derenk66-1 I've only seen this in a "Mystery Science Theater 3000" episode, but judging from the synopses that I've read, very little material of any importance was cut.An international impresario, Gary, is flying a planeload of showgirls to Singapore for an engagement (the film begins with the auditions). However, the plan crashes in the South Pacific, killing the pilot and crew. Gary and the showgirls manage to make it to a small island in a rubber raft. There, they find a deserted hut with the body of a man suspended in a giant spider web - he was apparently a scientist looking for uranium on the island. Soon after, Gary goes out for a walk and is bitten by a spider around the size of a small dog. He kills it, but its bite results in his turning into a monster. He begins to prey on the showgirls.First of all, the synopsis on IMDb is inaccurate, since there is only one spider and the one person bitten does not turn into a spider, but a sort of weird "were-spider" hybrid. However, that hardly makes a difference, because this is a terrible movie, and maybe the most sexist film I have ever seen. It's really much more of a sexploitation film than a horror film; the horror content is pretty light. The showgirls who end up on the island are portrayed as completely brainless and helpless without men around. When two men arrive in a rowboat with supplies for the dead scientist, the women are only too happy to have sex with complete strangers because they are SO hungry for men.The film is also really shoddy technically. The special effects are laughable. The big (but not giant) spider that originally bites Gary looks like a cartoon menace and the "were-spider" that Gary becomes looks a bit scary, but sure doesn't look anything like a spider. In his excellent book on 50's (and early 60's) SF films, "Keep Watching the Skies," Bill Warren reviews this under the title "Horrors of Spider Island." He gives it a negative review, but his review still didn't prepare me for how shockingly amateurish this film was. Proof that continental Europeans can make low-budget films just as badly as the Americans!

Horst in Translation (filmreviews@web.de) Here we have a German black-and-white film from over 50 years ago, which managed quite an achievement. It is bad enough to make in to the list of the 100 worst films in film history on the biggest movie website of the world. Yes it is German, even if there are copies with English language out there and even if the director and some of the cast used American pseudonyms. The director is Fritz Böttger and it was his 3rd and final film behind the camera. He wrote many more though.The cast is predominantly female. A group of dancers has a plane crash, but (what a miracle!) they all survive and are just hungry and thirsty. So they reach an island, but sadly they are not alone. One of the very few males in this film is bitten by some kind of spider monster and transforms into a spider human himself afterward. But not the Spider Man hero kind. A furry, scary looking creature which is out there to kill.This 75-minute film could have been fun actually, if the spider monster would have killed the girls one by one, but the actual outcome is not so bad that it's funny, it's so bad that it's real bad. The girls keep (cat)fighting for no reason really and the males fight too, but then all of a sudden in a scene near the end it was just harmless fun. But the worst thing in this film is probably all the sexual bait. Literally, every third scene we see one or more women making suggestive gestures obviously aimed at getting male audience members horny and thus tricking them into believing this was not a complete rubbish film. From the female cast, one actress died shortly afterward when she fell out of her apartment's window, while another (Barbara Valentin) actually had a great career working a lot with Fassbinder. The other actresses aren't particularly known and did not appear in too many films and those that they appeared in were all fairly forgettable.I do not care about what MST3000 did with this movie as they are idiots and don't know a thing about quality movies, only possessing the (lack of) ability to put down films. However, I have to say that this film here is not a good watch at all. Pretty much exactly the opposite. The writing is bad. The acting is even worse. Stay far far away.

Woodyanders Eight showgirls, rugged manly man manager Gary Webster (smoothly played by Alexander D'Arcy), and Gary's strict assistant Georgia (a solid portrayal by Helga Franck) seek refuge on a remote tropical island after surviving a plane crash. However, said island turns out to be overrun by giant lethal spiders. Gary transforms into a ferocious predatory subhuman beast complete with claws and fangs in the wake of being bitten by one of the spiders.While director Fritz Bottger fails to generate much in the way of either tension or creepy atmosphere, he nonetheless keeps the entertainingly silly story moving along at a reasonable pace and delivers a pleasing plethora of tasty cheesecake. The catty and backbiting behavior of the fiercely competitive models serves as a key source of campy amusement (we even get the obligatory catfight). Moreover, the occasional use of blatant stock footage, cruddy dubbing, tacky (not so) special effects (Gary's shabby paper mache make-up in particular is positively gut-busting), wonky continuity, a ridiculous dance party sequence, and the overall shoddy production values all give this picture a certain endearingly rough'n'ready kitschy charm. The gals portraying the models are pretty hot as well, with Helga Neuner as the foxy Ann, Dorethee Parker as the pretty Gladys, Gerry Sammer as the fetching May, and Elfie Wagner as the voluptuous Linda rating as the definite sizzling stand-outs. Georg Krause's crisp black and white cinematography provides a few neat visuals. The groovy jazz score by Karl Bette and Willy Mattes hits the swinging spot. Fun rubbish.

BA_Harrison An all female dance troupe and their manager Gary (Alexander D'Arcy) are en route to Singapore when their plane catches fire and ditches into the sea. Somehow, Gary and a handful of his dancers survive the disaster and, after several days adrift in an inflatable raft, chance upon a remote tropical island that is home to a monstrous spider whose bite causes terrible mutations.Horrors of Spider Island started life as a German adults-only feature, but was subsequently trimmed of most of its nude scenes and turned into a cheesy horror flick for the US market, all of which goes to explain why the film seems more concerned with titillating its viewers than terrifying them.The opening scene sees Gary auditioning a series of sexy 60s babes who flaunt their generous curves, show off their long legs (clad in sussies and stockings, of course) and even strip down to their their underwear in an effort to secure a job; once the action moves to the island and the girls adopt tropical attire, barely a minute goes by without a glimpse of bare thigh, a flash of cleavage, a tempting expanse of mid-riff, or the sight of a shapely rear; and when two men arrive on the island ready to party, the wanton women are only too happy to oblige. This smörgåsbord of cheesecake and smut is accompanied by a wonderful jazz soundtrack that wouldn't seem out of place in a seedy 60s go-go strip joint, and which helps to propel the film into the uppermost reaches of the trashosphere.As far as the horror is concerned, all we get is the giant spider—a very peculiar looking creature with alien-like eyes and what look like teeny hands at the end of its legs—and one mutated bite victim, who grows fangs, facial hair and an impressive set of claws with which to terrorise the women.On top of all of the eye-candy and lacklustre horror, viewers are also treated to dreadful dubbing, terrible acting, amateurish direction, some poorly choreographed brawls (including the obligatory cat-fight), and plenty of unintentional laughs (try keeping a straight face at the dancers' reactions when the plane is about to crash, or Gary's inexplicable knowledge of Uraniam mining equipment), all of which go to make this one seriously bad movie that no self-respecting fan of kitsch Z-grade garbage should miss.