10 Most Spiteful Horror Movie Easter Eggs
3. Throwing Shade At Jaws - The Giant Spider Invasion
Released just four months after Jaws, The Giant Spider Invasion was a sci-fi horror movie about, you guessed it, gigantic spiders terrorising a Wisconsin town.
Originally the film's spiders were actually going to be more modestly sized at about 10 feet tall each, but when the producers got wind of Steven Spielberg's Jaws going into production, they insisted that the spiders would have to be bigger in order to compete at the box office.
A tongue-in-cheek reference to this is made in the movie's own climax, when Sheriff Jones (Alan Hale, Jr.) tells another character that the spiders make the shark from Jaws "look like a goldfish," to which the character agrees.
Trying to compete with Jaws is one thing, but actively trying to denigrate it in the movie itself? Unsurprisingly this did little to harm Jaws' reputation and likely only reminded audiences they could be watching that far superior movie instead.
Reviews ultimately compared The Giant Spider Invasion unfavourably to Spielberg's suspense classic, and despite turning a profit on its low budget, the film is best remembered today for being featured in a 1997 episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000.