Don't miss the HORRORS OF SPIDER ISLAND while you're ogling skinny-dipping dancers on Severin's Blu-ray special edition.

Burlesque show producer Gary (Alex D'Arcy, BLOOD OF DRACULA'S CASTLE) and his assistant Georgia (Helga Franck) are mounting an Asian tour and have casted a bevy of jaded dancing beauties who know all about what to expect in Singapore: among them sexpot Babs (Barbara Valentin, CARMEN BABY), inexperienced Ann (Helga Neuner), stripper Linda (Elfie Wagner), tight "duo" Gladys (Dorothee Parker, MISSION TO HELL) and Doreen (Gerry Sammer), swing dancer Nelly (Eva Schauland), and Kate (Helma Vandenberg, THE FESTIVE GIRLS) who has to watch her figure. En route to Singapore, however, their plane goes down and they drift in a lifeboat for several days before stumbling upon an island, unaware that the rescuers have called off the search. They find fresh water but the island's only inhabitant appears to be an uranium-mining old scientist whose corpse hangs in a gigantic web. While Gary is out patrolling the grounds in search of possible predators, he is attacked by a giant spider and mutates into a fanged, frothing killer who starts stalking the scantily-clad girls around the island, and there may not be any left when the professor's younger horny prospecting partners Joe (Harald Maresch) and Robby (Rainer Brandt, KISS KISS KILL KILL) make their way to the island.

Having less in common with early body count horror films than that crossover between burlesque films and nudie films, HORRORS OF SPIDER ISLAND has some wild elements and some creepy images but is a hard slog in between the horror sequences. The bickering of the dancers is supposed to be funny but grates and there is only so much to appreciate in many scenes of brazier-clad dancers running around from one place to another. The nudity is mainly of the peekaboo variety until late in the film when the girls' libidos are ramped up by the presence of not enough men for them all and Valentin does a striptease. The monster make-up is not all that bad but there is little bloodshed and most of the killings are offscreen. The climax ramps up the suspense with a few more kills and a sequence in which the surviving women light up flares to crowd the monster to his doom. Lending the proceedings a degree of slickness is the noir-ish photography of Georg Krause whose previous DP credits included Stanley Kubrick's PATHS OF GLORY!

Released stateside by Pacemaker Pictures in a horror version titled HORRORS OF SPIDER ISLAND and a nudie version called IT'S HOT IN PARADISE, the only difference being the substitution of a nude skinny-dipping scene shot from long shot in place of the former version's bathing suited one. The latter appeared on VHS from Something Weird Video as part of the "Frank Henenlotter's Sexy Shockers" line and the on DVD from Image Entertainment, both utilizing the HORRORS title while the horror version has turned up on public domain DVD presumably from a transfer done by Sinister Cinema. A superior transfer of the covered version turned up on DVD in Germany from Ostalgica running 81 minutes when converted to 24fps, which is shorter than Severin Films' 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.66:1 feature presentation (84:07) which features the German title sequence. This version incorporates additional nude scenes shot for export, revealing that there was more material that could have been included in the American nudie version while a selection of clothed scenes (8:06) in the extras suggests that Pacemaker got the nude export version and chose to bluntly cut away nude scenes rather than substitute the covered takes while the alternate IT'S HOT IN PARADISE version on this disc (77:01) – also a 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.66:1 widescreen transfer – reveals that they inserted the skinny-dipping scene into the already cut version and did not reincorporate the additional nudity which includes a shower scene shot from behind, a catfight with torn blouses, and the climactic striptease. Presumably all that would have been too risqué for 1962 (the nudie version might have been released in 1965, still rather early) and audiences may not have realized what they were missing and the skinny-dipping was enough for them.

The feature presentation is purportedly "from the Düsseldorf dupe negative" but it appears to be a composite of sources that is generally clean and sharp apart from some jitter in a couple scenes and individual shots, a lesser source for Kate's audition scene, as well as a contrastier segment during the fresh water scene, and a French end card. The day-for-night grading seems to air on the dimmer side with some grayish long shots but the horrific or erotic close-ups look crisper and brighter. The low-contrast print used for IT'S HOT IN PARADISE looks more stable and consistent, although the blunt edits to the nude shots do call attention to themselves at the cutting points on the image and the soundtrack. While the longer version has more nudity, it is a tossup as to which is better in terms of entertainment since the more streamlined US version moves at a better clip. The German version includes both German and English DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono tracks – the latter reverting to German and revealing just where the cuts to the English version were made – and English subtitles for the German track and SDH subtitles for the dub (there is no separate subtitle track for the scenes where the English track reverts to German so one or the other subtitle track must be turned on). Both versions include a stretch of opening music on black which the feature presentation uses for a disclaimer about the incomplete English track while the US version remains blank.