'The joy that you're feeling right now is just the beginning.'
Welcome back to my Dark Corner of this Sick World.
‘Oh, not you again.'
It’s a long time since we looked at a Bill Rebane film and The Giant Spider Invasion is the classic,
for one ridiculous reason.
I mean, if I’m honest, it doesn’t get much better than that.
‘We’ve got a 50ft spider on the loose’
A mysterious object crashes to earth in a farm.
Wow. Wonder what it is.
‘Well, whatever it is it can wait until morning.’
I don’t care if my farm burns, I’m not losing a minute’s sleep.
It is of interest however to scientists like Dr Vance and Dr Langer.
‘I have an appointment with your father’
That could be compliment – she doesn’t look old enough to be scientist.
‘Oh I’m so sorry, then the appointment must be with your husband’
He’s from a different generation, you gotta make allowances.
‘Then it’s probably with your brother’
It’s getting hard to keep defending you mate,
‘I’m Dr Jenny Langer’
‘Oh?’
I’m going to assume this is because the film is kind of a parody of 1950s B movies,
seemingly set in the same rural small town as Russ Meyer’s later films .
‘Can you come again tomorrow night’
‘I hope so’
I mean I’m not as young as I was, but…
‘I always give you a big tip’
Meanwhile, farmers Kester and Ev have finally dragged themselves out of bed to see what landed in their field.
Whatever it is, it has a big appetite and has left some strange rocks behind.
For a while, it’s just these little ones they have to contend with, but then…
and then.
It’s interesting to note that the bigger the spiders get, the less scary they are.
So this is quite creepy...
this isn’t.
Also, while there are occasional jokes.
‘We’ll try to get the preacher to exorcise them’
‘They’re getting enough exercise already’
There’s also acres of deeply serious ‘science’
‘If a dead star collapsed it's masses... the star would gradually shrink to form...'
'would disappear into another universe.'
'Right a parallel universe with a door back and forth.'
in a film that would have done better not to try and explain things, because, really...
What explanation for this are you buying?
It’s all very well saying.
‘The energy pattern has to feed off of the gravitational field of the blackhole'
But I think you might just as well drop a giant shoe on it.
‘It might just work’
It’s easy to mock the giant spider Bill Rebane has produced.
It’s easy to mock the fact that no one attacking it realises that guns do work over a distance greater than 6 feet,
and the fact that a hole has been ripped in the fabric of reality letting through a giant monster,
which has already taken out a B-52,
‘We have already lost one aeroplane crew’
yet the army or any authority beyond a local Sheriff who is used to dealing with much smaller issues,
‘You say your radio won’t work?’
are nowhere to be seen.
‘I just don’t understand it’
It’s a budgetary issue, they’re all budgetary issues and we can’t blame Rebane for that.
‘You gotta be kidding’
We can blame him for the sprawl of characters,
none of them stepping up to be the lead.
‘Is he always that serious?’
The farmer hitting on his teenage sister in law,
‘I could do things for you – if you know what I mean’
and his drunk wife,
‘Sometimes the only way I know you’re still alive is when I hear the toilet flush’
exclude themselves. While the sister in law herself vanishes after increasing the film’s skin count,
‘Hi Terry’
'What are you doing here.'
and her boyfriend plays a likewise small role.
‘Hi little buddy’
The Sheriff seems to be there for exposition,
‘What are these gizmos? I found them near the corpse.’
and sometimes not even that,
‘Tell me, how does one of those gizmos work’
#muffled phone voice#
'Yeah sure.'
Gripping. Also seems to be addressing us at one point.
‘That’s funny. I wonder why she hung up on me’
That leaves the scientists played by B movie regular Steve Brodie.
‘Did I ever tell you you’re gorgeous’
and Perry Mason’s Barbara Hale,
'But now let's go back to the collapsed stars, or the neutron stars, quasars or black holes.'
but they also have no personal story, no chemistry, and less screen time than you might imagine.
‘This may be our problem.’
Think of it as one of those ensemble disaster movies Irwin Allen used to make,
but without any character whose survival you might care about.
‘You’re so dumb you wouldn’t know rabbit turds from rice crispies’
Or Frosties.
‘Grrrreat’
Still, I think it’s mainly about the spider.
Thanks for watching.
This film now has a cult following, what do you consider the ultimate cult bad movie? Let us know in the comments below.
''He's a strange man and he's working up a big head of steam.'