Oh Spider Baby, if there was any lingering doubt I wouldn’t love you, it was washed away when your theme song kicked in.
The orphaned Merrye children–Virginia (Jill Banner), Elizabeth (Beverly Washburn), and Ralph (Sid Haig, House of 1000 Corpses, The Devil’s Rejects)– live in a dilapidated mansion and are looked after by their guardian and family chauffeur, Bruno (Lon Chaney, Jr., The Wolf Man, Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein). The kids are afflicted with “Merrye syndrome”, a genetic disorder that causes them to regress emotionally and physically thanks to family inbreeding.
Though Bruno is loving toward the children, his authority over them is tenuous at best. Their condition causes them to deteriorate and they start to exhibit murderous tendencies. Virginia, the “Spider Baby”, enjoys trapping people in a “web” and then using butcher knives on them to sting her prey. Ralph is simple minded and lecherous, especially when an attractive female is around; he communicates only by grunts and groans. Elizabeth is the one usually put in charge of the others when Bruno runs an errand, but she’s just as demented as the others.
When two cousins, Peter (Quinn Redeker, whom I remember fondly as Alex Marshall on Days of our Lives) and Emily (Carol Ohmart) arrive along with a lawyer (Karl Schanzer) and his assistant (Mary Mitchel) to take control of the property, the children become even more unstable leading to even stronger murderous impulses.
Spider Baby is one hell of a good time and it’s easy to see the influence it had on House of 1000 Corpses and other genre films thanks to its combination of horror and very black comedy. Though it was released in the late 60s (but filmed in the early part of the decade and not distributed until later), it almost feels timeless.
Writer-director Jack Hill has created a classic that is as effective today as it was when released. I can imagine Spider Baby threw audiences for a loop back in ’67 and it might actually have the same effect on some today considering its morbid subject matter. The acting is first rate with all of the players contributing their own brand of oddball humor yet balancing it out with the right amount of dramatic weight to make the film as believable as possible.
Spider Baby has endured all of these years not only in the hearts of filmgoers, but also in various incarnations (as a stage show, for example) and rightly so. It’s a definite must see and highly recommended, especially as a double feature with The Rocky Horror Picture Show or one of Zombie’s films. It’s a perfect little film any time of the year, but might just be added to my permanent Halloween rotation in the future.
Spider Baby or, The Maddest Story Ever Told grade: A-
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This Old Haunted House 