The Giant Spider Invasion

The Giant Spider Invasion is a 1975 American independent science fiction action horror film produced, composed and directed by Bill Rebane, and follows giant spiders that terrorize the town of Merrill, Wisconsin and its surrounding area. The film was theatrically released in 1975 by Group 1 Films and enjoyed a considerable run to become one of the 50 top-grossing films of that year.

After a three-time ABC network run, The Giant Spider Invasion achieved further exposure many years later, when it was featured in a 1997 episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000.

Plot
A comet or meteor is seen streaking across the night sky. Davey Perkins stops in to see Sheriff Jones. He works for his Dad's newspaper and is looking for a story. The Sheriff informs him that things are quiet.

At a rundown farm outside of town, Dan Kester bids his wife Ev goodbye. He tells her he's going to a revival meeting. The preacher is giving a sermon to the faithful, but Dan isn't there. Davey stops by Kester's place to pick up his girlfriend, Terry and greets Ev on the porch. She is drinking and offers Davey one. Ev and Terry are sisters. Terry and Davey depart, and Ev continues to drink alone. Ev runs out of alcohol and calls Dutch, the café/bar owner and asks him for a delivery. Davey and Terry drive over to a local junkyard and start necking. Dan finishes up with his prostitute/waitress, Helga and leaves her place and drives home, listening to the revival on the radio. Just as Dan arrives home the meteor crashes somewhere on their property. In addition to a strong wind, electrical equipment starts to malfunction.

A B-52 flying on patrol reports a magnetic anomaly and RADAR problems, then crashes. The Sheriff starts getting calls from citizens reporting electrical problems. Dr Jenny Langer at Montclair Observatory calls NASA again to report further information, now including gamma-ray activity. At the Houston office of NASA, Dr Vance is feeding and talking to his plant. A co-worker, Paul, brings him some reports from Northern Wisconsin. Vance suspects the downed B-52 and the reports are related. Vance leaves for Wisconsin to investigate.

Langer finishes a lecture on astronomy to her class when Dr Vance arrives on campus to meet with her. They walk back to her office and she briefs him on her findings. The Kesters search their property and find a dead cow. In fact, they find many dead cattle. Kester proposes to butcher the animals and sells the meat to the local café. As they continue to survey their property, Ev picks up a strange rock. They find more of the same kind and collect them. They finally arrive at the impact spot of the meteor.

Sheriff Jones walks into the local café/bar and talks to the owner, Dutch and the waitress, Helga. Helga goes into the kitchen to get the Sheriff his breakfast. The Kesters return to the house. Dan tries to break open one of the rocks, but it falls off the table onto the floor, and the geode breaks open. Unobserved by the Kesters, a spider crawls out. Dan retrieves the rock and pulls a crystal out. They are convinced they are diamonds after Dan scrawls a dollar sign on the kitchen window. Back at the café, Langer and Vance stop by to see the Sheriff. Davey stops by and joins the three at the table. He's still looking for a story. Davey tells them about the electrical disturbance and winds the evening before.

Ev is hitting the booze pretty heavily and swatting the spiders on the kitchen table with a flyswatter. Dan hasn't seen them yet and attributes Ev's spiders to the DTs. Dan heads back out to collect more rocks but discovers the dead body of a motorcycle rider. Instead of reporting his find, he buries the body and hides the motorcycle. He doesn't want the Sheriff nosing around the property and finding either the diamonds or the pot they are growing. He returns to the house and tells his wife, Ev of his discovery. That evening, Ev, still drinking, goes to bed, but can't get to sleep. As she pulls open a dresser drawer to get something, a giant spider jumps out at her. She exits the bedroom and the house, screaming, and runs into an outbuilding or barn. There she is attacked by a dog-sized spider that kills her.

Dan leaves Helga's house the next morning and drives into town to see his cousin, Billy. Billy is a rock shop owner and examines one of Dan's crystals. Billy pronounces them inferior-industrial quality, but still a diamond. Dan drives back home. The Sheriff stops by the Kester farm to make inquiries about the missing motorcycle rider. Dan lies to the Sheriff and denies any knowledge. After the Sheriff leaves, Dan heads back to the impact zone to dig for more rocks. He is attacked and eaten by a great spider, the size of a car. His curiosity whetted, Billy stops by the Kester place to talk to Dan a little more about the diamond, but Dan is missing. He leaves, but on his way home his car hits a huge web, and he is attacked by another giant spider. He manages to escape, but in his confusion runs his car into a gas station, and the explosion kills him.

Langer and Vance drive around trying to locate the impact zone. They know it's around the Kester property, but not an exact location. Meanwhile, the Kester house is destroyed by the giant spider with Terry inside. Davey arrives at the house, only to find it demolished. He fires his rifle at the departing spider, then rushes to retrieve Terry who is barely alive. The bullets seemed to have no effect on the spider. Vance and Langer are attacked but manage to escape the giant spider. Davey takes Terry to the hospital. Langer and Vance make it back to town and inform the Sheriff of the 50-foot spider. The Sheriff gives them a couple of rocks to examine. Davey calls the Sheriff to report the damage at the Kester place and Terry's condition. Dutch organizes a posse to go after the giant spider, but the Deputy orders them home. The mob ignores the order and heads for the Kester place.

The giant spider attacks the Gleason Days carnival. The Sheriff is called by Gleason officials and told the spider is headed his way. He calls for the National Guard. Vance and Langer had discussed earlier the possibility of using a neutron device to destroy a mini-black hole that allowed the spiders to invade Earth. The neutron device is shipped to the local airport and loaded on a helicopter. The target is the impact site. Meanwhile, the mob gathers and Sheriff Jones tries to keep them off the Kester property. The spider attacks the mob while they are still in town. The giant spider returns to the impact site, where Langer and Vance direct the dropping of the neutron device. The spider attacks the deputy who is eaten alive. The neutron device is deployed and the giant spider explodes, melting into a pile of goo.

Cast
• Steve Brodie as Dr. J.R. Vance

• Barbara Hale as Dr. Jenny Langer

• Alan Hale Jr. as Sheriff Jones

• Leslie Parrish as Ev Kester

• Robert Easton as Dan Kester

• Christiane Schmidtmer as Helga

• Kevin Brodie as Dave Perkins

• Bill Williams as Dutch

• Diane Lee Hart as Terry

• Paul Bentzen as Billy

• Tain Bodkin as Preacher

• J. Stewart Taylor as Deputy

• William W. Gillett Jr. as Rider

• Sheryl Desotelle as driver of VW Giant Spider

Production
Originally conceived as an idea from Richard Huff, he and actor Robert Easton, a friend of Rebane, were tasked to write the script. By the time filming began, creative differences led to a script not being made and only pages of dialogue had been written. To motivate Easton, who was told to write 10 to 15 pages a day, Rebane locked him in a cabin and told him to finish the daily task or he would not be fed. The cast of the film consisted of Hollywood veterans. It was tentatively titled The Great Spider Invasion.

The Giant Spider Invasion was shot in Gleason, Tomahawk and Merrill, Wisconsin in six weeks with a budget of $300,000. The University of Wisconsin–Stevens Point was also used for filming. Former mayor of Madison, Wisconsin and future Wisconsin Circuit Court Judge William Dyke was an uncredited executive producer, helping to fund and find a distributor for the film. Special effects artist Bob Millay was hired to design the spiders for the film. Jack Willoughby was the cinematographer. Rebane's wife Barbara worked as the script girl. Tarantulas were used in portions of the film to portray the spider hatchlings, sent from Arizona through trucking by the special effects crew.

While attempting to film a scene where the spider explodes, the effects team covered the prop with gunpowder and had a crew member attempt to ignite it with matches. Despite using the entire matchbox, the spider did not explode and Rebane decided to stop filming. Immediately after they stopped, the spider exploded, causing two crew members to get their hair singed and be taken to the hospital to be treated for severe burns.

Release
The Giant Spider Invasion was distributed by Group 1 International Distribution Organization. The movie was released in theaters in 1975. In an interview with Fangoria in 1996, Bill Rebane claimed the movie grossed $15 million. Turner Classic Movies claimed the movie made a $22 million return. In the United States and Canada, video rentals of the movie in 1976 grossed to $2,347,000. On television, it was featured on The CBS Late Movie.

The Giant Spider Invasion was released on DVD by multiple video companies, including Retromedia in 2002 and a director's cut on May 5, 2009 by MVD Visual. It was released on Blu-ray on June 15, 2015 by VCI Entertainment.

Reception
Brandlon L. Chase, the president of distributor Group 1 International Distribution Organization, won the "Outstanding Executive Achievement" award at the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films. Linda Gross for the Los Angeles Times called it a "poorly done combination of science fiction, Jaws, and Day of the Locust." Gross was also critical on the films script and Rebane's direction, but thought the spiders to be scary. Glenn Garvin from The Delta Democrat-Times described the movie as "self-subconsciously ludicrous". Garvin also recounted during his theater experience kids at the screening were laughing instead of being scared by the film. Albuquerque Journal's Chuck Mittlestadt gave the film a warmer reception, giving positive marks for its editing and direction. Mittlestadt also gave praise to Barbara Hale, Kevin Brodie, and Alan Hale's acting.

Michael Weldon, in The Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film, while criticizing the special effects and comparing them negatively to The Giant Claw, he considered the movie to be "Lots of laughs". Leonard Maltin wrote, "Veteran cast can't do much for this tacky horror opus filmed in Wisconsin." VideoHound's Golden Movie Retriever gave the film one star, while Robert Firsching from Allmovie gave the movie one star out of five, speaking negatively about Rebane's direction and the movie's use of humor. Blockbuster Entertainment gave the film one star and thought that the unintentional laughs from the film worn thin quickly.

The film is listed on 'The 100 Most Enjoyably Bad Movies Ever Made' in the book The Official Razzie Movie Guide by Golden Raspberry Award founder John Wilson. Wired listed the movie as one of the "cheesiest movies" ever made.

Legacy
On May 31, 1997, The Giant Spider Invasion was featured on the Sci-Fi Channel in a season eight episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 (MST3K), a comedy television series in which the character Mike Nelson and his two robot friends Crow T. Robot and Tom Servo are forced to watch 'bad films' as part of an ongoing scientific experiment. Regarding the episode, Director Bill Rebane thought it was strange, but overall accepted it due to its popularity. But During the episode, As Pearl, Brain Guy, and Bobo were out camping, They inadvertently unleash Body Snatcher aliens that affected Pearl, Brain Guy and all the Bots, until Bobo destroys the aliens to bring the ones affected back and turn them back to normal. This caused Pearl to force the SOL crew to watch the movie again, much to their horror.

In 2006, Rhino Entertainment released the MST3K episode as part of the "Volume 10" DVD collection of the series, along with Godzilla vs. Megalon, Swamp Diamonds, and Teen-Age Strangler. The boxset was later recalled due to the rights to Godzilla vs. Megalon being disputed. It was redistributed in the "Volume 10.2" collection in 2008, with Godzilla vs. Megalon being replaced by The Giant Gila Monster.

Bill Rebane had a festival given in his honor; the "Bill Rebane Film Festival" took place in Madison, Wisconsin in May 2005. Hosting the festival were MST3K stars Michael J. Nelson and Kevin Murphy, the voice of Tom Servo. In an article recapping the festival in Scary Monsters Magazine, the two noted that although they lambasted the film during their show, they admired how Rebane was able to pull cast and crew together to get the film made. In 2011, it was announced that the movie was going to be remade into a musical.

In a 2012 interview with Wisconsin television station WSAW-TV, Rebane remarked that he was not sure how the movie became popular, saying it was not an initial hit until it became a cult classic. He also stated that while the movie grossed millions of dollars over the past 35 years, he never saw a fraction of the money, calling the film "one of the most pirated movies in history." Despite his grievances, Rebane was proud of the impact that the movie made for the city of Merrill, Wisconsin.

In 2012, film historian Bill Dexter found the shells of the two 30-feet spiders with the intent on restoring the spiders to their original form. In 2013, the shell of one of the main giant spiders was reported stolen by Rebane. Weeks later, a recycling facility announced that the giant spider was brought to them as scrap metal.

On August 15, 2019, The Giant Spider Invasion was featured as a Rifftrax live show.