Up there — or should we say down there — in the pantheon of bad movies we love to watch is The Giant Spider Invasion, a 1975 horror/sci-fi indie directed, produced, and scored by maverick filmmaker Bill Rebane. A Latvian-Estonian immigrant, Rebane went on to run for governor of Wisconsin and open the state’s first film studio, but is best known for this monster cheesefest, which was shot for a rather impressive $300K and featured faded stars like Gilligan's Island skipper Alan Hale.
A Mystery Science Theater 3000 favorite, The Giant Spider Invasion is the nadir of a string of '70s "nature gone amok" movies, which makes it kind of a perverse must-see. Released 50 years ago today, the twist here is that the title spiders actually come from another universe, the result of a meteor crash near a small town that opens up a miniature black hole. Through this opening fall a whole bunch of geodes that contain not only diamonds, but also spiders that begin growing to monstrous proportions.
