Review by Tim Robins
Having missed the spider invasion film Crawlers (2026) at the cinema, due for release on DVD in December, I was delighted to see PizzaFlix had recently uploaded a 4K restoration of The Giant Spider Invasion (1975) to YouTube.
Unfortunately, the version I watched was broken up with intrusive adverts. Worse, scenes of gore, including piles of cow offal and the blood-soaked giant spider attacks, have been completely blurred to meet YouTube’s standards, whatever those might be. Despite all that, watching the film for the first time in 60 years was a nostalgic experience, and, good news, a Unblurred, Uncensored Director’s Cut is now available.
I first saw The Giant Spider Invasion at the Plaza, a long-gone Cardiff cinema in the suburb of Gabalfa. The film was part of a double bill along with 1977’s disappointing Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger. Although that film features Patrick Troughton, his character seemed to spend a lot of time just naming various threatening creatures e.g. it’s “Walrus Giganticus!”.
As for “Arachnid Giganticus”, The Giant Spider Invasion was another low budget cash-in on the box office success of Jaws. Both films were released the same year, and is even referenced. “Ever seen that movie Jaws?” asks town Sheriff Jones, trying to explain the enormity of a rampaging spider, “It makes that shark look like a goldfish!”
Director Bill Rebene recalled: “The distributor came up with a great campaign saying the spider had a bigger bite than the Jaws. That was all the advertising he put out.” It was the distributor who wanted the film to feature a 25-foot spider, for better or worse.
Shot over six weeks on a budget of $300,000, The Giant Spider Invasion went on to become one of the top-50-grossing films of 1975 and the most financially successful of director Bill Rebene’s films. Others included The Demons of Ludlow (1983), The Game (1984), and Blood Harvest (1987).
David Kalat, writing for Turner Classic Movies in 2008, states “the whole shebang cost no more than $250,000 (that’s the equivalent of roughly a million dollars today). As The Giant SpiderInvasion made its way through the drive-ins and exploitation houses, and then to the CBS Late Night Movie, though, it found an appreciative audience and managed to recoup a staggering 22 million in return ($89 million in today’s figures).
Although the film looks incredibly cheap, the script is quite accomplished. Apparently, there were “creative differences”(!) between its two writers, Richard L Huff and Robert Easton, nicknamed ‘The Man of a Thousand Voices’ due his command of accents. The pair had differing views over whether the drama should be played for laughs, or taken seriously. Watching the film, it would appear they went for both.
One humorous exchange is between a philandering husband who has been seeing another woman while pretending to attend a revival meeting.
Ev: I’m sorry I missed the sermon. What was it about?
Dan: Sin.
Ev: What did the minister say about it?
Dan: He was against it!
This turns out to be based on a conversation President Calvin Coolidge alleged he had had with wife, but I laughed anyway.
The screenplay does a competent job in populating the film with the kind of characters needed to move the plot forward. These include the aforementioned, two-timing farmer, Dan, and his drunken wife, Ev. We also meet a young local newspaper reporter looking for a scoop, the town’s Sheriff and a couple of out-of-town astrophysicists, one from a Wisconsin observatory, another from NASA – that’s in Houston, don’t you know.
While the preacher is promising “every creeping thing that creepeth upon the Earth shall be an abomination!” small spheres, scattered around a crater of sorts, begin hatching “baby” giant spiders. If they look like tarantulas, that’s because they were tarantulas, all freshly trucked in from Arizona. Infamously, the giant spider itself was a full-sized prop, planted on top of a Volkswagen chassis. The effect works OK, depending on how its shot, and in what light.
Eventually, the scientists work out that the spiders have come from another universe. “There’s only one thing that could cause a warp like this!” exclaims Dr Langer, “A miniature black hole!” confirms Dr Vance. The sheriff takes some persuading, “I used to take physics, but now I find that prunes do the better job for me.”
The solution can’t come soon enough, because the invading spiders are eating up the rest of the cast. Although, in the film’s best scene, the tables are turned. When Ev makes “Bloody Marys” for her husband and herself, she is unaware that a tarantula has crawled into the blender. It’s a classic moment of suspense. The audience knows what’s happened, but the characters don’t. Yuck!
As the scientists try to plug the black hole, the giant spider has spied an entire smorgasbord of humans, all enjoying the town carnival. Well, I say ‘enjoying’, but some look visibly cheesed off. Kalat noted that locals had been recruited as extras, but the giant spider prop failed to turn up.
“The hours dragged by, and only later that night, when all but the most hardcore wanna-be extras had long since departed and the patience of those who remained had been thoroughly exhausted, did the ludicrous spider props appear… the crowd is visibly agitated and bad-tempered.”
Over the years, The Giant Spider Invasion became a cult movie, particularly after it featured on an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000. The format – an audience of wise arse characters talk over a film – cracking jokes and having adventures of their own never really took off in Britain (thank heaven for small mercies). That said, Beavis and Butt-head (1993-97) began by incorporating commentary (on music videos) into their initial repertoire.
The Giant Spider Invasion at least deserves to be seen as a film in its own right. The script has some genuinely, and intentionally funny lines. But this is not a film that is so bad it’s good. It’s far from good.
With the exception of one scene of a big spider leaping off a roof, it takes an hour for the final boss spider to appear, and no amount of chit-chat can make that hour pass quickly enough.
Admittedly, the film is not as terrible as Ed Wood’s movies. It helps that at least half the cast are veteran performers, who know how to deliver lines. Dr Vance is played by Steve Brodie, a rugged veteran character actor, whose many credits include The Caine Mutiny (1954) and several roles as a western villain; while Barbara Hale, who plays Dr Langer, is best known for her Emmy award winning role as legal secretary Della Street in Perry Mason (1957-66). The town sheriff is played by Alan Hale Jnr., who was “The Skipper” in the comedy series Gilligan’s Island (1964-67).
The Giant Spider Invasion doesn’t rise to the level of Arachnophobia (1990) or Eight-Legged Freaks (2002), or even Kingdom of the Spiders (1977), a film starring William Shatner that makes similarly underwhelming use of tarantulas – surely the least scary and most cuddly of all spiders.
Still, I enjoyed revisiting a time when audiences were prepared to go to the cinema and be entertained by such assertively low-budget fare. Watch it with friends who just want to have a night in and have something to chat and laugh about on a screen.
Oh, no… Perhaps Beavis and Butt-Head had the right idea…
Tim Robins
Watch the Film
• The Unblurred, Uncensored Director’s Cut
Head downthetubes for…
• The Giant Spider Invasion: Official Movie Site: thegiantspiderinvasion.com
• TCM.com: Insider Info – The Giant Spider Invasion
• The EOFFTV Review: The Giant Spider Invasion (1975)
• Don’s Non-Horror Round-Up: The Giant Spider Invasion (1975) by Bill Rebane
- About the Author
- Latest Posts
A freelance journalist and Doctor Who fanzine editor since 1978, Tim Robins has written on comics, films, books and TV programmes for a wide range of publications including Starburst, Interzone, Primetime and TV Guide.
His brief flirtation with comics includes ghost inking a 2000AD strip and co-writing a Doctor Who strip with Mike Collins. Since 1990 he worked at the University of Glamorgan where he was a Senior Lecturer in Cultural and Media Studies and the social sciences. Academically, he has published on the animation industry in Wales and approaches to social memory. He claims to be a card carrying member of the Politically Correct, a secret cadre bent on ruling the entire world and all human thought.
Categories: Features, Film, Other Worlds, Reviews
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