Perhaps a more fitting title for the German horror flick Horrors of Spider Island should be Hard-Ons of Spider Island, as in between the scant spider-man — with great power comes great perversity! — there are fantastical amounts of Teutonic skin, sex and sand to keep even the most passive of viewers somewhat intrigued.

Hot-shit nightclub producer Gary (Alexander D’Arcy) is planning a big song-and-strip showcase in Singapore, hiring a dozen or so sexy sirens with names like Babs, Nelly and Gladys. But, wouldn’t you know it, their plane goes down somewhere in the Pacific; as they’re arguing over water rations, a large island is spotted in the distance.

After finding an old scientist drained of his bodily fluids in a big spider web, Gary is bitten by the uranium-enriched spider and becomes an amazing spider-man. But instead of dealing with this monstrous blight of subhumanity, for the next few weeks the gang frolics and fornicates with a 1960s-style sensuality that shouldn’t really titillate but, boy, does it ever.

Also released in the U.S. under the name It’s Hot In Paradise, the lack of sturdy spider-scares is more than ably surrendered by the statuesque skirts that lounge about in garters, girdles and other essential tropical island wear, so much so that about 45 minutes into this, I forgot this was supposed to be a horror flick.

But, you know, I’m guessing the filmmakers probably did, too. It’s like the old saying goes: When life gives you lingerie, make linger-ade. Or something like that … —Louis Fowler

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Lonely teen Tomi (Fachrul Rozy) may live in a wealthy-ish home, but his stern father is always working; his good-time sister is always at the discotheque; and his recently deceased mom has just come back from the dead as an unholy apparition of pure evil. While most kids would experiment with sex or drugs to cope, he instead reads horror movie magazines, a direct path to the Unholy One.

The family, having lost their faith in God, becomes bewitched under housekeeper Darminah (Ruth Pelupessy), a diabolical agent of the devil who will inadvertently kill anyone who dares interfere with her plans to turn the children into slaves, presumably of Satan; this includes gruesomely resurrecting the woefully asthmatic groundkeeper and the daughter’s cracked-skull boyfriend.

These demonic forces of absolute malevolence are spooky as hell, with their pale white skin, pinhole-pupiled eyes and newly formed pair of vampire teeth ready to bites the blasphemous necks of the scared family. And even though this clan is offered chance after chance to get in good with God, they constantly turn it down, right up to the very end when a holy man shows up at their door with an army of spiritual warriors.

While not as downright bizarre as other Indonesian flicks — have you seen The Queen of Black Magic? — Satan’s Slave is far more atmospheric, with genuinely creepy moments that almost feels like it should be viewed on a 10th-generation VHS dub at 3 in the morning. It’s a personal style that has me believing director Sisworo Gautama Putra was an unheralded master of horror, in Indonesia and beyond. —Louis Fowler

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Alternately released as The House That Cried Murder and, more notoriously, Last House on Massacre Street, Jean-Marie Pélissié’s The Bride is an unassuming horror thriller worth a trip or two down the aisle.

Head over heels in love, Barbara (soap star Robin Strasser) can’t wait to marry David (Arthur Roberts, Midnight Movie). She’s even designed and built them her dream home, a midcentury modern number that looks like a semester’s worth of geometry homework. So what’s the problem? Well, David works for her doting dad (John Beal, Amityville 3-D), who looks unfavorably on her choice of suitor: “What I’m saying is,” he tells his daughter, “I think he stinks.”

Father indeed knows best, because at their wedding reception — repeat: at their wedding reception — David ducks upstairs for a tryst with another woman, Ellen (Iva Jean Saraceni, Creepshow). Finding them in flagrante delicto, Barbara impulsively wounds David with scissors and flees the scene. Two weeks later, she’s still off who-knows-where, while David is looking to get divorced and already shacking up with Ellen. That’s when the eerie phone calls and eerier acts of aggression begin …

Popular opinion has it that any horror movie with an MPAA rating below the R bares no teeth. While that may be true for today’s offerings more often than not, it’s stunningly narrow-minded for product from the early 1980s and on back. The Bride is the perfect example why. Affixed with a whistle-clean PG, it may be a simple story told in a frugal 76 minutes, but it hits the right buttons as it does so. The script by Pélissié and John Grissmer — who went on to give us the incredible Blood Rage, which features snippets of this film playing at the drive-in — thrives on a macabre sense of humor, while Pélisse — in his one and only directorial chore — proves he can stage suspense effectively; one shot in David’s dream sequence, with Barbara poised like a spider waiting to pounce, stands out as chilling.

Although Saraceni is a bit shrill, the no-name actors do Pélisse proud. As shameful as it is that he never helmed another feature, even more so is that Strasser goes unheralded for a strong, layered performance. —Rod Lott

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Right away, Revenge in the House of Usher renders itself suspect due to three things:
• referring to its source material, an Edgar Allan Poe short story of about two dozen pages, as a “novel”
• misspelling that legendary author’s name as “Edgard Allan Poë”
• being written and directed by Jess Franco

Book ’em, Dano.

With characters named Harker and Seward — not to mention the film’s theme of blood transfusions — Revenge makes one wonder if Bram Stoker deserved Poe’s credit. Both authors’ bibliographies rest in the public domain, so either fits the typical Franco budget.

Franco fave Howard Vernon (The Erotic Rites of Frankenstein) is Dr. Eric Usher, who invites his favorite med student, the aforementioned Harker (Robert Foster, Franco’s Night of Open Sex), to come hang at his cool castle. Old, crazed and near death — basically, Dennis Hopper in Hoosiers — Usher asks Harker to continue keeping Usher’s reanimated daughter (Françoise Blanchard, The Living Dead Girl) alive with fresh blood transfusions. As Usher confesses to his mentee, he’s killed many women — but, hey, it was “for science,” so all’s good, right?

As Usher spills his secrets, Franco cannily fills the running time and fortifies his bottom line by reusing footage of Vernon as the title character of The Awful Dr. Orlof, the filmmaker’s black-and-white breakthrough from 1962. Thrifty! And those scenes make up the only good parts of Revenge in the House of Usher — which is weird, considering this flick has an assistant with one comically large eye, not to mention Lina Romay Lina Romaying herself all over the place.

It may be impossible to overstate how boring this movie is, with a story that crawls at the pace of a snail — one that’s been showered in salt. Unofficial though it may be, the Orloff franchise has its ups and downs. This one is the below the basement, more Eurosnorer than Euroshocker. —Rod Lott

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Whereas the Hi-8: Horror Independent Eight shot-on-video anthology was a mixed bag, its sequel, Hi-Death, is start-to-finish consistent. Unfortunately, that means it’s awash in tedium. Among its five directors, most of them giants in the SOV world, not even the otherwise reliable Tim Ritter (Killing Spree) is able to satisfy.

Part of the problem is Hi-8’s story count has been reduced from seven to five, yet Hi-Death runs a few minutes longer. This time, the wraparound follows two L.A. tourists (Kristen Adams and Kate Durocher) as they spontaneously embark on a “Terror Tour” of Hollywood. They’re led to the next landmark after watching a video, so naturally, what they see, we see — only without the reward.

In “Death Has a Conscience,” from Sodomaniac’s Anthony Catanese, a junkie (Jensen Jacobs, Miss December) rides out her heroin high at a fleabag motel, and acquires a few, um, very temporary roommates. Amanda Payton’s “Night Drop” shows what happens to a video store’s new employee (Christopher Preyer, Clownado) on his first night closing up shop. True to its retro setting, tried-and-true jump scares are involved.

The aforementioned Ritter’s “Dealers of Death” concerns a serial killer known as the Switchblade Bandit (Todd Martin, Earth Girls Are Sleazy), who gets off collecting other serial killers’ memorabilia. While the Bandit’s dialogue elicits a few laughs, the segment suffers greatly from the same problem as the remaining four: being painfully overlong. No piece has enough story to fill its allotted time — perhaps unavoidable with fewer stories this go-round — so scenes either are drawn out or run in circles.

The final two tales are the worst offenders; incidentally, both are about tortured artists. The whatta-named Fabiana Formica (Cemetery Man) delivers a fine performance as an auditioning actress up against a bullying director (Jay Sosnicki, Dolly Deadly) in “Cold Read,” from Camp Blood series impresario Brad Sykes. Finally, Zombie Bloodbath trilogy creator Todd Sheets turns in “The Muse,” about a crazed painter (Nick Randol, Dreaming Purple Neon) struggling to work with quite a unique patron.

The passion each filmmaker (videographer?) holds for horror shines big and bright — perhaps too much, since the overall emphasis seems to be on effects than effectiveness. On that note of practicality, they succeed in demonstrating remarkable ingenuity under an edict that bans CGI and green screens. I only wish the results were more fun. —Rod Lott

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