810 - THE GIANT SPIDER INVASION

Genre:  Low-budget ’70 Horror (1975, Color)

Possible Alternate Title: “Giant Parade Float Invasion”

Synopsis:  In some rural redneck-ville, a meteor crashes on a farm owned by Dan Kester (white trash #1) and his alcoholic wife Eve (white trash #2).  Soon, something is killing their cows and they find a bunch of little round stone that, when broken open, contain little low-grade diamonds… and little spiders.  The town sheriff, played by an aging Alan Hale Jr. (has-been #1), receives calls complaining about problems, like people dying and stuff, that have been cropping up since that strange meteor crashed.  Of course, he just gets rid of the calls by using the same amount of comic timing he displayed on Gilligan’s Island (i.e. not much).  Meanwhile, a couple of scientists (one of whom is played by has-been #2, Barbara Hale of Perry Mason fame) are researching the anomalies caused by that meteor and they discover that the meteor’s crash site is the location of a small black hole to another parallel universe (who wrote this stuff???) and is allowing creatures from that universe into our world.  So they go to the small redneck town to investigate.  Back in the town, the little regular sized spiders, it turns out, are just that... regular spiders.  But they are all being controlled by a giant parade float, I mean spider, that is invading from this alternate universe (hence the title).  The giant spider is going around killing people left and right and eventually invades the town.  The scientists somehow figure out that if a bomb is dropped on the meteor crash site, it’ll close the portal to the other universe, so we get tons of footage of a helicopter presumably flying in to drop this bomb.  The giant spider is at the crash site when this happens and is destroyed by the blast so it, unfortunately, isn’t able to kill everyone else left in this movie.

Don’s Review:  Bad ’70s era monster movie that completely lacks a single sympathetic character is decently riffed by M&tBs overall, although a surprising high number of their riffs fall completely flat.  The host segments in this experiment are another movie spoof, this time it’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and they are sometimes amusing (I liked the duplicate Tom) and sometimes very dumb (especially the final segment in which Bobo saves the day).  Not a bad episode overall, but not one of the better ones either.

Don’s Rating: 

Related Link: 
    (1) B-Movie Central (Movie Review)