We've covered some bad monster films in this e-zine and now we're looking at a real stinker...as you'll find out, acting in this mess was far better than watching it, because...

By GENE DORSOGNA

During the Sixties, Seventies, and part of the Eighties, I lived in the wonderful state of Wisconsin. It is a state of wide contrasts.

Now, please do not mistake me. This is in no way meant facetiously; this can be said about any place. There is beauty, history, culture, and a multitude of points of interest in this great state and my memories are fond. Madison is one of the most stimulating cities in the country and home to one of our finest universities. Western Wisconsin, where I went to college, has beautiful lakes and waterways and some of the loveliest forests one could hope to encounter. Additionally, the twin cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul are a mere twenty minutes away. The Door Peninsula in the east rivals Cape Cod in its rustic splendor and in the number of resident artists.

On the other hand, there is a small farming town in Wisconsin that boasts "the second largest artificial cow." Ed Gein, the prototype for Norman Bates, resided in Plainfield. His home became a site of pilgrimage until the locals torched the place. There is a berg outside of Madison that is kind of a theme park to religious psychosis (Mary--yes, that Mary--allegedly made the trek from heaven to appear to a farm wife to tell her, "People who listen to rock 'n' roll will rock and roll in hell!"). There is Henklemann’s Museum in Northern Wisconsin, where the eponymous gent, a murderous old fellow who shot anything that walked or crawled, has stuffed his prey, laminated it, and decked it out with funny hats so that the public can slap down a ten dollar bill and admire his handiwork.

As I said: contrasts.

Orson Welles hails from Wisconsin. And Harry Houdini. And Frederic March. And Bill Rebane. Ahem…Who? You may ask.

Contrasts again. And herein lies our story.

In the early Seventies, seemingly out of nowhere, Bill Rebane with a little money, a bizarre collection of hangers-on, and a dream ("I want to make movies that will clean up in drive-ins in the South") decided to make North Central Wisconsin the movie capitol of the Midwest.

His first film, The Alpha Factor, was a risible no-brainer that posited an alien takeover of a small Midwestern city. It opened in several cities in the rural Midwest after which it vanished (presumably) into the wilds of Alabama. His second opus, In Search Of Bigfoot, vanished into the South immediately. Armed with this portfolio, he embarked on what he saw as his masterpiece: The Giant Spider Invasion.

Now, at that time (1974) I was living in the aforementioned city of Wausau. A nice city grown up around the Wisconsin River, Wausau had much to recommend it; it was a liberal, progressive city in the best Wisconsin tradition. However, in contrast, a commitment to the cinema was not among its attributes.

From fall to spring, the three local movie houses abandoned first-run movies altogether and ran instead the dreck being churned out by Sunn Classics--The Wilderness Family, or In Search Of Noah's Ark--that sort of thing. But when Bill Rebane announced that his arachnid movie would not only be shot in and around Merrill, a mere fifteen miles north of Wausau, and would feature locals as extras, and also (if that was not enough) have its world premier in Wausau, the city went Hollywood!

The Wausau Daily Herald reported heavily on the progress of the mighty epic and the local radio stations, usually into the reportage of hog futures and interviews with farmers who claimed to have had visitors from outer space, gave huge chunks of air time to interviewing those involved with the production. State-of-the-art special effects were hinted at (apparently no expense was to be spared in the benefiting of drive-ins in the South); a cast of international renown was promised.

Finally, in the crowning glory, the mighty climax wherein the fearsome monster rampages down the main street of Merrill, was to be filmed on location and anyone who cared to show up on that hot summer afternoon was welcome to do so; they would be part of the cast of extras running in fear from the giant spider. If not fifteen minutes of fame, fifteen seconds was guaranteed.

And that is how I got to appear in The Giant Spider Invasion.

The filming was scheduled for two in the afternoon. The main street of Merrill was clotted with people, young and old alike; parents brought their infants to be part of the historic event. The mayor showed up. The local TV station was there. A state senator (a Merrill native who--honest to God--was a former sideshow fat man) made a speech. The only no-show was the giant spider.

Afternoon wore into early evening. The sun began to set. At twilight, just as the crowd had begun to turn surly, the word went out that the spider was coming.

A semi-cab hauling a flatbed trailer rounded the corner and as the assemblage parted to let it pass we had our first glimpse of the multi-million-dollar special effect. There, on the flatbed, was what appeared to be a Volkswagen Beetle (known affectionately back then as a Bug) wearing a tatty fur coat. There were legs attached to its sides that resembled big, thick pipe cleaners dyed black. The wheels of the bug, indeed the lower several inches of the chassis, were clearly visible. Two globes, the kind of which are used on lamp posts, were on the front of the contraption and had pupils and red thunderbolts painted on them. These "eyes" were placed so that they were over the car’s headlights.

Even the most unsophisticated of the crowd was dismayed. To make matters worse, it was discovered that vandals had spray painted the legend "FOK" on the spider’s back (someone, no doubt possessing a severe problem with spelling) and no one could get it off. Generally, the spider looked a little moth-eaten; no doubt due to its having been carted around the Wisconsin countryside. Its abdomen--the part with the political statement inscribed on it--dragged on the ground.

But the show must go on, and in the best tradition of "there’s no business like show business," it was rumored that on film it would look better.

The spider was rolled off the flatbed and the truck was moved away. By now it was full darkness. Someone from the special effects team threw a switch and the eyes of the mighty monster lit up and its pipe cleaner legs wobbled up and down but did not touch the ground. It could not move under its own steam, so lots of burley guys were conscripted to walk real close to it, pushing it along. Then the assistant director (a guy with a loud voice) urged us to run away from the spider. Most of us did not have to be asked twice. It was in all a moment of delirious, nutty fun.

After a rigorous post-production period (probably about six-and-a-half hours), The Giant Spider Invasion did indeed have its world premiere in Wausau. It opened at The Grand Theater, a genuine movie palace with a balcony, a curtain and a huge screen. Above the marquee a web of rope was placed with a spider hanging from it (fortunately, it was not big enough to harbor a car; a windstorm came up during the film’s run and blew the spider onto the sidewalk). Locals who would not have been caught dead going to a movie went to see it. It ran for months. I did not go to opening night but did see it (after all, I was in it). Oh, and what a movie it is….

The movie opens with a shot of a line of White-Out moving towards a map of the earth. I need not add that this is supposed to be interstellar space we are seeing and not a map, but the bubbles and wrinkles in it obvious to all undo the illusion. Then, there is a jump cut (this is the only kind of cut throughout) to the Marathon County Sheriff’s office where Sheriff Alan "Skipper" Hale, Jr. (one the cast of international renown) is busy wasting the publics’ money reading a book about flying saucers.

Hales’ acting is abysmal throughout, all mugging and leering--at one point he even addresses the audience. A phone call disturbs this vigilant public servant and he is informed that a meteor has landed (that strip of White-Out...remember?) and strange things are happening.

We then jump cut to a farm owned by a local troglodyte and his alcoholic wife (played by Robert Easton and Leslie Parrish). There is much boob-baiting comedy between them, none of which is funny and all of which is made less so by the fact that Easton plays these scenes wearing red thermal underwear and a corset (You can almost hear Rebane and his crew ruminating how the folks in those drive-ins down South will just love this!). There is a younger sister present also, but her only function is to briefly appear topless for no apparent reason except as another sop to the yokels below the Mason-Dixon Line.

It seems that since the meteor hit, cows have been disappearing and little hard balls of rock have been appearing everywhere. We soon learn, via interminable dialog between nuclear physicists Barbara "Perry Mason" Hale and Steve Brodie (!) that the meteor opened a black hole; as every schoolchild knows, giant spiders come out of black holes. (Brodie, by the way, with his hairline that starts just above his eyebrows is clearly not cut out to play men of science, but the less said about this the better!)

Soon, not only cows but also local dumbbells start disappearing. For no apparent reason, tarantulas and limp spider puppets invade the Easton farm (but no place else). Leslie Parrish gets drunk and wanders into the barn where the spider puppet falls on her. Her sister takes a shower, leaps around bare-breasted and is almost consumed by the Volkswagen Beetle Spider.

All of this might have gone unnoticed if the spider hadn’t set his sights on Gleason Days, the annual summer drunk at the eponymous nearby town. This gives Rebane an excuse to show endless minutes of footage of the local Gleasonites milling around eating bratwurst, guzzling beer, and gawping at the camera; there is a lengthy shot of people's bottoms plopped on bleachers as they watch a softball game.

And then, the spider itself makes its first appearance on the crest of a hill, its headlights flashing hungrily. It rolls down the hill toward the softball game, bent on breaking it up as its first step toward world conquest. (If you are fortunate enough to see this on video and are quick with your freeze-frame you can see the VW chassis underneath the spider.) The crowd disburses in horror as the spider rolls across the ball field. Curiously, a large part of the crowd moves along with the spider. This is because, as I said before, the spider could not move on its own; the fleeing fairgoers are pushing the spider.

Clearly, something must be done. The loss of a cow or two and a few local rednecks might be ignored but break up Gleason Days?? A civic-minded person calls the Sheriff to ask for help ("Gleason Days!" wails the Sheriff into the phone, with the same anguish you or I might bring to hearing that, say, the President had been shot, "Oh, no!"). He then notifies NASA (everyone in the movie pronounces it "Nassau") and there follows about fifteen minutes of stock footage of plane and tanks being mobilized.

During this time, the spider makes his move on Merrill and there follows the scene alluded to earlier. And it is a washout. The scene is so dark (a not doubt the wrong film stock was used--remember, the scene was to have been shot in the afternoon) that nothing much is visible. Due to the graffitum painted on the spider’s backside, only the front half was filmed, so the creature is only seen with his face looming around a corner. Sheriff Hale calls for a posse to stop the spider, but the extras by this point had either 1) gone home or 2) got drunk, so those remaining just kind of stand there and look at the spider. Worst of all, I could not see myself; my film debut ended on the cutting room floor! The scene doesn’t end, it just stops.

Suddenly, courtesy of another jump cut, the spider is on a hillside. Barbara Hale and Steve Brodie appear out of nowhere as does Alan Hale. They appeal to Hale to "distract" the spider while the Air Force gets into position to drop a bomb on the black hole, thereby sealing it off and causing the spiders to disappear. (Another lesson in elementary physics. Who says you can’t learn anything from the movies?) Hale obligingly runs at the spider and shoots at it with his gun, a fatal miscalculation. The spider eats the Sheriff. Actually, due to budgetary limitations, the spider was incapable of performing this move and we get to see Alan Hale literally hoisting himself into a hole in the spider’s head.  (Or, rather, we get to see the stuntman do it. There are at least five close-ups of the stunt double for Hale. The double has a big mustache…need I say that Hale played the role clean-shaven?)

The bomb drops on the black hole. The spider does not disappear. Rather it sort of melts (there’s some close-ups of what look like spaghetti sauce boiling) and then it catches fire. Our two physicist-heroes embrace. There is a freeze-frame. In voice-over we here someone quoting a random line from Revelation.

And that’s it. The whole thing is a delirious moment in filmmaking. It ran for months at the Grand Theater in Wausau then presumably moved south. I hasten to add that I have lived in the South for fifteen years and I have yet to encounter anyone who has heard of it.