The Giant Spider Invasion (1975)

(In French, On Cable TV, July 2020) There are movies out there that you watch simply to be able to say (or answer), “Hey, have you seen that movie with the big spider built on a Volkswagen Bug?” To be fair, you have to be connected to the bad-movie community to know that the big spider has been built on a Bug frame, but The Giant Spider Invasion would not be remembered today if it didn’t have a bit of a reputation as one of those so-bad-it’s-good films. Produced on a tiny budget but taking advantage of the mid-1970s craze for creature horror movies, it’s incoherent, dull, offensive, mystifying and almost a chore to watch when it’s not featuring spiders on-screen. (Legend has it that the film started out featuring ordinary tarantulas, but the producer kept saying, “bigger, bigger, BIGGER!” throughout the production, which forced the directors to get creative and end up with a car-sized spider built on a car frame.) But when it gets cracking in its third act, it sports an oddly charming giant spider moving onto a small town and eating people. The special effects are terrible, but they have the likability of an eager high-school production. It’s not quite enough to make anyone forget about the nonsense that The Giant Spider Invasion spouts on the way there, but it does offer a bit of a late balm… and it does lead to asking others, “Hey, have you seen that movie with the big spider built on a Volkswagen Bug?”