History Film / TheGiantSpiderInvasion

Bill Rebane has decided to turn ''The Giant Spider Invasion'' into a stage musical, and why not? [[IncrediblyLamePun He hopes it'll have legs.]]

* [[WriterOnBoard Actor on Board]]: Robert Easton, who played Dan Kester, also co-wrote the script. Apparently it had a very serious tone until he added jokes.

* TooDumbToLive: [[spoiler:The Sheriff at the end of the movie runs out of bullets shooting fruitlessly at the spider. Instead of fleeing like a sensible person, he throws his gun at the spider... then pulls off his gun belt and tries ''whipping'' the spider with it. Two guesses what happens to him next, and the first one is replaced with "remember TooDumbToLive is a death trope".]]

* FanService: Nope. Plenty of individuals got wet over seeing Alan Hale Jr flaunting his chest on the job.

* DoesNotLikeShoes: Ev, making the hillbilly stereotype complete.

* AssholeVictim: Dan is an adulterer, hits on his underage sister-in-law, and verbally abuses his family. He becomes one of the spider's victims.

* Fanservice: Nope. Plenty of individuals got wet over seeing Alan Hale Jr flaunting his chest on the job.

The movie was filmed primarily on location in the towns of Merrill and Tomahawk, while the spider's rampage at a fair was shot during a Gleason Heritage Days event in Rebane's hometown of Gleason, Wisconsin. The cast is populated by famous has-beens including [[Series/GilligansIsland Alan Hale Jr.]] as a dumpy sheriff, [[Franchise/PerryMason Barbara Hale]] as a lady scientist in a pantsuit (sadly not a HotScientist), and [[Film/TheWildWorldOfBatwoman Steve Brodie]] as a morbidly obese NASA scientist. Robert Easton, who not only starred as Dan Kester but cowrote the screenplay -- aside from being a 60-year acting veteran by the time of his death -- was famous for his ability to do ''two hundred'' convincing regional accents. He became known as "The Man of a Thousand Voices" and was [[http://articles.latimes.com/2011/dec/22/local/la-me-robert-easton-20111222 the best Hollywood dialect coach]].[[note]]The only major Hollywood actor he never trained was Creator/MerylStreep.[[/note]] One might wonder why Bill Rebane was able to hire them for his BMovie -- the simple reason was that all of those actors were born-and-bred Wisconsinites who knew Rebane very well, and [[VacationDearBoy used the film as a way to visit their families]].

* ILoveNuclearPower: A couple of early scenes with Drs. Vance and Langer imply that this causes the spiders' abnormal size, since the meteor crash coincided with (and probably caused) the disappearance of a B-52 carrying a nuclear weapon. On the other hand, this tidbit isn't mentioned after the first twenty minutes or so, which leads us to believe that these alien spiders naturally grow to huge sizes.

The movie was filmed primarily on location in the towns of Merrill and Tomahawk, while the spider's rampage at a fair was shot during a Gleason Heritage Days event in Rebane's hometown of Gleason, Wisconsin. The cast is populated by famous has-beens including [[Series/GilligansIsland Alan Hale Jr.]] as a dumpy sheriff, [[Franchise/PerryMason Barbara Hale]] as a lady scientist in a pantsuit (sadly not a HotScientist), and [[Film/TheWildWorldOfBatwoman Steve Brodie]] as a morbidly obese NASA scientist. Robert Easton, who not only starred as Dan Kester but cowrote the screenplay -- aside from being a 60-year acting veteran by the time of his death -- was famous for his ability to do ''two hundred'' convincing regional accents. He became known as "The Man of a Thousand Voices" and was [[http://articles.latimes.com/2011/dec/22/local/la-me-robert-easton-20111222 the best Hollywood dialect coach]].[[note]]The only major Hollywood actor he never trained was Creator/MerylStreep.[[/note]] One might wonder why Bill Rebane was able to hire them for his BMovie -- the simple reason was that all of those actors were born-and-bred Wisconsinites who knew Rebane very well, and used the film as a way to visit their families.

A low-budget 1975 SciFiHorror film directed by Bill Rebane which dares to show that yes, there are [[DeepSouth rednecks]] living well north of the Mason-Dixon line, and no, covering up a Volkswagen with fake fur and sticking legs on it does not make a convincing giant spider.

A meteorite crashes in Merrill, Wisconsin, leaving behind an ominous "wormhole" in the impact crater and a bunch of geodes scattered across a really unappealing farmer's property. Between belittling his alcoholic wife Ev, visiting the local prostitute, and [[{{Squick}} threatening to spank his wife's teenage sister]], Dan Kester attempts to sell the extra-dimensional rocks to his equally unappealing cousin Billy, but is miffed when the jeweler informs him that they don't have much value. The farmer is distracted from his monetary woes when it turns out the "geodes" are actually eggs, which hatch to release first a swarm of tarantulas, then badly-made dog-sized spider puppets, and finally the ''[[GratuitousGerman Volkswagenspinne]].''

[[quoteright:250:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/giant_spider_invasion_9203.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:250:[[CoversAlwaysLie Group 1's Amazing New Super Sensation!]]]]

A 1975 film from director Bill Rebane that dares to show that yes, there are [[DeepSouth rednecks]] living well north of the Mason-Dixon line, and no, covering a Volkswagen with fake fur and sticking legs on it does not make a convincing giant spider.

->''"Giant puppet invasion!"''\\
-->-- '''[[Series/MysteryScienceTheater3000 Crow T. Robot]]'''