My Top Ten Favorite Giant Spider Movies

In real life, spiders scare me. A lot. There are quite a few movies that feature giant spiders or giant scorpions. Here are my top ten. In most cases the arachnids are a small part of the movie so my ranking is based mostly on the movie rather than on the creature.

1. The Black Scorpion (1957) – An earthquake in Mexico unleashes large scorpions from their underground habitat. The largest scorpion is black and not at all friendly. Excellent stop-motion special effects by Willis O’Brien (the original 1933 version of King Kong) and Pete Peterson.

2. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002) – Aragog is a giant talking spider. Even though Aragog was raised by Hagrid, Aragog and his children will eat pretty much anything they can catch. He is a bad spider.

3. Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) – Shelob is another giant talking spider. She captures and paralyzes Frodo but Sam drives her away, and eventually rescues Frodo from the Orcs.

4. The Dark Crystal (1982) – Garthim are kind of like big, mean, land-dwelling hermit crabs. They do the bidding of the Skeksis and act as enforcers.

5. Clash of the Titans (1981) – Giant scorpions menace Perseus. Stop-motion special effects by Ray Harryhausen. I prefer the 1981 scorpions to the CGI scorpions of the 2010 remake.

6. King Kong (1933) – When originally released, the movie had a spider pit sequence where sailors are chased down and eaten by giant spiders and other insects. The scene was so horrific for audiences of the time that it was removed after the first screening. Director Peter Jackson recreated the scene using old technology.

7. Tarantula (1955) – A scientist is experimenting in his desert laboratory with techniques to use radioactive food to make giant animals. What could possibly go wrong?

8. King Kong: Skull Island (2017) – A military expedition is attacked by a huge spider with really long legs. Clever twist on the giant spider theme.

9. Earth vs. the Spider (1958) – Teenagers find a giant tarantula in a cave. They defeat it with the help of their high school science teacher and rock and roll music.

10. Eight Legged Freaks (2002) – In this comedy film, all kinds of different types of spiders are mutated to extra large size by toxic waste. They attack a small western town.

Honorable and Dishonorable Mention

Valley of the Dragons (1961)

Cat-Women of the Moon (1953)

Remade as “Missile to the Moon” (1958). See below.

Clash of the Titans (2010)

Jumanji (1995)

7 Guardians of the Tomb (2018)

Krull (1983)

Mesa of Lost Women (1953)

Missile to the Moon (1958)

A remake of “Cat-Women of the Moon” (1953). See above.

Son of Godzilla (1967)

One Million Years BC (1966)

The Giant Spider Invasion (1975)

Infestation (2009)

The Lost World (1960)

Monster Island (2004)

World Without End (1956)

Cosmic Monsters (1957) aka The Strange World of Planet X

Spiders (2000)

Spiders II: Breeding Ground (2001)

Spiders 3D (2013)

Horrors of Spider Island (1960)

Beast from Haunted Cave (1959)

The Cyclops (1957)

Three Stooges: Have Rocket, Will Travel (1959)

King Solomon’s Mines (1985)

Queen of Outer Space (1958)

Uniforms from “Forbidden Planet” (1956) and spider from “World without End” (1956)

Stinger (2005)

Very large scorpions on a submarine. A very bad movie, even for my ultra-low personal quality bar.

Ice Spiders (2007)

A made-for-TV movie. I don’t usually include such movies, but I thought this film was pretty good.

Curse of the Black Widow (1977)

Another made-for-TV movie. A woman can turn into a rather large black widow spider, which is bad news for the men she picks up in bars. A police detective gets rid of her using fire. Not a very good movie.

The Thief of Baghdad (1940 and 1924)

The 1940 version won the Academy Award for Special Effects. The 1924 silent version featured amazing effects for the time.

The Giant Spider (2013)

A spoof of 1950s style giant spider movies.

Big Ass Spider (2013)

Better than I expected.

Megaboa (2021)

College students in the rainforest run into a giant boa constrictor and a big spider.

Spider in the Attic (2021)

Starforce (2000)

A generic space opera. The hero runs into some large, vaguely spider-like creatures.

Fury of the Congo (1951)

Adventurer Jungle Jim (played by actor Johnny Weissmuller, best known for his portrayal as Tarzan in the 1940s) fights a large spider during a sandstorm.

Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore (2022)

There is an extended scene where the hero, Newt, is rescuing his older brother Theseus who is hung upside down in a cave that has dozens of sort-of baby scorpions and one large mother sort-of scorpion. A very disappointing movie — mediocre plot, mediocre acting, mediocre effects.

The Lost Continent (1968)

Passengers on a tramp steamer become stranded in the Sargasso Sea and encounter a weird group of descendants of Spanish Conquistadores and pirates. And mutated monsters. In one brief scene, a giant hermit crab (left) tussles with a giant scorpion (right).

Future Fear (2021)

Four very low-budget unrelated stories. The first story, “Spiders of Doom” features a giant spider who uses a woman to lure men to feed on.

Journey to the Center of the Earth (2008)

This is a low-budget direct-to-TV production by Asylum designed to piggyback on the release of a major picture released the same year by New Line Cinema. Big spiders, bigger spiders, biggest over-acting.

Dune (2021)

Baron Harkonnen had some kind of large spider pet. It appeared only for a few seconds before it was told to go away during a meeting of the Baron and head witch of the Bene Gesserit.

Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (TV series)

In the episode “The Monster’s Web” (1966), the submarine Seaview is menaced by a giant sea spider.

Dungeons and Dragons (2023)

At one point in the movie, the band of misfits must go to the Bowels of the Underdark to get a magic helmet which will allow them to . . . well, anyway, they travel on horseback through a creepy forest with red fungus and a very large spider crawling up a tree. It was just a brief cameo appearance by the spider.

Monarch: Legacy of Monsters (2023)

I should like this Apple TV production but it feels more like a cash grab than being produced by someone with a passion for a good story. There is a “Mother Longlegs” spider that resembles the spider in “Kong: Skull Island”.

Spookies (1986)

A group of people end up in a demonically possessed mansion which includes all kinds of dangers including a woman who turns into a spider woman. This is a truly bizarre movie but one that has a surprising number of fans.

Rebel Moon (2023)

Harmada was a giant spider woman thing. She was the last of her kind until she was killed and a swarm of babies emerged from her abdomen. I had high hopes for “Rebel Moon” but I was disappointed. The movie felt more like it was trying to set up sequels and merchandising than trying to tell a good story.

Sting (2024)

A young girl in New York City finds a baby spider in a meteorite and decided to raise it as a pet. Not a good idea. This movie is no award winner but it was better than I expected it to be and much better than many of the movies on this list.

Spaceman (2024)

A very strange movie. Six months into a space mission to explore a mysterious cloud near Jupiter, a Czech cosmonaut (played by Adam Sandler) discovers a telepathic alien stowaway named Hanus who looks like a man-sized spider. I like odd plots and I wanted to like this movie but it just didn’t hold together well — too slow and philosophical for my liking.

Arachnid (2001)

A plane with about a dozen people crash lands on a jungle island while searching for a lost military pilot. Somehow, an alien is involved. Unfortunately for all involved, there’s a very large spider on the island. People start dying one-by-one. This movie got terrible reviews, and yes, objectively, it’s not very good. But I enjoyed it.

Arachnids in the UK (2018)

This is an episode of the Doctor Who series, series 11, episode 4. The Doctor and her companions find, well, giant arachnids in the UK. This was a mediocre episode, featuring the worst Doctor. But the brief appearance of a giant spider in a hotel bathtub was not too bad.

Crocodile Island (2020)

A plane crashes on a remote jungle island that has one huge crocodile and several giant spiders. A Chinese movie that isn’t too bad but it didn’t hold my attention well.

Monster Hunter (2020)

In an alternate dimension of some sort, Nerscylla are giant arachnid monsters that hunt in packs. This movie is based on a video game, and for me, watching the movie was like watching somebody play a video game — not much of a story.

Spiders on a Plane (2024)

A handful of people are on a Boeing 747 with a grizzly-bear-sized spider in a crate in the cargo hold (along with a couple hundred of its hand-sized spider children). This is a bad movie, but one that I liked more than I thought I would. The special effects for the spider children were pretty good, but the effects for the large spider are absolutely awful. The minimal story was exactly what you’d expect.

Lost in Space (TV series)

In the episode “The Keeper: Part 2” (1966), Dr. Smith accidentally causes the release of a giant space spider from an alien zookeeper. I never really liked this TV show very much, but I’m not sure why. It had all the ingredients of shows I like, but somehow it just didn’t work for me.