PRINT ADS

For the next week on eBay, the Internet auction site, you can buy a piece of Wisconsin film history -- the giant spider that terrorized movie audiences, and especially discerning critics, in 1975's "The Giant Spider Invasion."

The minimum bid for the spider is $25,000, which seems a bit pricey, but Bill Rebane, the mind responsible for both the spider and auction, points out that you never know. A few years ago a grilled cheese sandwich alleged to bear the likeness of the Virgin Mary sold on eBay for $28,000.

"Strange things happen," Rebane was saying this week.

The eBay listing is titled "Giant Spider Invasion Volkswagen Spider," and it includes a quote from Stephen King's "Danse Macabre," in which the famed horror author analyzed the star of "The Giant Spider Invasion."

King wrote: "In spite of the title, there is really only one giant spider, but we don't feel cheated because it's a dilly. It appears to be a Volkswagen covered with half a dozen bearskin rugs. Four spider legs operated by people crammed inside this VW spider, one assumes, have been attached to each side. The taillights double neatly as blinking red spider eyes. It is impossible to see such a budget conscious special effect without feeling a wave of admiration."

The movie itself has endured as a camp, cult classic, selling out when it played the Wisconsin Film Festival in Madison in 2003, nearly three decades after its original release.

The executive producer of "The Giant Spider Invasion" was Bill Dyke, the former Madison mayor who is now a judge in Iowa County. Rebane directed and co-wrote the screenplay with Dick Huff of Madison.

Rebane, a native of Latvia, moved to Chicago with his family when he was 15 and watched movies endlessly to improve his English. He eventually bought a farm north of Wausau and used it as a base to make low-budget films.

The best known is "The Giant Spider Invasion." Rebane and Huff had earlier collaborated on a series of films for the electric utility industry, and they were thinking about trying a feature. Why not science fiction? Rebane suggested a meteor crashing to Earth. Huff said maybe spiders could crawl out of the hole.

"I hate spiders," Huff said this week. "It's an obsession. I can't stand them."

Rebane met with a distributor in California. "How big can you make the spiders?" the distributor said.

Rebane hadn't thought about it.

"If you can make giant spiders," the distributor said. "You have a deal."

"We can make giant spiders," Rebane said.

The spider admired by Stephen King was constructed by a welder friend of Rebane's, using a rusty Volkswagen Beetle automobile and abundant chicken wire.

Besides the VW spider, the film's stars included Alan Hale Jr. (the skipper on "Gilligan's Island") and Barbara Hale (the secretary on "Perry Mason"). Made for just over $300,000, the film did little business domestically but grossed $24 million overseas.

Rebane's deal did not bring him much of the foreign take. He has scrambled ever since, with each new film an adventure and roll of the dice. A 1988 stroke led to a bankruptcy filing, and Rebane, who has always worked on the edge, has frequently sparred in court with distributors and others on the business end of movies. Yet he is a survivor, and respected enough that in May 2005 there was a Bill Rebane Film Festival at the Orpheum Theater on State Street.

A few years ago, when a Minneapolis filmmaker was making a documentary on Rebane, they discovered the VW "spider" at the farm of a friend, where Rebane had stashed it years earlier.

Now it is up for sale on eBay, and we'll see. I'm reminded of a piece George Plimpton wrote in Esquire after he heard that Tom Clancy, the author, was thinking of buying an old Russian submarine.

Plimpton called Clancy and asked, "How much for one sub?"

"About $100,000," Clancy replied.

Plimpton whistled. "What do you get for that?"

"A 30-year-old obsolete submarine," Clancy said.

The VW spider will be up on eBay through July 30. There were no bids as of Tuesday afternoon. Rebane, who said plans are in the works for a musical comedy based on the making of "The Giant Spider Invasion," remains hopeful.

There's always the chance that somebody might take a look at that VW spider and see the likeness of the Virgin Mary.