Sat firmly amongst the B-movie dross of the early sixties is Horrors of Spider Island (aka Body In The Web). Made in Germany at the start of the decade, it combines fifties cinematography and sensibilities with a hint of the burgeoning sixties desire to shock. Had it been shot better and not strove so hard to titillate, it would have no doubt been a better movie.
OK, the plot: Gary, a nightclub manager, hires a group of New York dancing girls for his club in Singapore. The flight across the Pacific comes to an abrupt end when the plane catches fire and crashes, killing all the crew but none of the dance troupe... After a few days in a liferaft, they find land. The island is (or was) home to a professor, whose body they discover hanging in a huge spider's web. Whilst searching for the beast, Gary is bitten and turns into Spider-man! No, not that Spiderman, but SPIDER-MAN! Hairy of face, claws for hands, and a taste for blood - human blood!
The rest of the movie basically covers the girls attempts to stay alive, helped when two of the Professor's assistants return from a trip to the far side of the Island. As the body-count mounts up, the awful, shocking truth is revealed - Gary is SPIDER-MAN, and must be stopped...
Now, I'm not one to complain often at gratuitous exposure of female bodies in movies, but this is a little too far-fetched. There's absolutely no reason for the girls to all be nubile dancers, and even when they are, there's absolutely no reason for them to spend almost the entire movie walking around in their underwear. But they do. And it's not long before the thought that you've seen one pointy brassiere too many comes around. Add the terrible acting, and the poor dialogue, and what could have been a good movie becomes almost a period piece, showing what the vogue for schlock horror was back in the early sixties.
