HORRORS OF SPIDER ISLAND (1960)
Label: Severin Films
Region Code: A
Rating: Unrated
Duration: 84 Minutes
AudiO: English DTS-HD MA Mono, German DSTS-HD MA Mono with Optional English Subtitles
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (1.66:1)
Director: Fritz Bottger
Cast: Alexander D'Arcy, Barbara Valentin, Allen Turner, Donna Ulsike, Norma Townes
Synopsis: Produced in 1960 as BODY IN THE WEB, it became a notorious Adults Only feature throughout Europe (though banned in the UK). Three years later and sheared of its nudity, it was repackaged for American audiences as a brain-melting monster movie filled with stripper catfights, skimpy lingerie and radioactive arachnids. Alexander D’Arcy – whose Hollywood career ranged from Leo McCarey’s The Awful Truth to Al Adamson’s Blood of Dracula's Castle – and ‘The German Jayne Mansfield’ Barbara Valentin (Berlin Alexanderplatz) star in “the ultimate exploitation movie” (PsychotronicReview.com), produced by Wolf C. Hartwig of Bloody Moon and Schoolgirl Report infamy. Severin Films is proud to present both the complete uncensored version – scanned from the Düsseldorf dupe negative – as well as the alternate U.S. release – scanned from a pristine low con print – now together for the first time.
Low-budget b-movie Horrors of Spider Island (1960) is an early bit of German exploitation that mashes together the lurid delight of nude women stranded on an island with the creature feature shenanigans of low-rent horror film. It begins with New York City nightclub promoter Gary Webster (Alexander D'Arcy, Blood of Dracula's Castle) who is holding a bizarre audition, looking to cast eight women for a new nightclub show he's putting on in Singapore, During the audition he see's a bevy of beauties ranging from ballerinas to strippers, choosing eight they hop a plane. Somewhere in the vicinity of Hawaii the plan catches fire and ditches into the ocean, and this has gotta be one of the cheapest looking plane crash at sea you will ever see, a janky montage of world war II era stock footage of a plane taking a nosedive into the ocean intercut with unconnected shots of swelling ocean waves and the girls screaming.
All eight women and Mr. Webster somehow survive the fiery plunge, adrift in the ocean on a lifeboat, eventually landing on a small island with a supply of freshwater. While exploring they discover a cabin nestled away on the island, inside they are horrified to find the corpse of a man caught up what looks to be a giant spider web, which can only mean one thing, there's gotta be giant spiders!
Gary and the women manage to remove the corpse and after that they don't seem all that worried about what is most likely a giant-sized spider that's loose on the island. They find the journals of the dead man and discover he was professor researching uranium deposits on the island. They settle into the cabin and figure they have about a month's worth of food rations to survive on, and then the girls set about trying to catch the eye of Gary, being ditsy and again, not at all worried about what killed the professor.
At night Gary wanders into the woods and is attacked by one of the giant-spiders, which are actually only about small dog sized, but that's still pretty big for a arachnid. He kills the spider, but not before being bitten, and he almost immediately begins transforming into a fanged and clawed spider-man, seemingly driven mad by the transformation he soon sets about attacking the women. Now keep in my this irradiated spider turning a man into a man-spider was before Stan Lee ever created Spider-Man for marvel in 1962, which is pretty cool. I like to think Stan Lee was watching this clunker on late-night TV when he thought of it, even though this one is said to have never aired on TV here in the U.S..
Sure, the acting is bad, it's poorly made, and the plot is ludicrous, but dang it if I didn't have fun with this clunker of a creature-feature. We have eight attractive eight women stuck and an island battling not just an unusually large species of spider, but also a crazed spider-man out for blood. I thought the rubbery spiders with their snaggle-toothed mouths were actually pretty decent looking for the era, with the transformation of Gary into the creature bringing to mind the vintage Wolf Man make-up if it was fucked-up and with an arachnid bent to it.
It's very silly stuff, as I've said the threat of spider attack is seemingly not an issue for large swaths of the film, with the women giddily skinny-dipping in the ocean, cat-fighting with their tits hanging out over men, and eventually holding a wild tropical bikini-party to entertain a pair of men who arrive on the island to re-supply the now dead professor. The locations are cool-looking, the women are gorgeous, but the movie is a straight-up trash, but it's vintage trash with a ridiculous genre mash-up that's just bad enough to be sort of awesome.
Audio/Video: The uncut, uncensored German cut of Horrors of Spider Island (1960) arrives on Blu-ray from Severin Films framed in 1.66:1 widescreen in 1080p HD, coming from a scan of a low-contrast print with the original German title card 'Ein Toter Hing im Netz' (A Corpse Hangs in the Web). The omage is not perfection, but it is pleasing with only some speckling and faint vertical lines visible throughout. The worst I can say of it is that it looks a bit dark at times, which might be inherent to the lighting during the shooting of the film, but as the film progressed it improved considerably, the worst offender being the grainy stock footage of the plane crashing into the ocean. It's not razor sharp or crisp looking but it looked authentic to it's seedy b-movie roots.
Audio on the disc comes by way of both the original German and English-dubbed DTS-HD MA 1.0 Mono with optional English subtitles. The English dub is atrociously lip-synced but I still love it, I say if you're gonna watch a bad b-movie go with the dub track, it's only gonna make it that much more worse/fun. There are a few short dialogue passages where an English dub was never created, during these sequences it defaults to the original German audio with English subtitles.
The Severin team offer up some cool extras, kicking things off with a 15-min appreciation of the film with Prof. Dr. Marcus Stiglegger who talks about how the film was a bit of an odd fit for the director Fritz Bottger (The Bachelor Trap), this being his third and final film, but how it fit comfortably within the body of work from producer Wolf C. Hartwig (Bloody Moon), and how it's a rare example of German exploitation/horror cinema of the era. He also goes a bit into the careers of a few of the stars of the film, including actors Alexander D'Arcy (Blood of Dracula's Castle) and busty-blonde Barbara Valentin (The Head) who would go onto work regularly with German arthouse director Rainer Werner Fassbinder,.
There's also a brief three-minute audio interview with actor Alexander D’Arcy by film historian David Del Valle. Not sure when it was recorded but it was obviously before the actor passed in '96, at a time when the film was considered something of a lost cult item and hard to come by.
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| REVERSIBLE ART |
We also get 8-min of alternate clothed scenes - who the heck wants that? - and the shorter-running 77-min U.S. cut of the film under the title 'It's Hot In Paradise', which is also scanned from a low-contrast print and presented in 1080p HD with uncompressed English mono audio. The last of the extras is a faded and rough-looking trailer for film, but still appreciated.
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| SLIPCOVER |
The single-disc release comes housed in now standard black keepcase from Severin with a sleeve of reversible artwork, with what looks to be an original movie poster artwork on one side and a new illustration on the reverse, though I am unsure who did the new illustration. That's not all though, this release gets a limited edition slipcover with a third illustrated artwork, which might be a new retro illustration, again I am unsure about that. All of the artworks look deliciously pulpy and cool, with the Blu-ray disc itself sporting the new illustration on it.
If you order direct from the Severin webstore this release comes with a 59 page, 6" x 8” reproduction of the original Foto-Comic, which was unearthed by a collector in France and translated into English for the first time ever! Order now: https://severin-films.com/shop/spider-island-blu/
Special Features:
- Alternate US Release Version: It;s Hot In Paradise (77 min) HD
- The History of Spider Island with Prof. Dr. Marcus Stiglegger (15 min)
- Audio Interview with Actor Alexander D’Arcy by Horror Historian David Del Valle (3 min)
- Alternate Clothed Scenes (8 min)
- Trailer (2 min)
- Sleeve of Reversible Artwork
- Limited Edition Slipcover
Severin's Blu-ray of Horrors of Spider Island (1960) is a top-presention of of this trashy exploitation flick, with two versions of the film, including the one with all the tasty continental topless scenes, which I don't think has ever been available in the U.S. before, certainly not in HD. If your a lover of bad b-movies and cheapie creature-features with are absolutely gonna have a blast with this one, highly recommended to the MSTK3 crowd and anyone who delights in trashy cinema.
More Screenshots from the Blu-ray:
