The Giant Spider Invasion (Rifftrax Live)

Film Year:  1975
Genre:  Science Fiction, Horror
Director:  Bill Rebane
Starring:  Alan Hale Jr., Barbara Hale, Steve Brodie, Robert Easton, Leslie Parrish, Bill Williams, Christiane Schmidtmer
Rifftrax Year:  2019
Riffers:  Michael J. Nelson, Kevin Murphy, Bill Corbett
Short Featured:  "Adventures in Telezonia"

The Short

From the guy who made those puppets from The Sound of Music comes this short instructing us on how to properly use a telephone.  A boy has lost his dog, but a little puppet imp appears to help him use the telephone to call people to help find them.  He takes the boy to a very elaborate telephone heaven where more creepy imps, each with their own spooky personality trait, show various ways the telephone can be used.

Kid's today with their smartphone apps and Pokemon Go don't know what it was like when a telephone was used as an actual telephone and not much else (except maybe a paperweight).  We also needed ugly puppets to teach us how to use them properly, because the turn crank was hard to use for some reason.  But back in the day there were a lot of fancy tricks you could do with a phone, like connecting a party line or...dialing the operator, I guess.  This short also helps us learn those techniques.

Was this educational?  Sure, I guess.  We don't really use these types of phones anymore, so it was probably more useful at the time.  But did we really need the nightmare fuel in those puppets?  I mean, yeah, I guess kids like puppets, but holy crap those things are as haunting as those ghosts in The Grudge.  I don't think I'm going to be sleeping at all tonight.

The Movie

Was I particularly hard on the special effects in Earth vs. the Spider?  If I was, then I take every word back.  Earth vs. the Spider is Avatar compared to Giant Spider Invasion.  I mean, holy crap.  Bert I. Gordon at least knew that a real spider blown-up to a large size on the big screen might have some semblance to realism, whereas Bill Rebane (the original director of the classic Monster A-Go Go) makes his large spider a mostly immobile plush toy with the largest pipe-cleaner legs you'll ever see.  I know suspension of disbelief is a thing, but if you're able to employ it on this movie, congratulations, because you have a much grander imagination than I have.

At least they had the decency to use real spiders for the small ones.  Though it might have been more amusing if they had consistency and just pulled along little rubber ones on strings.

Giant Spider Invasion sees meteors from space (or another dimension...in space) landing in a redneck's yard in Wisconsin.  In the fragments, he finds crystals which he believes are diamonds.  He spends his spare time collecting as many as he can and cheating on his wife, but, unknown to them, space spiders also hitched a ride on those meteors, and they're growing...and hungry.

Giant Spider Invasion also stars Gilligan's Island's Alan Hale Jr. as the laid back town sheriff, which helps this movie go down easier.  Hale is easily the least rage-inducing character in the movie, which is due to the man's gosh darn lovable nature.  Almost everyone else in this movie is trash, and I'm happy to see shoddy spider creatures devour them.  Even the two scientist characters, who are trying to save the day, range from dull to shrill ("BeeeeeeeeeEEEEEEEEEeeeeeeN!") and don't really encourage me to root for the spider.

Alan Hale has a line in this movie that has always bugged me a bit, where he compares the giant spider to the movie Jaws and says "This spider makes that shark look like a goldfish!"  It's not uncommon for a bad movie to throw shade at a good one to try and trick the audience into thinking it's the better film, and say what you will about the "fake shark" in Jaws, but comparing that plush spider to the thing is just a slap in the face.

The Live Show

Inherently I'm probably going to be harder on re-riffs of movies that were featured on Mystery Science Theater, because these are riffs that I grew up with and I hold dearly to my heart.  Seeing the movies live with an audience is cool and all, but I'm always going to question if there is something new to add to the experience other than just overlaid laughter and applause.  This is especially rough when Mike, Kevin, and Bill decide to choose a movie from the Sci-Fi era, where I've already seen this troop take on these films.  If it is a movie from the Joel era (ala Manos or Santa Claus Conquers the Martians), I'll give them something of a pass because I'd be curious to hear if a different group can come up with a different commentary.

On the surface, riffing Giant Spider Invasion kind of intrigues me, because seeing this movie in a theater with an audience sounds fun to me.  But I also have a bit of an uneasiness that the whole affair is going to go for cheap nostalgia laughs.  This is the episode with the "PACKERS!" running gag, which worked well in the MST episode because it aired hot off the Super Bowl.  Is the reason Giant Spider Invasion is being riffed in front of a studio audience to merely get pandering cheers at a "PACKERS!" callback?  When Kevin marches out onstage wearing a Packers jersey, it seems the answer is an absolute "yes."

To my surprise, they don't cry out "PACKERS!" nearly as much as I expected them to, and the run gag amount is far less than the MST episode.  I'm pretty impressed with their restraint here, and glad they only pulled it out for a punctuation of cheers rather than a safety net.  The rest of the riff, however, doesn't differentiate itself too much from the episode it's inspired from.  Like Space Mutiny's Live show, a lot of the riffs run very similar to the original episode, except not as strong.  I mostly gave Space Mutiny a pass because it settled into a breezy groove and maintained itself as being fun to watch, even if it didn't live up to the classic predecessor.  Spider Invasion I feel I need to be a bit harder on.  While some of the best riffs got big laughs from me, a lot of the rehashed material bored me a little bit, as I reflected more on what I enjoyed in the original episode.  There are really only so many variations of riffs on how stained and unappealing Robert Easton is that can keep my attention especially when I had my fill the first time around.  Even scenes that weren't in the MST version, including one featuring Easton propositioning his young sister-in-law (which made me vomit a little) just amount to a few more riffs of how disgusting these characters are.

I also feel I need to note that a few points during the performance it felt the timing of the riffs were a little off.  Sometimes it felt like the riff came in too early, and I also felt a couple of times where the riffers themselves may have realized it and stretched it to make it work better with the scene.  Maybe their time stamps were off?  Or maybe I'm just crazy and am noticing things that aren't there.

One glistening diamond featured in this show is the short, Adventures in Telezonia, which is so disturbing and weird that it probably would have been funny without riffing.  It's such a rich environment of marionette characters with bizarre character quirks, such as a mumbling, angry fellow and a pig-man that "hogs" the line.  It's a proper short that jazzes up the energy in the room for the feature.  And indeed, the room stays jazzed, even when the riff is a bit flat.  It's never not fun to be in that audience, which is something the Live show coasts on.

But even if the main feature doesn't quite measure up, one good thing happened tonight, as Mike, Kevin, and Bill invite a young couple onstage at the end of the show, in which the man gets down on his knee and proposes to his girlfriend.  Luckily she said "yes," because if she said "Oh good lord, no, I've been having an affair with Robert Easton." it might have ended this whole night on a sour note.

Average