Welcome back to Dark Corners Streaming.
‘Guess I have to sting you now’ ‘You have to what?’
Spider Baby, or the Maddest Story Ever Told, which you can find on Shudder amongst other places,
sank without a trace on its release in the sixties only to be rediscovered as a cult classic in the 90s.
'Better beware, there is a full moon tonight.'
The film establishes its tongue in cheek tone from the opening theme, sung by its star, Lon Chaney jr.
'Hairy spiders creep and crawl, boys and gouls having a ball,'
'Dracula, Frankenstein and even the Mummy, are sure to end up in somebody's tummy.'
But that doesn’t mean it can’t summon up shocking moments,
‘And now the spider gets t give the bug a big sting.’
alongside its dark comedy.
'Oh, ooooh.'
The plot is a spin on the old Dark House movie,
there’s an estate to be decided but the surviving relatives living in the house, cared for by Chaney’s Bruno,
suffer from a rare condition,
‘An unfortunate result of inbreeding’
that makes their behaviour regress, first into child-like and then beyond.
‘Reverting to a pre-human condition of savagery and cannibalism.’
The result is almost like an old dark house movie with the family from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
Alongside the two homicidal girls,
‘Good evening Uncle Peter.’
one of who arachnophilia gives the film its title,
is their brother, the cat-hunting Ralph,
#cat meow#
a relatively early role for future exploitation great Sid Haig,
imbuing Ralph with a blend of innocence and psychosis.
But with a gallery of grotesques inhabiting the house, and a somewhat bland gallery of cliches arriving to wrest it from them,
‘There is something terribly wrong here’
what holds the film together is a surprisingly touching performance by Chaney.
‘Well, we didn’t have much time anyway, pretty soon Ralph will be ready to join uncle Ned, aunt Fleur...’
Bruno loves his charges, but hates what they do,
and knows that he can only protect them from the outside for so long,
giving the character a weary melancholia that plays very much into Chaney’s wheelhouse.
‘Please treat the children tactfully, you see they're not accustomed to strangers and they might act wild if encouraged.’
Released 6 years before the actor’s death,
it would be fair to call this the last notable performance of his career,
and a film that pays brief tribute to his best known role.
‘There’s going to be a full moon tonight.’
Despite the reputation it now has, it would be a mistake to call Spider Baby a neglected classic
or put it alongside other horror greats of the decade like Night of the Living Dead – another low budget black white.
But, aside from Chaney, what raises it above the many similar, now forgotten films,
the type that we review for regular Dark Corners is a full-blooded dedication to its own brand of madness.
‘Kill him! Kill him!'
There’s no backing off, there’s no ill-advised moralising,’
writer/director Jack Hill has decided what this movie is going to be and that’s what is,
love it or hate, we’re not going to try and justify it.
‘Virginia, I think we’d better play another game’
I wish it was better paced, it’s surprisingly sluggish in places,
I wish that the visitors and the lawyer especially, had more character,
but I am grateful for the complete absence of backstory, explanation and restraint.
‘I caught a big fat bug right in my spider web’
There are quite a few films like Spider Baby,
but I think this is the only one worth watching.
Thanks for watching.
The presence of Chaney at the end of his career and Haig at the start of his give Spider Baby an almost torch-passing moment,
what other films achieve that? Let us know in the comments below.