Two Cents is an original column akin to a book club for films. The Cinapse team will program films and contribute our best, most insightful, or most creative thoughts on each film using a maximum of 200 words each. Guest writers and fan comments are encouraged, as are suggestions for future entries to the column. Join us as we share our two cents on films we love, films we are curious about, and films we believe merit some discussion.
The Pick
The following are some of the names Spider Baby was released under during its strange, delayed, long roll-out into theaters:
The Liver Eaters
Attack of the Liver Eaters
Cannibal Orgy
The Maddest Story Ever Told!
None of these titles are especially accurate to Jack Hill’s film, but in fairness, it must have been awfully difficult to come up with any title that could encapsulate this particular mad brew.
Spider Baby stars Lon Chaney Jr. as Bruno, the chauffeur and caretaker of the Merrye family, a once esteemed family that has been laid low by a mysterious disease. Known as “Merrye Syndrome”, the illness strikes members of the family around the time they turn ten and causes their minds and bodies to regress to primitive states. Currently, the last generation of the family includes only hateful Elizabeth (Beverly Washburn), silent, savage Ralph (Sid Haig), and Virginia (Jill Banner) the titular “spider baby” whose favorite game involves wrapping strangers up in her nets and then ‘stinging’ them with some carving knives.
Bruno has managed to create a bizarre sort of peace with these doomed, demented children, but that peace is destroyed by the arrival of distant family members, greedy Emily (Carol Ohmart) and bemused Peter (Quinn K. Redeker). Emily is convinced that “Merrye Syndrome” is a hoax meant to cover up a vast inheritance she wishes to snag a piece of for herself.
She’s wrong, but just how wrong won’t become clear until the body count has stacked awfully high.
This berserk Gothic was filmed in 1964 but due to legal issues it was not released until almost 1968. The film languished in obscurity for years, but has steadily amassed something of a following thanks to being the debut solo directorial film from Hill (who went on to direct stuff like Coffy, Foxy Brown, and The Big Doll House), one of Lon Chaney Jr.’s final films (and including arguably his best performance), and introducing the world to the captivating wonder that is Sid Haig’s face.
Haig passed away recently, leaving behind multiple generations of fans who revere him in everything from his dozens of character-actor roles throughout the ‘60s and ’70s (including many of Hill’s films), to his renaissance as the iconic Captain Spaulding in Rob Zombie’s Devil’s Rejects series.
We thought it only fitting to begin this year’s October series with a hat-tip to the big man himself. So join us as we get wrapped up by Spider Baby.
Next Week’s Pick:
Join us next week as we continue the Trick or Treat series with our first ever Halloween-season documentary.
Horror Noire is available to stream on Shudder! And please don’t miss out on any of our other October offerings.
Would you like to be a guest in next week’s Two Cents column? Simply watch and send your under-200-word review to twocents(at)cinapse.co anytime before midnight on Thursday!
Our Guests
Chris Chipman:
Wow…Spider Baby sure is…something!
I am a sucker for the films of this era, particularly the horror/sci-fi fare that begin with a fair amount of exposition as to the oddities you are about to see. Spider Baby doesn’t disappoint in this regard, beginning with our “hero” Uncle Peter reading about the condition members of his family suffer where they regress in behavior to that of a child, followed by an animalistic (and cannibalistic) state.
All of this, of course, is just an excuse to have a veritable house of horrors at the Merrye estate. Cannibalistic relatives locked in the basement, Sid Haig in an early and quite amazing physical performance and our “star” the daughter who plays “spider” with her victims by trapping them and cutting them up are just some of the treats that await in this insane asylum of a movie.
What I found most striking, however, was how badly our hero is portrayed. Obvious drunk driving, extremely inappropriate physical encounters with his niece and allowing members of his family to be blown to pieces to eradicate the bad branch of his bloodline are only some of his negative marks on screen. I guess that softens the blow of the Twilight-Zoneish ending, but I feel bad for his poor wife…
Verdict: TREAT (@TheChippa)
The Team
From the opening moments of the theme song, sung by the late great Lon Chaney, you know you’re in for a bizarre treat with Spider Baby. An early Sid Haig role, he shines as one of the deranged Merrye children. Haig was a Jack Hill staple in this era and it’s easy to see why.
Somehow I’d gone through my life up until now without seeing this predecessor and strong influence to the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Having seen it, the influence on TCM and other great genre fare is undeniable. It’s a black comedy with horrific moments and legitimate thrills. The characters are extremely interesting and well drawn. In fact, it’s not only an influence to what came after it, but it’s also a significantly better and more enjoyable film than many of them.
I’ll miss Sid, but this is as good a time as any to dive into his early catalog and catch up on why he was considered a genre great long before Tarantino and Zombie brought him back to the scene. This film is a great start for the spooky season and a great way to celebrate a recently deceased legend.
Verdict: TREAT (@thepaintedman)
Everyone who’s invoked Texas Chainsaw as a descendant of this one is bang on the money, but all I could think of while I was watching was that the Merrye family plays like the most demented sect of Addams Family cousins ever captured on film. It’s not just that they live in a big, spooky house filled with freaks and creeps, but the way Hill mines the juxtaposition between the family’s casual acceptance of their bizarre Gothic surroundings with their guests varying degrees of bafflement and disgust. I was a particularly big fan of Redeker as “Cousin Greg”, who responds to each new tidal wave of weirdness with a chipper, “boy, that’s neat!” attitude. Hill keeps his tone varying between horror and comedy, and shows a surprisingly deft hand in balancing the two out.
Special mention has to be made of Lon Chaney Jr., delivering what I found to be easily his best performance. Chaney was always a weak-link in the classic Universal Monster movies, cast because of his name and clearly beaten down and aggravated by this fact. At a very rough-looking 60 or so, he was pretty near the finish line by the time he did this one and time had worked his face into a hangdog expression of infinite sorrow. But there’s a warmth and playfulness to Chaney in this film that wasn’t always present in his other work, and the result is that you can’t help but feel invested in poor Bruno and the doomed children he’s dedicated himself to protecting.
Verdict: TREAT (@TheTrueBrendanF)
Spider Baby is actually a film I’ve kind of avoided for a long time. I’ve always taken an interest in seeing it, especially as a fan of Jack Hill, but I’ve always been repulsed by its aesthetic.
As I’ve found is usually the case when I feel that way about classic horror movies (The Hills Have Eyes, The Last House on the Left) the film is actually much tamer and more palatable than what I’ve worked it up to be in my mind. In the case of the demented but gore-free Spider-Baby, it’s much more of a manic oddball comedy than a straight-up horror film,and its touted madness ends up being a ton of fun. As others have noted, it’s a more intense cousin of The Addams Family, and certainly a stylistic progenitor to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, which stripped the comedic tone and emphasized the lurid nastiness.
It’s also a delight as a meeting of generations — one of the last films for horror regular Lon Chaney Jr., but one of the first for both Sid Haig and director Jack Hill, who would go on to make many genre pictures both individually and together. In his later career, Haig would similarly take up that horror veteran mantle and collaborate with new blood Rob Zombie and his crew. Haig is a legend, and I’m glad to have finally caught him in one of his earliest and oddest roles.
Verdict: TREAT (@Austin Vashaw)
The Verdict:
Trick: 0
Treat: 4
Unanimous verdict: TREAT!
Next week’s pick:
https://www.shudder.com/movies/watch/horror-noire-a-history-of-black-horror/4548652