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.

Warning: This review has a few minor spoilers, but as the film is a pile of dung, who really cares!

For years, Ed Wood, Jr.'s PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE has been popularly regarded as the worst film ever made. Sadly, however, this isn't at all true, as there are quite a few films that are much worse....take this film, for instance. Unlike PLAN 9, where at least you can have a good laugh at the bad acting or cheesy sets or silly plot, here in HORRORS OF SPIDER ISLAND, the film isn't even good as "cheese". In other words, it's just bad--and not even in an enjoyable way.

Here's the plot: A guy takes a group of dancing girls from the US to Singapore, but on the way the plane crashes and they are stranded on a deserted island. All this happens in the first 10 minutes of the film and I knew I was in trouble when all of the action was pieced together from stock footage. In one scene, they are supposedly on a two-engine airliner, but just a moment later it has four engines! Then, when it crashes, they show a clip of a plane flying completely vertical into the sea--and with such a crash there is no way anyone could have survived! And, between airplane shots, there are closeup shots of giant waves. Why? Well, I guess their mantra was "if you have the film, use it"! Through all of the film, editing seemed to be done randomly. In one spot, the monster was standing directly in front of some trees, but when the shot changed, the trees just vanished! In another scene, it was very dark outside and in the next it was light outside! This was one of the biggest problems with PLAN 9 and this film manages to uphold the same traditions of excellence! Once on the island, a whole lot happens rather quickly--they find a dead professor and soon the group's manager turns into a monster when he's bitten by a spider. However, for the next 30 minutes or so, nothing happens--nothing. For weeks, the girls frolic about the island (in the original, this included a lot of nudity apparently--I saw the edited version). Then, when two guys come to the island to rescue them, nothing much happens for a while--and then suddenly in the last 10 minutes some more action and then the movie ends. All this action and then nothing for extended periods is because apparently they didn't have a script and they just winged it until someone had some inspiration! It was incredibly sloppy AND amazingly dull.

By the way, this was originally a German film. Some lunkhead decided it should be dubbed into English, so they got one or two friends and did all the dubbing--for all 8 or 10 of the girls (I lost track how many they were, but who cares?). So they already had a rather horrid film, but they managed to make the English version even duller!! Apparently that IS possible! Overall, this is a dull and stupid film with no redeeming values. Because of this, I really think we all owe Ed Wood, Jr. an apology--he clearly WASN'T the worst film maker of all time and this turkey proves it.

Not the worst movie ever, not quite down there as one of them and there have been worse movies featured on MST3K. But is that any consolation? Not really, this is still a truly rubbish movie in every way possible. The horror elements is not enough and the overall effect of it is tame and to the point of unintentional hilarity. The lack of pace and suspense hurts it even further, as well as the special effects, make-up and such looking infuriatingly cheap. Ein Toter Hing im Netz felt more like an exploitation movie, with lots of beautiful girls, and oddly enough the girls are the only things interesting about that approach. The movie throughout looks amateurish with murky photography, choppy editing and dull lighting, while the music also falls as flat as a pancake with a lot of it being repetitive and ponderous. The script actually sounds like it was made up on the spot and the fight scenes are far too much in number and look cartoonish and juvenile, even the worst cartoons with bad action/fight scenes do them better than Ein Toter Hing im Netz. There is very little story so to speak and what there is of it is chronically dull and predictable, while the characters are just archetypes that do very little of note, even those who are meant to scare or threaten don't in any way and at times come across as goofy. The acting is so bad that it's beyond description and the sloppy, badly-written-and-delivered dubbing is even worse. On the whole, blood-curdingly bad. 1/10 Bethany Cox