Misty Mundae aka Erin DeWright aka Erin Brown is an underrated performer. I’m a little hesitant to call her an actress, but she is a competent performer worthy of some acclaim if she ever manages to break free from the softcore porn/exploitation genre and approach an actual acting career. If you saw her in the “Masters of Horror” episode “Sick Girl,” she capable of vulnerable sympathetic solid acting. But that’s not to say I don’t love her in what she does. I’ve seen “Playmate of the Apes” where she’s in full on comedy mode leading the charge with a bunch of fake apes going to war, and I enjoyed her in “Lord of the G-Strings” where she engaged in mild girl on girl and petting with some brutally hot fantasy nymphs, so “Spiderbabe” was naturally a treat for me as Mundae explores her comedic talent and her ability to be both grating and charming at the same time.
After the obligatory shot of Mundae naked in her bath scrubbing her breasts (and not showing anything below), we’re introduced to Patricia Porker… who has sex with her dream guy in a scene comprised of soft kissing, gentle petting, loving glances and pretty much everything you’d expect from softcore porn. You can tell this is fantasy because any normal man would tear in to Mundae like a monkey on a cupcake. So after the fairly lame fantasy Patricia Porker is a goofy science nerd prone to odd fantasies a la “Scrubs” who is accidentally bitten by a hybrid spider. This is obviously not a “movie” to be taken seriously at all. It’s basically Vivid a la Lloyd Kaufman with a hint of Mel Brooks as Mundae mugs for the camera forced in to a fantastic situation that… is fairly ridiculous, but still a lot of fun. Once Patricia is bitten by the hybrid spider she has wacky hallucinations like her original character that involves… a girl on girl scene! If only my hallucinations involved girl on girl sex scenes, I wouldn’t mind getting the flu.
But this rather hot girl on girl scene is a sort of symbol for Patricia coming of age and… aw fuck the pretentious crap, it’s a hot scene, and the rest of “Spiderbabe” revolves around Patricia’s super powers fighting crime as Spiderbabe while engaging in wacky fantasies that consume the run time enough to garner a respectable ninety minute length for the director to sell. Misty Mundae is gorgeous in this film and the camera loves her, hence why she takes up most of the screen time and works well as this super heroine who can shoot webs out of her cooch. No seriously. The rest of the movie is composed of a basically beat by beat spoof of Raimi’s movie. Patricia is bitten (with a girl on girl scene), she gets powers that help her confidence (with a girl on girl flirting), lives with her eccentric family (who are prone to S&M), she enters a fight competition (that ends in girl on girl sex), and realizes she wants to be a hero when her uncle is killed (plus laughs), saves helpless young women from local thugs (and gets repaid with girl on girl) and fights against the evil Lucinda Knoff (who is a lesbian). Cue the hilarity.
How can you not enjoy this with lines like: “This competitor has turned in to a Subphylum Chelicerata! That’s a hopping spider for you morons!” This is the first features from EI Cinema I’ve ever really seen and Mundae considerably steals the show with her knack for making even the stupidest scenes utterly hilarious to sit through, and can turn mild petting and pecking with another girl absolutely mind-blowing. And who doesn’t love a good story about a crime fighter, eh? This really will not translate with many audiences mainly because it’s such a bipolar movie with comedy a first and foremost priority with the occasional bouts of softcore sex and really wicked girl on girl to keep the viewers expecting Mundae to drop trou happy. And they will be. I had a guilty fun time, sue me. Did I mention the hot girl on girl?