Hellish Spiders (1968) User Reviews

Mexican Wrestler takes on spiders from space in a much too talky wrestling sci-fi film

[dbborroughs · 5/10 · 28 December 2005]

I'm not a huge Mexican wrestler movie fan I've seen several Santo movies that were badly dubbed into English as well as titles that sported other wrestlers as leads. Most were over the top time killers that scored on the inventiveness scale if nothing else. Here the hero is the Blue Demon and he takes on evil spiders from space.

High on the cheese scale of "I don't believe what I'm seeing" this is movie that has a good beginning, good ending, and a middle with too much talk and wrestling. The plot has the spiders trying to take over the world while stopping the Blue Demon the only person who has caught on to their plan. The spiders both transform into humans, the wrestler with the spider hand is way cool, and hypnotize people into doing their bidding. The spiders also have a neat death ray that turn people to bones (The film It Came From Hollywood used the clip of the alien coming up out of the flying saucer and turning a dog into a skeleton as Dan Akroyd says "You throw a dog a bone not turn him into one). The film does have moments but not enough to suffer through the whole thing for. Ideally this is a movie to watch for 20 minutes then walk away from until the final 15 since that way you see the good stuff with out the bad.

5 out of 10 for some great psychotronic images. Fans of cheap sci-fi/horror films will enjoy, all others are on their own.

A spider-handed wrestler!

[BandSAboutMovies · 6/10 · 28 July 2021]

Translate this title as Hellish Spiders and you know what Blue Demon is up against and man, is there any better genre in the world than Mexican lucha libre movies? Get this. Blue Demon is up against the entire planet of Arácnea which is trying to cultivate human brains as food for their demanding queen. How magical!

This movie has an astounding wrestling match where Blue Demon's opponent Arac suddenly has his hand turn into a spider hand that can bite and instantly kill people. Also, after a match, all sweaty, Blue Demon casually explains antimatter to a scientist and I lost what was left of my mind.

This movie needed a UFO scene so of all the movies they could steal a flying saucer from, Federico Curiel lifted the hubcap from Plan 9 from Outer Space. You know what they say: "El talento toma prestado, el genio roba."

Blue Demon against diabolical spiders...

[insomniac_rod · 6/10 · 17 August 2008]

...well, not spiders from hell; these are spiders from outer space that transform into wrestlers and want to conquer earth and beat Blue Demon's ass.

This is one of those movies that you watch it only because of the cheese factor. The f/x are of course horrible but amusing; I guess it deserves a recognition for the effort.

I'm a fan of Blue Demon but his movies aren't the best let me tell you. Overall, this is Mystery Science Theater material so you know what to expect. It also demonstrates that Mexican sci-fi cinema at the time had to do with wrestlers; a successful combination that 40 years later worked better.

Was Blue Demon ahead of his time?.

Masked Hero vs. Spiders From Space

[kikaidar · 17 May 2000]

At the onset of a film career that spanned some 20 years, Blue Demon (Alejandro Munoz) made several low budget films for producer Luis Enrique Vergara. El Santo had also worked for the Vergara, but he was already receiving better offers from other producers, so Vergara lured in both Blue Demon and Mil Mascaras, in order to continue making wrestling films. A number of these contained outright fantasy or fantasy elements in their plots.

In ARANAS INFERNALES (INFERNAL SPIDERS), Blue Demon is confronted by an invasion of seemingly humanoid aliens who turn out to actually be large spiders from space. After some suitable swatting he vanquishes the foe and Earth is once again (temporarily) safe.

Like Santo, the Demon later went on to bigger budgets and more ambitious productions -- possibly the best being the DIABOLICAL BRAINS (where he gained the power to teleport) and THE DIABOLICAL WOMEN, where he was confronted (not for the first time) by a murderous pseudo-Demon. Both entries introduced a brassy Blue Demon film and a few op art sets. VERY '60s.

A nice, "veg-out" sort of film with great advertising artwork. I collect lucha film art, and the lobby cards for this film feature the Demon struggling in a huge spider web, a mechanical hand rising from the ground to grip him, as an enormous spider approaches from the other aide of the picture. A spaceship rises, reasonably majestically, in the background.

If the Arácneans are looking for brains, why come to Earth??!!

[planktonrules · 1/10 · 10 January 2021]

Mexican luchador (wrestler) movies are a very odd genre. Imagine...they feature one or more masked wrestlers battling the likes of aliens, Atlantians, monsters (including Frankenstein, Dracula, mummies, the Wolfman, witches and zombies) and megalomaniacs bent on world domination. In some ways, the films are like James Bond or superhero films...but far, far cheesier when it comes to plot, make-up and the extensive use of cheap rubber masks.

In "Hellish Spiders" ("Arañas Infernales"), Blue Demon battles aliens from planet Arácnea, who have come to Earth to bring back brains for their queen to consume. Apparently, she ate up all the brains from her own planet and nearby planets and that's why they've chosen ours. Can Blue Demon stop them or is he destined to be brainless like everyone else on Earth?

The film might have been better titled "Plan 9 from Arácnea", as the special effects are that bad....yes, Ed Wood Jr. bad. The UFOs look like pie plates and jiggle just like them. And, like "Plan 9" they also can shoot out beams to turn folks into skeletons! And, like "Plan 9" the writing and acting and direction are pretty bad...and also unintentionally funny. I checked and was not surprised to see that some of the film WAS lifted from "Plan 9" as well as another crap-tastic American film from the same era, "Teenagers From Outer Space". You know a film is bad when it steals from this caliber of movie!!

Overall, this is a terrible film. But like "Plan 9" there is a certain campy silliness that make it fun viewing. Terrible in just about every way...yet funny because it's so incredibly bad!

Bizarre and cheesy but entertaining: Hellish Spiders (1968)

[jesusmaldonador · 7/10 · 16 March 2022]

The aliens from the Arácnea galaxy arrive on Earth (specifically in Mexico) to feed their Queen with brains, (after they killed all the beings in that galaxy to use their brains as food).

Upon landing in Mexico, the arachnids hid in an abandoned ranch to fulfill their objective, since if the Queen dies of hunger, this would mean the death of all the aliens of Arácnea.

During their journey to said ranch (traveling in their flying saucers), these beings disintegrated a man who was traveling in his car with their death ray, leaving only his charred skeleton. Coincidentally, Blue Demon and his friend José (Sergio Virel) were traveling on the same road where the man was disintegrated and they also managed to see the ships, so they approached to see the man's car, only to find his skeleton. Demon tries to explain this event and talks about the supposed phenomenon of "self-ignition" and its relationship with neutrinos and antimatter (in the most illogical way).

Once installed in the ranch, the spiders talk about their transformation from arachnids to humans (and supposedly the only thing they have left of arachnids is a kind of spider-shaped tattoo under their ears). However, the Queen kept her spider form. Arianec (Maria Elena Cervantes), the Queen's closest subordinate, sends her assistants Moloc (Nathanael León "Frankenstein") and Brotik (René Barrera) to bring people to the queen and feed her with their brains. Likewise, Moloc and Brotik must stop Blue Demon, since Arianec detected that he, along with Lieutenant Robles (Ramón Bugarini), José and Hilda (José's girlfriend; played by Blanca Sánchez), are investigating the origin of the radiation that caused the disintegration of the man on the road.

After trying (unsuccessfully) to eliminate the Blue-Masked Man and Company, Moloc and Brotik kidnap a wrestler and a woman and offer them as food to the Queen. However, these 2 brains are not enough and Arianec decides that Blue Demon will be the new victim.

A short time later, from Arácnea arrives Prince Arac (Fernando Osés), who will be in charge of catching Demon. Arac appears in the wrestling arena as "Ocram" and directly challenges Blue Demon to a match and the masked man accepts. The day of the match arrives and Arac has a great advantage over Demon due to his surprising agility, but Blue Demon discovers that Arac has a weak point: his right arm, and after hitting him on that point several times, Arac's hand turns into a spider, with which he tries to attack Demon without success, but in the attempt he manages to kill Lieutenant Robles by biting him and inoculating his wrist with his venom. Arac escapes from the wrestling arena with Moloc and Brotik, who managed to kidnap José and Hilda.

Our hero goes after them in his car, but Arianec manages to make the car useless using his death beam, but Demon still reaches the lair and defeats Arac, Moloch and Arianec. He also rescues José and Hilda from being eaten. Brotik and the Queen escape on the ship, but Blue Demon manages to destroy the ship with the beam, thus ending the threat of the Hellish Spiders.

As you saw, the story of this movie is quite strange. Spiders do not come from hell as the title suggests, but rather they come from another galaxy.

Due to its low budget, this movie uses footage from "Plan 9 From Outer Space" and "Teenagers From Outer Space" (for the flying saucer and death ray scenes).

There are also several bizarre things that this film contains, such as the capes with spiderweb decorations worn by Moloc and Brotik (which would make the presence of space arachnids on Earth more obvious); also the explanation about neutrinos is not even real (which in this movie are considered antimatter particles that cause the self-ignition phenomenon) and without a doubt the most cheesy and bizarre thing is the transformation of Arac's hand into a spider.

To make the Queen, a plush in the form of a spider was used, which was quite damaged. As a curious fact, that same plush was used in another Sci-Fi and horror movie that was made in Mexico, I am referring to the film "Aventura al Centro de la Tierra" from 1965.

This is one of the first luchador movies I saw in my life (I saw it approximately when I was 4 years old). At first, me and my mom thought that the name of this movie was "Arácnido" (Arachnid in Spanish) and with that name I was looking for it on the internet for several years, but a couple of years ago I found its real name and I was able to see it for the second time.

To conclude this review, I give "Hellish Spiders" a rating of 6.5/10.