I speak, of course, of "Eight Legs to Love You," the latest epic from Spanish wackjob director Jess Franco, who always manages to work at least four lesbo scenes into every movie he makes. Jess has made something like four hundred movies, and lately he's taken to flying in American scream queens to work on location in Malaga. The result is that both Linnea Quigley and Michelle Bauer, the two legendary B-movie goddesses from the eighties, are both strutting through this turkey in various stages of undress, even though the serious heavy-breathing is saved for the frisky young porkchop Amber Newman.

When Jess dubs his movies into English, he doesn't bother to get actual English actors. He uses thickly accented Spaniards who have taken a couple of Berlitz courses, and the result is that you never know exactly what's going on. What we do know is that, while the Netherlands was being dominated by the Spanish army of Flanders in the 17th century--who could forget that?--a young pregnant woman was raped by a sadistic Spanish captain and then, left helpless on the floor, was visited by a tarantula. (I won't go into the details here. Use your imagination.)

Apparently the when mutant insects are born to violated Dutch women, the result is immortality, because three hundred years later a chubby "avant garde punk rock star" named Tarantula is working the dockside show lounges in Malaga and transforming herself nightly into the hissing "Queen," who drugs her victims, paralyzes them, and mounts them on the wall.

The only hope for these splayed-out refugees from a third- grade science project is the inquisitive sheriff, Michelle Bauer, who patrols the seafront in a thong bikini bottom, a black cowboy hat, and a leather vest that flies open at the slightest Moroccan wind. She canoodles her way into the underworld of lesbian performance art and befriends Linnea Quigley, the mother of innocent target Amber Newman, who turns out to be not so innocent after all.

The result is a whole lot of writhing around on a rope web that looks like something out of Bourbon Street, circa 1971, and so much drug-induced slave-lair-groping that we see every inch of every cast member's body at one time or another. There's also a chauffeur who likes to nibble on feet, but then of course there's a chauffeur who likes to nibble on feet. It is, after all, a Jess Franco movie.

Absolutely no plot to get in the way of the story. Thirty- five breasts. Two dead bodies. One giant tarantula attack. One shower scene. Insect moaning. Skull-cup potion. Multiple topless writhing, with fright wig. Fondling. Semi-orgy. Kung Fu. Lesbo Fu. Full-frontal Fu. Drive-In Academy Award nominations for Amber Newman as the somersaulting nubile victim; Michelle Bauer, looking better than ever as the half-nekkid sheriff who says "Men are weak and false"; Lina Romay as the chubster Tarantula Queen; and Linnea Quigley, for having nothing to do in the movie but doing it well.

Two stars. Joe Bob says check it out.