Mari-Cookie and the Killer Tarantula

Jess Franco is known the world over for either making the most unusually intoxicating films ever or the worst films ever. It all depends upon your point of view. A lot of people get pleasure out of trashing anything Franco ever makes. However, intelligent viewers can decide for themselves if they are entertained by naked men singing from their prison of spider webs, kookie madwomen conjuring up sex-potions made from monkey balls, a beautiful sheriff who dresses in a black hat, smoking jacket and g-string, etc. If you can find humor in cavity searches and cats flattened by passing cars, then MARI-COOKIE AND THE KILLER TARANTULA is the movie for you. Just seeing Michelle Bauer in her sheriff's outfit and Linnea Quigley in her barely-there bathing suit is definitely worth the price of admission.

With One Shot Productions, Jess Franco has found somebody who finances and distributes his home videos.

In Franco's filmography, Mari-Cookie follows Tender Flesh. Whereas the latter was quite a good effort, Mari-Cookie is barely watchable. As so often, Franco stretches material which would be good for 5-10 minutes of film to a full length movie. There are some elements which only a director like Jess Franco could conceive: A shot from inside a vagina (extremely badly executed), an exaggeratedly phony toy spider provided by a digital special effect with a living human face, and the usual extended scenes of voyeurism and exhibitionism, as well as a good musical score. The final showdown where all the trashy elements of the movie (the singing male captive, the toy spider, and so on) dissolve in abstraction is of some interest.

But for the most part, the film is really on the level of an amateur's home video (there is one scene where the microphone is not properly adjusted) obsessed with exhibiting Franco's aging wife having sex with other not so fresh women (except for Amber Newman). I have rarely witnessed such disregard for the audience.

By the way, the Spanish soundtrack is slightly better. E.g., it features Jess Franco as the voice of the tarantula in the opening scene.

Killer Barbies (1996) was a half decent film (thanks to the band of the same name and Santiago Segura) but even then one could see that Senor Franco was starting to lose his touch. Since then his films have become exponentially worse. Everything that fans liked about Franco movies has been thrown out. All that is left is an Indecipherable mess of gawky ex-scream queens, awful Subterfuge grunge music and pathetic product placement (T-shirts, posters on the wall, etc), cheapo video effects, flacid nude scenes and some very poor acting. No knew Howard Vernons to be found here, I'm afraid, and as for a Soledad Miranda - forget it. "Mari-Cookie and the Killer Tarantula" is not barely watchable - its totally unwatchable.

Mari-Cookie and the Killer Tarantula (1998)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

If you're familiar with the movies that Spanish director Jess Franco made with One Shot Productions then you should know that they were ultra cheap productions (even by Franco standards) and that they really weren't all that good. They were basically "good" for the fact that they managed to keep Franco working but very few of them had much merit.

The "plot" involves a cop (Michelle Bauer) trying to figure out why so many men and women are going missing. She believes that a stripper (Lina Romay) might have something to do with it. Again, if you're familiar with Franco's One Shot movies then you know plot isn't always the main focus.

MARI-COOKIE AND THE KILLER TARANTULA isn't the worst Jess Franco movie that you'll ever see but I very seriously doubt too many people are going to become fans of the director by watching this. As someone who has seen over a hundred Franco titles, the One Shot period is my least favorite but this film here is a prime example of why I'm not really a fan. These movies were shot with low-budgets and more times than not they're just an excuse to show off a lot of nudity and bizarre sex scenes.

This movie features that nudity and sex but it's all rather boring. The one good thing is that we're given a pretty good cast that includes Romay being her charming self, Bauer in a rather tough-girl role and even Linnea Quigley shows up in a few scenes. There are all sorts of strange visuals, poor cinematography and various other things that really doesn't add up to much. Fans of Franco debate these One Shot pictures but for my money they're only to be seen after you've watched dozens of other films from the director's filmography.