Horrors of Spider Island (1962)

Alternate titles: It’s Hot in Paradise and Body in the Web

After they’re hired in a bizarre audition involving dancing, stripping, and promising not to have affairs, a group of about ten showgirls board a plane to Singapore with their promoter, Gary (Alexander D’Arcy) and his assistant, Georgia (Helga Franck).

The plane crashes almost immediately after take-off and the women and their boss spend some time complaining on a lifeboat until someone spies land and they swim ashore. Gary finds a cabin and, instead of vacationers or a missionary converting the natives, he finds a dead man in a huge web. Georgia, possessor of keen observational skills says, “Oh…a dead man in a huge web.”

A dead man in a huge web

While we ponder why Georgia never made head detective everyone moves on and it’s shower time. Scantily clad from the get go, the women seem to remove more clothing as the story progresses. They complain about the heat and cope with it by writhing a bit which gets Gary excited and he kisses the wrong girl. He’s chastised by Georgia and retreats into the jungle only to be attacked by some Alaskan King Crab legs with blinky eyes. He transforms into a furry-faced, spidery, claw-handed thing and we don’t see him until he bites a stripper and leaves her in a pond. The girls find her covered in bite marks and naturally assume she’s been strangled. They remember the web, put two and two together and accuse its maker. Makes sense, right? I mean, when a person has been strangled, I immediately suspect a spider.

No matter, now it’s time for nude swimming. Despite the tropical setting, the cameraman stands in Vancouver so good luck seeing the girls’ attributes. While they swim, two men in a boat come ashore and the fun really begins. The girls tell the men about the professor. Remember the dead man in a huge web? They think about him for a minute then decide to have a dance party. Everyone takes off a layer of clothes and gang up on the only two men on the island. Bobby, our boater with an eye for the ladies, goes from one girl to another in a weird, semi-nude orgy which involves kissing and leering and not much else. People talk about things they don’t care about much, have a wild cat fight, and SpiderGary returns.

I hate to spoil the ending and I’ve already spent more time reviewing this film than the producers did making it, so I’ll end this. Horrors of Spider Island left me with many unanswered questions. Why did the professor end up in a web and Gary go all spidery? Was this really a stag film? Why is the cameraman filming this through cheese cloth. Anyway, if you want to watch a mumbly, incoherent story filmed from a distance which may or may not involve spiders…ah just skip it. Actually, don’t skip it. In spite of its shortcomings, Horrors of Spider Island is a lot of fun to watch.

See ya!