Verdict
Summary
Corny and cheap as all get-out, but with a personality that is all its own, The Giant Spider Invasion is just sleazy and skeezy enough to have given drive-in patrons of its era a good time, and surprisingly the big, practical creature effects are pretty good too! At times, the movie is spectacularly cheesy, but it’s also sincere and thinks it’s scary (it can be for kids), but if you’re watching it for a bit of sleaze factor, I think you’ll be in for a good time, especially since it runs just about 80 minutes.
Plot:
Mutant spiders from space land in a small town and cause havoc.
Review:
Space rocks land in a small community in Wisconsin, and it’s just another day of the week … except it’s not. Two befuddled scientists have been calculating the bizarre comet activity, and when the community gradually begins to succumb to strange deaths, they turn to the old-timer sheriff (played by Alan Hale Jr. from Gilligan’s Island) to help them sort out what’s going on. He’s got his hands full with his usual domestic complaints of infidelity and drunkenness (everyone in town seems to be sleeping with everyone they shouldn’t be, including an underage girl who has to fend off her own freaking cousin!), but when crusty, emaciated bodies start piling up, it becomes apparent that something hinky is going on. It’s spiders! Big, freaking mutant spiders! At first, we see tarantulas crawling out of geode rocks, then the spiders get bigger and bigger and BIGGER! Big enough to attack a house and tear it down! These suckers have been lurking in the bushes (haha!), but when they can’t contain how big they get, they terrorize entire fields of soccer players and parks full of screaming families! The Giant Spider Invasion is here!
Corny and cheap as all get-out, but with a personality that is all its own, The Giant Spider Invasion is just sleazy and skeezy enough to have given drive-in patrons of its era a good time, and surprisingly the big, practical creature effects are pretty good too! At times, the movie is spectacularly cheesy, but it’s also sincere and thinks it’s scary (it can be for kids), but if you’re watching it for a bit of sleaze factor, I think you’ll be in for a good time, especially since it runs just about 80 minutes. It was rated PG (which is pushing it), so go figure. Directed by Bill Rebane.
Dark Force Entertainment has just released a 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray disc of The Giant Spider Invasion, and it looks about as good as it can possibly look, although I’m a little mystified why they decided to give this one the royal treatment. The film stock itself was not as clear in 1975 as it might’ve been with some murky, washed out colors (they weren’t trying to make a great looking movie here, folks), but the 4K zing really preserves the washed out look of the film as best as it can. The disc comes with a comedic audio track called “Demon Dave & Joe’s “Savage Tracks.”
