Horrors of Spider Island (1960)

During the Cold War, most of the cinema coming out of Germany came out of West Germany where arts and culture continued to flourish, though not all of it was capital-G Great cinema. Take the low budget creature feature Horrors of Spider Island (1960) a film clearly inspired by America's giant monster craze of the atomic age. This B-movie classic stars Egyptian actor Alexander D'Arcy as hot shot American nightclub owner Gary Webster who enlists several showgirls to come and perform at a new club he's opening in Singapore. Somewhere over the Pacific Ocean, the plane catches fire and splits in two, though miraculously none of the passengers are killed. Instead they wash up on the titular island which, at first anyway, seems like a hidden paradise right here on earth. However, when the group discovers a human skeleton laying in an enormous spider web, they begin to suspect that they are not the dominant life form on the island. Gary and his intrepid showgirls must now fight for survival against arachnids of every shape and size! The film's lackluster special effects eventually earned it a spot on a 1999 episode of the classic comedy series Mystery Science Theater 3000, though B-movie lovers and fans of Z-grade camp cinema are sure to find a lot here to love. The film also came just a little before the resurgence of nudity in film, meaning that while we get to drink in a lot of shots of Alexander D'Arcy sans shirt, we're unfortunately not treated to any shots of him sans pants!