Trivia / The Giant Spider Invasion

• No OSHA Compliance: The giant spider (which, yes, was a large spider puppet mounted on a Volkswagen) proved a serious hazard to cast and crew. First of all, the spider was operated by seven crewmembers, mostly teenagers (several of them Rebane's relatives), who found the interior of the puppet uncomfortably hot to the point where several passed out while operating it. The spider nearly caused fatalities twice: during the scene where the spider demolishes the farmhouse, its legs moved in the wrong direction and caused debris to crash through the puppet, nearly killing the operators inside. The finale of the spider's destruction also caused problems when a gunpowder charge went off improperly; two crewmembers were hospitalized with serious burns and the fires caused several brushfires which were contained by the fire department. These and other mishaps caused Rebane to dub the movie The Giant Spider Disaster.
• Real-Life Relative: Steve Brodie's son played Dave Perkins, and Barbara Hale's husband played Dutch. Also, there's loads and loads of Rebanes in the credits.
• Vacation, Dear Boy: Many of the film's stars were from Wisconsin and used the production as an excuse to visit their families.
• Writing by the Seat of Your Pants: According to Bill Rebane, the movie's screenplay was never properly completed because Richard Huff and Robert Easton kept arguing and rewriting each other's work. The main source of friction was that Huff wanted to write a serious science fiction movie while Easton preferred something more tongue-in-cheek, with the result being that they completed only 10-15 pages' worth of script by the time filming began. Eventually Easton wrote the balance of the finished movie, with Rebane claiming that he locked the actor-writer in a cabin until he refined their drafts into something useable.

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