Nightclub impresario Gary Webster (Alexander D’Arcy) has a wild hair up his ass about filling a club in Singapore with ladies from New York City. After auditioning a bevy of beautiful babes (via seeing them in various states of undress and dancing about), the whole motley crew boards a plane which promptly erupts in flame, rips in two, and plunges into the ocean, as planes often do. I’m guessing ol’ Webster saved a buck or two booking that particular airline.
In a completely realistic fashion, the gang survived that ordeal, are set adrift on a life raft… and soon see a nearby island that could lead to salvation… or getting killed by giant spider monsters… as is usually the way of things.
Look, if you even bothered to read the title of this review it’s no spoiler… it’s the latter, as before long our heroes discover a cabin with a human corpse stuck to a big-ass spider web… and soon one of their party is bitten by those arcane arachnids and turned into a human-spider hybrid! Sexy stripper music and monstrous mayhem ensues!
Say what you will about Horrors of Spider Island, it’s always entertaining… at least to yours cruelly anyway! It’s creature feature craziness at it’s most dazzlingly ludicrous, and I love every sinister second!
The women are cute n’ catty, the score (courtesy of Karl Bette and Willy Mattes) sounds like the incidental music from the ’60s Batman TV show, the spider creatures are unique and entertaining as hell in all their snaggle-toothed glory, and the were-spider is equally rad… and admittedly it strays a bit when focusing on the romantic angles (some dudes show up part way through the picture), but overall it’s a wicked winner.
Also of note; this version of Horrors of Spider Island contains sequences re-instated from it’s German release (in German language ‘natch), so if you’ve seen the film before there’s new material awaitin’ your eerie eyeballs!
Speaking of winners; those putrid prizewinners at Severin have included some solid bonus materials on this Blu-ray release including: the slightly truncated U.S. release version of the film under it’s ultra-shitty alternate title It’s Hot in Paradise, an extremely fascinating look at the film’s production and history courtesy of Prof. Dr. Marcus Stiglegger, a brief audio interview with D’Arcy (conducted by horror film historian David Del Valle), a selection of alternate clothed takes of the film’s nude sequences, and the film’s trailer.
Horrors of Spider Island is goofy creature feature Drive-in fun from beginning to end, and I’d wager it’ll be right up your alley if you dig on the kind of late-night monster pictures that dominated TV broadcasts of decades past!