The Giant Spider Invasion (1975)

Oh, the joys of blind buys! Typically, it's a good idea to have at least seen a movie before you pick it up but, more often than not, I end up buying movies simply because I heard about them and they interested me or because the opportunity arose; either way, each time, it's been a roll of the dice. Sometimes, I'll come across a gem I wouldn't have found otherwise, but other times, I'll either absolutely hate it or just think to myself, "Well, that was a waste of time." In the case of The Giant Spider Invasion, I picked up VCI's ridiculously packed Blu-Ray release at the G-Fest convention in Chicago in 2019 purely on a whim. I was looking through the many monster movies they had available at one of the dealers' tables and, when I saw it, I figured, "Why not?", and got it (I don't remember what I paid for it), along with a bunch of other stuff. The first time I'd heard about it was when it was mentioned briefly in The Horror Movie Survival Guide and, like every other film mentioned in there, I decided to look it up on IMDB. There, as I expected, I learned it was most definitely a B-movie, one where the general consensus was that it was pretty awful, and the most memorable tidbit I found was how the giant spider itself was actually a car decked out to look like a spider that was slowly driven around. So, I knew well ahead of time what I was getting into when I picked it up, but I was hoping for nothing more than an enjoyable, schlocky monster movie. What I got instead, though, was a rather dumb flick that featured a bunch of characters I mostly couldn't get into, an oddball tone, some pretty egregious technical lapses, a lack of giant spider action until the third act, a story that, even for this kind of movie, is for the birds, and a climax that wasn't satisfying whatsoever. That's not to say the movie doesn't have its good points, as it's quite admirable what the people behind it were able to accomplish with a very low budget, and if you're arachnophobic, which I am, there are parts that will freak you out, fake spiders or not, but on the whole, it's not one I enjoy watching.

A meteorite-like object crashes to Earth in northern Wisconsin, outside of a small, rural town. Specifically, it hits near the Kester Farm, run by Dan and Ev Keste. Following the impact, various machines in and around town begin to malfunction and short out, including a B-52 that flies into the area, which reports problems with its radar before being reported having crashed into a river. Dr. Jenny Langer at the Montclair Observatory calls NASA to report bizarre activity such as high levels of gamma rays and a drop in the barometric pressure and Dr. Vance of Houston is sent to meet with her about it. The following day, when Ev is finally able to convince Dan to get off his butt and go check the field where the crash occurred, the two of them find the half-eaten corpses of their cattle, as well as strange rocks scattered about. Taking them home, Dan tries to break one of them open, and when it finally does split, they find it's filled with small crystals that could be diamonds. Unbeknownst to them, a spider was also inside the rock but crawled away before they could see it. More and more spiders start appearing in the house but only Ev, who's often drunk, sees them, while Dan, out looking for more diamonds, finds the corpse of a missing motorcyclist. Not wanting to call the sheriff and risk him finding out about the diamonds, or the weed growing on the property, he buries the body and hides the motorcycle. That night, Ev is attacked by a large spider hiding in her dresser drawer and runs out in a panic, only to be attacked and killed by an even bigger one in the barn. The next day, both Dan's cousin, Billy, and Dan himself fall prey to large spiders, the latter being devoured by a particularly enormous one that's big enough to destroy the farmhouse, nearly killing Ev's younger sister, Terry, in the process. While searching for the impact zone, Vance and Langer also run into the giant spider, which begins terrorizing the countryside, wandering into the midst of a carnival in the town of Gleason. Theorizing the spiders may be coming through an blackhole at the site of impact, the two scientists now must come up with a way to destroy that doorway before more monsters are unleashed upon the Earth.

Looking him up, I've learned that the film's director, Bill Rebane, is actually quite an accomplished man, credited with the first 360 film process, the forerunner of the Cinemax and Rotascope processes, the creation of the Wisconsin Film Office, and his studio, the Shooting Ranch, the first feature film studio in the entire Midwest. However, in terms of his directing career, while a lot of his movies have been profitable, considering how low budget they were, they can't exactly be called high art. His first movie was Monster A Go-Go, which he sold to H.G. Lewis when funding ran out, with Lewis himself completing shooting, and after he established his studio in the 70's, Rebane made such movies as Invasion from Inner Earth, The Alpha Incident, The Capture of Bigfoot, Rana: The Legend of Shadow Lake, Blood Harvest, and Twister's Revenge, working steadily up to the late 80's. But then, in 1989, he suffered a stroke and the doctor bills it amassed forced him to close his studio. Rebane has developed a number of movies since then and has directed some things in the 2000's, but he's had no major release since the 80's. The Giant Spider Invasion, which he made directly after Invasion from Inner Earth, is probably both his most profitable and well-known movie. He made it for just $300,000 and yet, depending on who you listen to, it grossed anywhere from $15 million to $22 million, making it one of the top fifty highest grossing movies of 1975. Yeah, this little low-budget monster flick with no major actors managed to be competitive in the same year as Jaws, which is definitely quite remarkable.

If you were to ask me who the star of The Giant Spider Invasion is, I would have to say, "Nobody, really." I'd be saying that both because no major actor features in the film and also because there's actually no one protagonist, with the film instead jumping back and forth between various groups of characters as they get caught up in the invasion as it unfolds. If there is one character who can kind of be called the hero of the piece, it's Dr. J.R. Vance (Steve Brodie), a NASA scientist who's sent to investigate the strange goings-on. He's a pretty dry, purely functional character for the most part, although they do try to make him something of an everyman scientist with some personality quirks, like his sweet-talking to the plant he keeps in his office, saying it helps them grow, as well as something of a sort of sense of humor. For instance, there's a moment where a co-worker of his, Rider, calls him up early in the morning to tell him of more stuff that's happened in the area, and when he asks what time his meeting with Dr. Langer is, he's told, "9:00 sharp," to which he answers, "9:00 I can make, but if I don't get some shuteye, I ain't gonna be very sharp." Also, when he meets Langer and finds she's a woman, he's immediately taken with her, responding to her saying they have important business to discuss with, "Yes, we do!" Charm and a sense of humor aside, though, Vance doesn't do much in his screentime other than analyze the data with Langer, talk with Sheriff Jones and Dave Perkins about what's been happening, and, after pinpointing the impact zone and figuring the phenomena is the result of a warp caused by a blackhole, he and Langer head out there to see for themselves, only to run into the giant spider. They manage to escape, albeit not without some cuts and bruises, and warn the sheriff before spending the rest of the movie trying to come up with a plan to close the space warp. To that end, Vance has a device called a neutron initiator flown out to the site and guides the helicopter pilot both in successfully dropping it and signaling for him to activate it.

Dr. Jenny Langer (Barbara Hale) is more of a purely functional character than Vance. Although she does have a flirtatious relationship with him and introduces him to some of the townspeople, which proves helpful in the analysis, her only real purpose is to help him spout out the scientific mumbo jumbo about gamma rays, an aurora occurring without a sun, barometric pressure, gravity fields, blackholes, and space warps, which both of them settle on being the cause of everything fairly early on. While heading out to the site to pinpoint its exact location, they come across the spider and, after escaping and warning the sheriff, they brainstorm about a way to stop it and come up with an idea of showering the blackhole with neutrons in order to destroy it, leading to Vance's idea concerning the neutron initiator. When they put their plan in motion, they head out to the site so he can guide the helicopter in dropping the device, while the giant spider continues running amok. It's during this scene that they learn the strange rocks they found at the site contain more spiders, as Langer opens a briefcase containing some flares, only to find that the rocks inside broke open, releasing the spiders. Despite some hiccups along the way, like a deputy getting devoured by the giant, they succeed in helping the helicopter drop the device and destroy the warp, along with all of the spiders.

For much of the movie's first half, when we're not with Vance or Langer, we're spending time with Ev (Leslie Parrish) and Dan Kester (Robert Easton), a couple who runs a farm out near town and can hardly be described as happily married. Before we even meet them, Sheriff Jones lets on that Dan is an unsavory guy and that's confirmed when, in their introductory scene, he heads into town under the pretense of attending a revival when, in reality, he's getting his jollies on with a waitress at

the local diner. He's just a creep overall, not only being downright cruel, as well as unfaithful, to his wife (at one point, he says, "You're so dumb, you wouldn't know rabbit turds from Rice Krispies"), but also hitting on his teenage sister-in-law, Terry, when Ev disappears in the middle of the movie. He's also surprisingly blase about the object that falls in the back of his property and the chaos that breaks out as a result, feeling it can be wait until morning to be investigated. It's only through Ev's prodding that he even goes out there at all, and when they do, they find a number of their cattle half-eaten, which Dan plans on taking care of by butchering and selling to the local cafe, regardless of the diseases the carcasses could be carrying. They also find some strange rocks and take them back to the house, where Dan attempts to break them open to see what they contain. Eventually, one does crack open and inside, they find crystal-like objects that Dan believes are diamonds. He, however, has no intention of sharing whatever they're worth with Ev, and goes to his cousin, Billy, to find out how much, though not before he hides a dead body he finds on his property to keep the sheriff from finding about both the diamonds and the weed he's growing. As for Ev, she clearly regrets having married Dan, lamenting that she didn't listen to her father about him, and there's also mention at one point that a baby they had together died, contributing to their relationship falling apart. Because of how miserable her life is, Ev is often drunk, which makes Dan prone not to believe her when she talks about the spiders that start popping up in the house which only she sees. Eventually, when she's at home by herself, Ev is attacked by the increasingly bigger spiders, ultimately dying at the hands of a particularly big one in the barn. The next day, Dan suffers the same fate when he's devoured by the giant while out looking for more diamonds.

Ev's little sister, Terry (Dianne Lee Hart), spends most of her time with Dave Perkins (Kevin Brodie), a local teenager whose father runs the town newspaper and who, in his first scene, drops in on Sheriff Jones to see if there's anything newsworthy going on. There, Jones warns Dave that Dan doesn't think much of him and is unlikely to let him near Terry if he can help it. He's out on a date with Terry when the object comes down on the Kester Farm, with his car going dead as a result of the

interference it causes and the two of them having to run for it when a violent windstorm is whipped up. As a result, Terry is forced to walk back home and runs into Dan, who initially believes she's a burglar when she sneaks into the house. The two of them get into an argument about Dave and their having parked at a junkyard, with Dan threatening to spank Terry when she admits it was her idea; her response is to tell him, "I always wondered why you used to spank me so much, so you could get your jollies!" The next day, Dave, still looking for a story for the paper, spends most of his time with Dr. Vance and Dr. Langer, telling them of the strange things that happened, and also learns of their theory about a blackhole having been created. Terry, meanwhile, has to deal with Dan coming onto her after Ev disappears, advances which she, of course, resists, calling him a "big, fat failure" and his diamonds fakes, at first. The same thing happens when Billy shows up afterward, and it's made worse by Terry having just gotten out of the shower and being naked except for a towel and her panties. Beginning to believe the diamonds are real, she keeps one with her, and throws Billy out when he comes onto her. Not too long afterward, the spiders start amassing on her in the house, when the giant attacks from the outside. At that moment, Dave, concerned about her and unable to get through because of the dead phone, drives out there and sees the spider nearly kill Terry when it destroys the house. He gets a few shots on it as it crawls away and takes Terry to the hospital.

Contrary to what I said earlier, there is one recognizable actor in the film, although I have to admit I didn't realize who he was until I looked up the movie's Wikipedia page: Alan Hale Jr., aka the Skipper from Gilligan's Island, who plays Sheriff Jones. I can't believe I didn't know who he was, especially since his first line is, "Hi, little buddy!", but, for whatever reason, my brain just didn't make the connection. With that in mind, however, Jones is pretty much what you would expect, as he basically acts like the Skipper, only with no bumbling sidekick to constantly get on his nerves. He's a very laid back, jovial guy, although that can be something of a detriment, as he doesn't take things as seriously as he should. For instance, when he gets a call early on from someone having trouble with their machines, he has this conversation: "You say your radio won't work?... Well, all I can tell you is call Joe's radio shop. He opens 9:00 AM, sharp... Your car won't start? Well, all I can tell you is call Ernie's Auto Repair. He opens at 8:00... No, ma'am, I don't have the number. All I can tell you is use the yellow pages. Let your fingers do the walking." The woman in question hangs up and he looks right at the camera and comments, "That's funny. I wonder why she hung up on me?" The next day, when Dr. Langer introduces him to Dr. Vance, he continues to joke around, acting like he doesn't know what a Geiger counter is, exclaiming, "We don't have any Geigers around here! Never did have in these parts!", and then jokes, "I used to take physics, but I find prunes do a better job for me." But, he does get serious when a local man named Joe Cooper is reported missing by his wife and when he and his men find what's left of him, and because of that, he doesn't find it hard to accept Vance and Langer's claims about a giant spider, especially when he gets a call from Dave telling him what happened out at the Kester Farm. When the spider starts rampaging in the nearby town of Gleason, Jones calls on the National Guard and also tries to control the mobs that are formed to hunt down the spider, but things quickly get too out of hand for him and his small armada of men.

Other notable characters include Dan Kester's cousin, Billy (Paul Bentzen), who writes off the diamonds Dan finds as being of inferior quality and, like I said earlier, is just as lecherous towards Terry, suggesting they be "kissing cousins" before she throws him out of the house and he drives into a big spider web, gets attacked, and crashes into a gas station, and Dutch (Bill Williams), the local bartender who rallies the townspeople to hunt down the spider when the shit hits the fan.

And finally, there's this preacher (Tain Bodkin) who's holding a revival in town and whose fire and brimstone sermons the movie tends to suddenly cut to as the story goes on, such as him exclaiming, "And every creeping thing that creepeth upon the Earth shall be an abomination! Only the pure of hearts shall be spared!", right before the really big spiders make their first appearance, as if the spiders are a sign of Armageddon. Also, the sound of one of his sermons plays over the ending credits, suggesting what happened could happen again.

I shouldn't rag on the film too much for the less than perfect way it looks and sounds, despite its now being available in HD, as it was a low budget movie made in the mid-70's. That's also why I'm not going to give it too much crap for all of the day-for-night cinematography, as it was probably the best way they could do those scenes, given the circumstances, and there actually is some genuine nighttime shooting, besides. That said, though, even in high-definition, those day-for-night scenes tend to be really murky, especially during the third

act, with some being totally impossible to see. Speaking of the third act, the movie's look takes a sudden nosedive during the last ten or so minutes, beginning when Sheriff Jones heads to the nearby town of Gleason to try to get the mobs under control. It becomes much more faded and blurry, akin to newsreel footage of street crime that you see from that era, with some shots having a fluttering effect on the screen that looks like it was shot on poor stock videotape rather than film, and while it gets better when it

transitions back to the countryside for the climax, the quality continues to look downgraded for the rest of the film (also, earlier, when Vance and Langer first run into the giant spider, the film looks very washed out in that scene). The editing could be a lot better in some spots, too, as some of the cuts are very, very sudden, such as the sudden transitions to the preacher's sermons and, in one scene between Dan and Terry, when he tells her he simply dug up the diamonds somewhere, he no sooner finishes his sentence when, wham! We're now watching Jones

drive up to the Kester Farm, and it happens so fast that your mind is liable to get whiplash and think, "Okay, enough of that scene, I guess," until Dan and Terry come out of the house to talk with Jones and you realize you're actually not done with that scene yet. But, as clunky as that editing is, it's downright horrendous during the climax, as I'll describe later. And finally, like a lot of the monster movies made in the 50's and 60's, there's some use of stock footage for the sequence where the B-52 gets caught up in the magnetic force created by the blackhole and contacts the headquarters of the U.S. Air Force, and even for a movie that doesn't look that great to begin with, you can still point out the stock footage easily.

All those criticisms aside, Bill Rebane does manage to also get in some surprisingly skillful and arty shots here and there, namely in how the camera sometimes zooms in on the equipment in Dr. Langer's laboratory that reflects people two or three times over, like in the scene where Langer contacts NASA about the strange phenomena. What's more, when Langer and Dr. Vance first meet and they walk through the interiors of the building where her office and lab are housed, the camera pans down to the underside of the stairs

they're walking down and focuses in to reveal a spiderweb hanging beneath it, part of a slow build up to the various creepy-crawlies. Rebane also manages to get some lovely shots of the countryside, be it big wide shots of the fields and pastures of the Kester Farm or overhead helicopter shots, including a very impressive one of the giant spider making its way through a field. In fact, the way he shoots the actual locations in Wisconsin, both the countryside and the streets of the town of Gleason, with the carnival there, makes it come off as something of a charming area.

While we're on the subject, I'll say that the little rural community where much of the movie takes place is one I can relate to, and the same goes for the people, as they both remind me a lot of the place where I live, particularly the Kester farmhouse, both inside and out, which makes me think of a lot of places around here, including some I go to frequently. The same goes for Dutch's diner, as every little town has a sort of hangout where everyone goes (ours is a place called Hank's), the town streets, the carnival (reminds me of one

that used to come to our town, as well as one that annually takes place at the bottom of the mountain I live on), the baseball field (makes me think of another, similar place in the valley), and the lovely, hilly countryside all around. The "bigger," more high-tech and urban interiors, like Dr. Vance's office in Houston and the Montclair Observatory where Dr. Langer works, are also convincing enough (they look better than Ed Wood's attempts to do those kinds of sets, anyway), but the movie's aesthetic works best when it keeps to that hometown feel, even if that does keep it from feeling as epic as they wanted, like in how the climactic battle to destroy the wormhole and stop the spiders takes place in a fairly small field.

As I mentioned in the introduction, the movie's tone is quite odd and quirky. I've already mentioned some examples of it with excerpts of dialogue among the characters, but it also comes down to the overt hillbilly, hick feeling that permeates much of it, especially the scenes that take place at the Kester Farm, where you have Dan sometimes walking around in his long-johns with a back brace on, both him and Billy hitting on Terry, and the Kesters' attempts to get rich on the diamonds that, to me, feel like something you'd see

on a number of movies and TV shows dealing with hillbillies, like The Real McCoys or The Beverly Hillbillies, to name a couple. Other quirky moments include Dr. Vance watering and sweet-talking a plant in his office when he's first introduced (he asks it, "Did I ever tell you you're gorgeous?", and Rider, who walks in behind him at that moment, says, "Not recently,"), a shot of a label on a circuit board at the U.S. Air Force headquarters that reads, RED PHONES ARE HOT, accompanied by a sudden, yellow burst on the

screen, and an early shot of Sheriff Jones reading a book titled Flying Saucers Want You. Very bizarre stuff that's definitely poking fun at the kind of movie you're watching, making it sort of a forerunner to the humor and finger-pointing Joe Dante would later put in his movies, and yet, the spiders, even the obviously fake ones, are never played for laughs. The reason for this tone, according to Rebane, comes down to the film's two screenwriters.

One of them, Richard Huff, wrote an initial screenplay that was completely serious, but after he left, his former writing partner, Robert Easton (who plays Dan Kester), rewrote it and put in the humor and more comical dialogue, most of it intended for the rednecks. While Easton's pass on it likely gave it more of a personality than it probably had beforehand, I wish he could have given Dr. Langer more of a character and role in the film, and done something to keep the many scientific jargon scenes from coming off as dry and dime-a-dozen as they do.

While they made fun of the movie on Mystery Science Theater 3000, Mike Nelson and Kevin Murphy have said they do respect what Rebane was able to do with the movie, given the low budget he had to work with, and I feel the same way. He was able to give it some scale, like in the number of big, wide shots of the Wisconsin countryside (again, the overhead shot of the giant spider in the field looks shockingly good) and some of the setpieces, like Billy's death, where he drives into a gas station following his encounter with one of the really big

spiders and it explodes, and the sequence where the giant spider destroys the Kester Farm. And the idea of realizing the giant spider by covering a Volkswagen Beetle with hair and fake legs operated from inside the car, while using the car's headlights as the spider's big red eyes and thus, always driving the thing backwards, is quite creative. That, coupled with the trials and

tribulations Rebane went through to get the movie made, including a moment where a prop spider exploded right after they turned the camera off, causing them to lose the shot completely and also resulting in some members of the crew getting burned and having to go to the hospital, means I can't help but give him and his crew props for what they were able to accomplish.

The rest of the spiders were achieved through a combination of real tarantulas that were brought in from Arizona and large props for when Ev and Billie get attacked, and even though the real spiders should make the artificial ones look all the more fake, all of them can really get under your skin if you're arachnophobic. Like a lot of people, spiders, save for the really tiny ones, freak me out, to the point where I can't even fool around with really large rubber ones or fake cobwebs with plastic ones that you put up for

Halloween. Because of that, even those scenes here where the spiders look the most fake get to me. Seriously, just the sight of those spider legs emerging from Ev's dresser drawer is unnerving to me, even though there's not much life to them, and the same goes for when she runs out in a panic, into a web with a smaller spider that's obviously fake, and then takes shelter in the barn, only to find one the size of a large dog staring at her from the rafters before it leaps for her. When that thing "jumps" at her, it's clearly just an oversized prop being pulled onto her

and isn't really moving when she struggles with it on the floor, and yet, just the sight and thought of it gives me the willies, as does the moment when Billy drives into a large web made by one the next day (there, Bill Rebane doesn't hold on it long enough for it to come off as fake, so you only get a quick glimpse of a silhouette and the feel of a big spider, which makes it all the more freaky). In fact, I might say those are the ones that freak me out the most, even more so than the real spiders,

because of the Uncanny Valley effect about them and also because they remind me of one time when I walked by a sensor-activated, leaping prop spider that about caused me to fall over myself. That said, seeing those real tarantulas crawling around the inside of the Kester house is still unsettling, as it gets to how unnerved I am at the very thought of them crawling around me unseen, especially the part where Ev unknowingly mixes herself a glass of fruit juice that has ground

up spider in it and there's a constant teasing of whether she or Dan are going to be the ones to drink it, as they continually put the glass to their mouths and then pull it away. Even the giant spider, as slow-moving and artificial as it is, has a creepiness to it with the high-pitched, wailing sort of noise it makes, its glowing red eyes, and the shots of its legs smashing through the wall when it attacks the Kester Farm and when it's coming over the hillside. These images probably don't look that scary to someone who's not afraid of spiders but, trust me, as bad as this movie does get, parts of it do give me goosebumps.

Even though it's rated PG, the movie gets surprisingly gruesome in its violence. You see a number of half-eaten cows when Ev and Dan go into the fields, including a decapitated head that Ev trips over, and they're often covered with flies and other bugs. Later, Dan finds the body of Joe Cooper, a man reported missing by his wife who has blood all over him, with most of his flesh having turned a ghastly pale color, and some parts dissolved down to the bone. The giant spider is also seen gobbling up a couple of people,

including Dan, and there's often plenty of blood seen when its large fangs force their bodies into its mouth, and those who don't get eaten hardly come off without a scratch, as Terry gets badly cut up when it attacks her house while she's in it and, when it rampages through the streets of Gleason and an angry mob tries to battle it, it leaves a lot of badly bleeding people in its wake. Even the spider itself doesn't get off unscathed, as Dave Perkins manages to shoot holes in it at one

point and, when the blackhole is destroyed, it bursts and disintegrates all over into a mass of disgusting, gloppy slime. As far as visual effects go, there are only a few: some shots here and there of the object traveling through space and heading towards Earth, it streaking through the sky, and most significantly, the effect that happens when it crashes in the rear of the Kester Farm property. First, the sky and horizon turn a vivid orange color and then, it changes to red, with dots floating back and forth between two large masses. The matte line on that effect is very obvious, but it's still an impressive visual, and is punctuated by some well-done physical effects that simulate a violent windstorm that whips up afterward.

So, some technical gaffes, drab characters, and tonal oddities aside, it sounds like The Giant Spider Invasion is a movie that has enough good to balance it out. However, there are a handful of major reasons as to why I can't say it's a movie I enjoy watching overall. One is that, because it takes so long to get to the major monster action (you don't see the actual giant spider until around the 50-minute mark), you spend a lot of time with these mostly uninteresting or unlikable characters. Now, on the one hand, the way the movie builds up

to the spiders is fairly well done, as you don't even see any normal spiders until after the blackhole is opened up, and from then on, the spiders you see gradually get bigger and bigger until the giant one makes its first appearance, but on the other, as I said earlier, you're either stuck watching Dr. Vance and Dr. Langer investigating what's happening, spouting off a bunch of technobabble and scientific jargon to each other, or the crap that goes on at the Kester Farm, and neither of it is all that entertaining (if Sheriff Jones had actually

been the main character, it might have been different). Another is the origin of the spiders, which I found to be really confusing on my first watch. Initially, I thought what falls to Earth and unleashes the spiders is a meteorite, a la The Blob, and that they're just aliens, but then, as the story goes on, you get the explanation that the spiders are coming out of a space warp caused by a blackhole that's appeared on the property of the Kester Farm. I still thought that maybe it was

a meteorite that crashed and created the blackhole, but it sounds more like what fell to Earth was itself a blackhole... I think. It's really confusing and not explained in a way that makes sense. Also, if the spiders are coming through the warp, then what's with the rock-like "eggs" a number of the tarantulas hatch out of? Wouldn't it have made more sense for them to have been part of a meteorite and been scattered about the countryside after the impact? Granted, they mention how blackholes

both expel whatever is inside them as well as suck things in, but still, a shot near the end of the movie of the tarantulas literally crawling out of the spot in the ground where the blackhole is centered kind of defeats the purpose of those rocks being in the movie altogether and even then, they don't play a major part in the story, other than as a way for the spiders to get into places unexpectedly, and the true properties of the diamonds contained inside them are never explained, either. Honestly, the only thing I understood by the time the climax rolled around was that they had to drop this device, on the blackhole in order to destroy both it and the spiders. I guess I should commend Bill Rebane and the writers for coming up an origin for the monsters that's not one you hear very often but still, I wished they'd made it easier to comprehend.

Finally, the climax flat-out sucks. The scenes with the spider terrorizing the town of Gleason are decent enough, but when it comes time for the final confrontation as they try to close up the blackhole, it's lackluster and confusing. It's all shot with the film's really bad day-for-night photography, making it hard to see, for one, and most of the action consists of Vance and a deputy running around the field, trying to keep the spider away from the blackhole. The deputy (who was such a nothing character beforehand, and also due to the

bad image quality, that I thought he was Sheriff Jones with a sudden mustache), gets devoured, while Langer, after getting freaked out when she opens a briefcase and finds it crawling with tarantulas, runs to Vance with a flare gun so he can use it to signal to the helicopter pilot to activate the neutron initiator, which he dropped down in the chaos. The two of them, along with the mob who arrived to contend with the spider, run for cover and Vance shoots the flare. The editing over the next sequence of shots is horribly choppy, with it cutting from

him pointing the flaregun upwards to a shot of it already burning in the sky (it also went from day-for-night to actual nighttime in between cuts), a quick cut to the spider, a sudden cut to the blackhole blowing up (I didn't even know what happened, I was so confused), a weird reverse shot meant to depict the flames and smoke behind the spider getting sucked in on themselves, another couple of shots of the portal burning and smoke rising again, and finally, the spider itself exploding and melting into goo,

which you see in a lot of detail, before the movie ends with a freeze frame of Vance and Langer getting to their feet and watching the site of the burning blackhole. As the credits roll, you get more audio of the preacher's sermon, suggesting that such a thing like this could happen again (a sequel is one of the many movies Bill Rebane has tried to get off the ground over the years, although nothing has ever come of it).

Bill Rebane was also responsible for the music score... or, at least, editing it together, as it's made up of stock music. Either way, the result is just as quirky and varied as the movie itself. During the opening credits, you hear this electronic, benign, and almost wondrous cosmic bit, and the score also takes advantage of the rural, rustic setting, with some country songs heard on radios and piece of music done with country guitar and even banjo. There are other weird, electronic sounds heard on the soundtrack, as well as more traditional-sounding pieces of music for some scenes, some of which do succeed in conveying a bit of mood and atmosphere, like this downbeat theme that plays when Ev and Dan search the fields behind their house and a freakish sound when you first see a spiderweb in Dr. Langer's institute. Some parts of the score are memorable, while others are just generic and will leave your head the minute the movie's over, but, if nothing else, it does fit with the tone and feel of the movie it accompanies.

The Giant Spider Invasion is a movie that I really wished I liked more, as there are things about it that make me see why it is a fairly popular cult film. In spite of its inherent flaws, it has production values and technical achievements that are impressive given the budget, commendable instances of creative filmmaking, a surprisingly effective way of making even the fakest of big spiders still get under the skin of those with arachnophobia, good bits of gore and visual effects, a quirky tone overall, and a music score and soundtrack that sometimes manage to be memorable. However, what keeps me from agreeing that it is enjoyably bad are a cast of characters who are either bland or unlikable, save for Sheriff Jones, which hampers what could have been an effective buildup to the spiders' appearance, many instances of poor cinematography and editing, story details that are mind-boggling to comprehend, and a climax that is a dull and virtually incomprehensible mess. Those who enjoy the film are welcome to it, but in my opinion, there are much better giant spider movies.