Yet another exotic Eurohorror item surfaces with the 1960 German production Horrors of Spider Island, made by one of the producers of the previous year’s The Head, aka Die Nackte und der Satan. This genuine cult freakout is now best known from a Mystery Science Theater 3000 offering. It exists in more than one version, so we welcome a special edition that can sort out the sordid details of its making, as we’ve enjoyed in cult fare like Eegah and Monstrosity.
Compared to the beautifully designed and filmed The Head, the follow-up horror Spider Island is a near-minimalist exercise. Producer Wolf Hartwig apparently decided that a commercial horror exploitation winner only needs a monster and some semi-nude women. It doesn’t look as if cameraman Georg Krause was given film lights, let alone a crew. Krause previously shot Robert Siodmak’s Nachts, wenn der Teufel kam and Stanley Kubrick’s Paths of Glory. The camerawork here is not only not distinguished, much of it is barely competent.
By 1960 Italy dominated Continental genre filmmaking, and would continue doing so in the horror craze ignited by England’s Hammer Films. Co-productions anchored in Rome pulled in Spanish, French and German investment. Spider Island is home-grown German schlock by producers that worked on cheap exploitation as well as mid-range fare with known stars. The ‘name star’ here is Alexander D’Arcy, whose scattered Hollywood career gave him roles in several memorable productions. He has a guest slot in Leo McCarey’s The Awful Truth as well as a string of later 20th Fox pictures: How to Marry a Millionaire, Soldier of Fortune, The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. D’Arcy was typed as a handsome self-important Frenchman. If he spoke with an American accent and shaved his Gallic mustache, he’d be a good choice to play Dick Tracy.
Horrors of Spider Island is not an accomplished movie by any measure. A troupe of Hollywood ‘dancers’ headed for a show in Singapore are marooned on a mysterious island (a Yugoslavian beach). They find a dead uranium researcher in a cabin, suspended in a giant spider’s web. Once that mess is cleaned up, castaway life continues. They cavort, swim nude, become jealous of each others’ attention to their boss Gary (D’Arcy). But Gary is bitten by a weird spider creature, disappears, and becomes a monster. After one of their number is bitten-strangled to death, the girls continue to act as if their lives are not in danger. Finally the researcher’s young assistants arrive, bringing news that a boat will pick everybody up in a couple of days. Pleasant Joe (Harald Maresch) and lustful Robby (Rainer Brandt) suddenly have more female companionship than they can handle. That prompts various romantic encounters, a party in which Nelly (Eva Schauland) dances topless, and more killings… did I forget to say that spider-monster Gary is still around? The stranded showgirls are not only not terrorized, they barely seem concerned.
We do have to applaud the game attitudes of the actresses gathered to film this oddity — all generate at least some screen presence, even when characterization is limited to revealing costumes. Featured dancer Eva Schauland has real poise, even when gyrating in a flower necklace. Dorothee Glöklen is convincingly frightened-looking. Gerry Sammer’s May is the showgirl that interests Joe. She’s supposed to be ‘sweet and innocent,’ but behaves only a little less man-hungry than the other girls. Helga Franck is good as Georgia, Gary’s intelligent and businesslike girlfriend; we’re surprised that she didn’t make very many films. Just the same, the studiously un-real screenplay gives Georgia no particular reaction when Gary goes missing. Monster fans love this vibe — the vague story plays out in a ‘Z’ movie fog, where people don’t seem connected to events.
The one actress who went on to bigger things is Barbara Valentin. She performed an isolated striptease in The Head but here is a standout as the most man-crazy of a generally forward crowd. Valentin’s pouty looks and excellent figure won her work in low-grade spy thrillers and a Radley Metzger movie. She eventually enjoyed a long association with Rainer Werner Fassbinder, beginning with the 1973 Sci-Fi-fi TV miniseries World on a Wire.
Much of the cult-camp appeal of Horrors of Spider Island derives from its hilarious dub job. The absurdly silly English dialogue invited audience derision long before MST3K arrived on the scene. The scripted dialogue retains some dignity in German, but almost everything in the English dub sounds too stupid to be believed:
Gary: “A hammer! With a long handle! It must be for the purpose of excavating some sort of metal, most probably Uranium.”
Showgirl: “It’s the same old story. You’re nice to a man and before you know it, he’s getting thrashed.”
The cinematography is slipshod at best — only this rather good HD scan makes the movie watchable. Daylight scenes are harsh and flat; the many nighttime scenes are basically identical, just darkened in printing. After two minutes of the scene where the life raft reaches the beach, we wonder if our TV monitor has dimmed. The decently-lit interiors are limited to the one shack on the island, and an agent’s office where the girls audition by dancing and disrobing. Spider Island’s blah appearance is surprising because Eurohorrors of this time, even the cheapies, are noted for expressive camerawork — The Head, The Vampire and the Ballerina, Werewolf in a Girl’s Dormitory, Atom Age Vampire.
The sketchy air journey is illustrated with grossly mismatched airplane stock shots, one of them a burning WWII bomber. The flight goes from Los Angeles to Singapore by way of New York City. Alexander D’Arcy may have left the production early. His barrel chest is pretty distinctive both as Gary and as the spider monster man, but another actor could have played the monster in most shots. During the final action scenes, monster-Gary’s face is seen only in mismatched cutaways. If they organized the shoot well, it’s possible that D’Arcy, or his monster stand-in, filmed all of the monster close-ups in one session.
Good monster designs partly redeem the movie. The face of monster-Gary is an arrestingly scary sight, with its hairy mane, wild eyes and nightmarish three-toothed mouth. Gary’s fangs sort-of match the fangs of the nasty spider-crab puppet seen skulking in the bushes. In stills at least, both Gary’s face and the spider creature are really effective. They were big memories from early issues of Famous Monsters of Filmland, where I believe Forrest Ackerman told us the show was an ‘adult movie.’
Spider Island delivers what passed for adult-movie jollies in 1960, serving up its exhibitionist cast in loose dresses, bikinis and underwear (although no luggage was saved from the air crash). Even with Severin’s extras, we’re not sure what version showed in America under what title. The adult content is limited to (1) a fairly discreet nude swimming scene, mostly viewed from fifty feet away, (2) an insert of exposed breasts during a catfight, and (c) Nelly’s exotic dance at the party, which would be more attractive if the lighting were better.
You know, it’s the rare ‘Z’ movie groaner that hasn’t got at least one competent moment. Spider Island threatens to become a real movie only once, when monster-Gary closes in on a screaming female victim, and then realizes that she’s Georgia, his girlfriend. Just for a second, his hesitation and her recognition suggest (I’d better whisper) a real dramatic conflict. Have no fear: we return immediately to the twilight zone of Psychotronic Z-movie unreality.
