Spider Baby (Director's cut)
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Movie Reviews of Spider Baby (Director's cut)
Movie Review: Spiders.....
Summary: 4 Stars
Jack Hill is the director of this, and he's made a living directing very bad films like Switchblade Sisters and Coffy (even though Pam Grier is hot). But this is his best film, and it's quite good. This is a really creepy, darkly funny, and surprisingly touching (especially at the end) film about a very unique and disturbed family. Lon Chaney, Jr. is magnificent as the long suffering butler of the family, who has a degenerative disease (called Merrye Syndrome, a sort of early dementia). After it was released (sort of) in 1964, it went into limbo over rights and issues like that, and was released under several names, like Cannibal Orgy: Or The Maddest Story Ever Told and The Liver Eaters. After a few unsuccessful releases under this myriad of titles, it disappeared and many people thought it was lost. A B movie enthusiast named Johnny Legend tracked down the original negative years later, and new prints were struck. The restoration is quite good, and the film is really a marvel considering the tribulations of its production. It was shot in a mere 12 days, and despite its budget and low rent production, it holds up surprisingly well. It's not campy, just a creepy and quite unique film.Movie Review: The Devil's Rejects before they were hip!
Summary: 4 Stars
Oh boy, this is one family you don't want to visit! They are all afflicted with a genetic disease named after, and prevalent only in, their family. It is a basic regression where your mind develops in a backwards fashion and soon you aren't aware that it is not socially acceptable to eat the cat or murder the mailman.
The "family" is looked after by Bruno, the butler, who is charmingly portrayed by Lon Chaney, Jr., with that sweet disposition and sad eyes that made us feel sympathy for the Wolfman.
He tries to keep everything "normal" during a visit from the greedy uncle looking into his share of the family dough. Well, we all know how that ends up! There is a great scene where the guests are served dinner and you can just feel their pain as one disgusting dish after another is presented to them.
All in all, a very twisted, funny, and entertaining movie.
Also- VERY cool- watch for Sid Haig (the future Captain Spaulding, speaking of Devil's Rejects!) who plays Ralph, the craziest family member who HASN'T yet made the transition to being locked up in the basement!
Gotta love him! He was destined to be a freak!
Movie Review: Loads of fun.
Summary: 3 Stars
Spider Baby (Jack Hill, 1964)
Jack Hill and his old pal Sid Haig (Haig, as an actor, and Hill, as a director/writer, both got their respective starts in Hill's The Host) reunite for yet another incredibly silly film, this one involving an inbred family whose children grow normally until they reach the age of ten, at which time they begin a slow descent into psychotic cannibalism. The last three surviving children of the clan, Virginia (Jill Banner), Elizabeth (Beverly Washburn), and Ralph (Haig), are watched over by their late father's longtime chauffeur, Bruno (Lon Chaney Jr.). Everything's going along swimmingly, with the exception of the occasional deliveryman (Mantan Moreland, long known as Birmingham Brown in the Charlie Chan flicks) getting offed by Elizabeth, until the last surviving relatives and their lawyer descend on the house to try and get the girls into school (and claim the family inheritance, naturally). They insist on spending the night in the house. Mayhem ensues.
Now, Spider Baby is not deathless cinema by any standards, but that said, it's an absolute joy to watch. Sid Haig is almost hypnotic. The two girls play the mixture of nubile innocence and murderous rage with a surprisingly nuanced air for such a basement-budget flick. The characters are, for the most part, well-rounded, and there's enough variety in them that they don't resemble a walking buffet, as the camp counselors in so many slasher films do, for example. It's kind of a revelation to find out that even bad horror comedies from the sixties are better-written and more fun than most modern not-scary horror flicks. (Also: how weird is it that so many people involved with this movie died in 1973? THE CURSE OF SPIDER BABY!) Looking forward to the remake, which will most likely be as disappointing as "remake" implies, but I still have some hope. ***
Movie Review: Great movie, but I got 2 copies from Amazon- BOTH defective.
Summary: 3 Stars
This is one of my all time favorite films. It's part horror, part comedy, part tragedy. Wonderfully spooky and weird. An unsung classic. Nobody was more anxious or more excited than I was to find out about the special Director's Cut DVD. I ordered it from Amazon right away. The picture quality indeed looks fantastic. I have seen several prints of this movie in different formats and this one looks the best. Unfortunately, about halfway through the film there is a terrible buzzing sound on the audio track. It comes and goes throughout the entire second half of the film, and is very noticeable and highly annoying. This is obviously a defect on the disk. I have tried watching the disk in 2 other dvd players to double-check that it wasn't my player - and I got the same terrible buzzing sound in all the same places, proving that it is a defect with this pressing of the DVD. Bitterly disappointed, I got a second copy and the second copy had the same exact problem. Perhaps Amazon simply got a bad batch from the factory? I would love to hear the opinions of anyone who knows the film (and its normal audio track) well, and can tell me if their copy of the Director's Cut DVD has the same problem. In other words I am trying to find out if all copies bear this same defect or if I am just extremely unlucky to end up with two defective copies in a row. If nobody speaks up, I guess I'll have to buy it a third time, probably from a different sales outlet, to find out.