed Gary, leads his fellow castaways (including Barbara Valentin) through Spider Island.
Director Fritz Böttger lets you know the score straight away by opening with an interminable sequence in which a multitude of models and dancers audition in various stages of undress before the arrogant Gary (Alexander D’Arcy, far from The Awful Truth), who crosses his legs as a signal to his assistant Georgia (Helga Franck) whether one of the young women should be selected for the voyage to Singapore. Much is made of the secret signal, which is the film’s excuse to spend as much time as possible with voluptuous women parading before the camera. On a stock footage trip over the ocean, the plane stock footagely goes down, intercut with close-up shots of the women, apparently in another dimension, screaming at the camera. “There’s absolutely no reason yet to fear the worst,” Gary’s partner back home reassures us: “We only know that the plane caught fire and we lost radio contact.” Luckily, Gary and the women arrive in strategically ripped clothing at the titular island, which Gary immediately, oddly, accurately conjectures to be the home of uranium miners. Upon discovering a log cabin, they find the body of one Professor Green suspended in a giant spider web (thus the original German title). Gathering together that night in the cabin over some canned food, we get an early indication of how the female characters will treat the imminent danger for the rest of the film: one complains that all the talk of giant spiders is spoiling her appetite; the other shrugs and says, “I can’t change anything.” Gary flings himself into a love triangle with Georgia and the libidinous Linda (Elfie Wagner), complains that it’s the humidity that’s causing him to plunge into Linda’s mouth, and walks into the jungle to be stalked by one of the spiders, which moves very fast thanks to editing and the prop-master sticking it in various trees. The spider jumps him (or his shoulders, anyway), they wrestle, and he immediately – and I mean immediately – turns into a fanged, furry-headed spider-thing.
Georgia (Helga Franck) is assaulted by the spider-infected Gary.
With that out of the way, Gary and any other mutant spiders (there was just the one) will frequently disappear for large swaths of the picture while the castaways meet two of the dead professor’s male assistants (Harald Maresch and Rainer Brandt). Böttger, especially in the uncut version of the film, is far more interested in the lengthy triangulation of seductions and jealous rivalries as the chauvinist Brandt tries to choose a mate from the women dancing and posing in flower-covered bikinis (or less) about the grounds. Of the female cast, generating the most interest is the statuesque blonde “Babs,” played with a Traci Lords pout by Barbara Valentin, who would later appear in Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s SF epic World on a Wire (1973). Even though the women are treated as decoration, the film can’t stop obsessing over them, putting the monster constantly on the backburner – and that’s all part of the campy appeal of Horrors of Spider Island. The cinematographer is Georg Krause, who had filmed Kubrick’s Paths of Glory just three years earlier, yet here, almost inevitably, seems to be just as concussed as the cast. I would have it no other way. Mix yourself your favorite Tiki cocktail and enjoy.
