Spider Baby (Directors cut)
by Jack Hill
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Jill Banner; Jr. Lon Chaney; Sid Haig; Joan Keller; Mary Mitchell; Mantan Moreland; Carol Ohmart; Quinn K. Redeker; Karl Schanzer; Beverly WashburnDirector: Jack Hill
Brand: SPIDER BABY (DVD MOVIE)
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
Format: Black & White, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.66:1
Running Time: 84 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2007-09-25
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: MPI Home Entertainment
Movie Reviews of Spider Baby (Directors cut)
Movie Review: A quick review with some details: Terrific old horror film!
Summary: 5 Stars
If Lon Chaney, Jr. (born Creighton Tull Chaney in 1906, died 1973) ever pulled off a finer performance I don't know where or when. Usually he's a little too much the brooding victim who morphs into the Werewolf for me: Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man / House of Frankenstein. But here, (somewhat as he was in his renowned Werewolf films), he's portrayed as a good guy... sort of.
This is an independent film which was shot over a seven-day period during the late summer of 1964. The location for shooting the home exteriors was the Smith Estate of Los Angeles, California -- this cool old house is still standing.
Chaney plays the servant-chauffer (the kindly old "Bruno") of the long-dead patriarch of a genetically-challenged family -- he's determined to carry out his old patron's wish to keep these demented children safe and insulated from society. There are three post-adolescent "children," two girls and a boy, and as a result of their DNA shortcomings they are really into cannibalism, spiders, and maintaining their unique existence in the spooky old rural family mansion.
Everything is going along just fine for this clan of reprobates and their altruistic mentor until a really sleazy lawyer (!!!) and noxious family members show up to institutionalize the kids, thereby dispensing with the need for Bruno, and to legally steal the estate. This idea turns out to be an egregious error on the part of these greedy people as they spend the night in this creepy house of multiple horrors.
I must also add that the opening scenes featuring the great Mantan Moreland (Charlie Chan in The Jade Mask) riding his cool pseudo-motor scooter to the old mansion is a genuine hoot.
For me, this terrific black-and-white horror film has it all: great story, savory predictability (the greedy ones get their due), spooky old house, just enough subtle humor to make the film endearing to the viewer, superb camera work, flawless casting... on and on. It's a little offbeat and clearly a cult classic.
This film has also been known as: Attack of the Liver Eaters; Cannibal Orgy, or the Maddest Story Ever Told; Jack Hill's Spider Baby (Australia), and; The Liver Eaters. But regardless of the best title, the film itself is really just one of the best, this coming from a huge fan of classic horror flicks -- highly recommended!
Summary of Spider Baby (Directors cut)
This highly influential cult classic from writer-director Jack Hill (Switchblade Sisters, Foxy Brown) tells the demented and darkly comic tale of the Merrye children -- Elizabeth (Beverly Washburn), Virginia (Jill Banner) and Ralph (Sid Haig)-- all of whom suffer from a rare genetic malady that causes its victims to mentally regress to a condition of "pre-human savagery and cannibalism."
The children live in the old family mansion, and though under the cautious guardianship of chauffeur Bruno (Lon Chaney Jr.), they manage to terrorize anyone or anything which passes through the gates. So when the family is visited by a pair of distant relatives and their greedy lawyer, a wild night of murderous thrills ensues.
Dark Sky Films proudly presents the Director's Cut of Spider Baby, transferred and restored in High Definition from the original 35mm negative under the personal supervision of Jack Hill and featuring previously lost footage, rounded out with never-before-seen featurettes created.
Bonus Features Include:
Feature length-commentary with writer-director Jack Hill and actor Sid Haig
"The Hatching of Spider Baby" (32 min featurette)
"Spider Stravinsky: The Cinema Sounds of Ronald Stein" (11 min featurette)
"The Merrye House Revisited" (8 min featurette)
Still Gallery
Alternate Opening Title Sequence ("Cannibal Orgy")
Extended Scene
Re-titled Spider Baby in 1968 after the original title Cannibal Orgy, Jack Hill's black and white proto horror-comedy influenced numerous films, especially those featuring boxed or bagged body parts, like Phantasm's yellow-bleeding finger and Blue Velvet's ear found in the meadow. Spider Baby is about an inbred family cursed with Merrye's Disease, which transforms even sweet children, Elizabeth (Beverly Washburn), Virginia (Jill Banner), and Ralph (Sid Haig) into murderous cannibals. Virginia steals the opening scene, during which she plays "spider," cutting the ear off a messenger who is sent to their decrepit Victorian mansion to deliver news of the house's confiscation. Caretaker Bruno (Lon Chaney Jr.) futilely chides Virginia in preparation for a visit from their oblivious, snooty cousin, Emily Howe (Carol Ohmart) and her husband, Peter Howe (Quinn Redeker), who plan to take the home. As more people pile into the house for a meeting, including lawyer Schlocker (Karl Schnazer) and his innocent assistant, Ann (Mary Mitchell), the kids cut loose, hacking everyone up and feeding them to their uncles locked in the basement. Jack Hill, whose films range from horror (Switchblade Sisters) to Blaxploitation (Coffy, Foxy Brown), made sure in Spider Baby to balance comedy with spook so its cannibalistic themes scare but don't absolutely disgust. A brilliant dinner party scene, in which the Merryes serve roasted cat and garden bugs, passing on the meat because they "don't eat dead things," is one of the tensest and funniest cannibal film scenes ever made, up there with Fuad Ramses' Egyptian feast in Roger Corman's Blood Feast. This special edition DVD includes interesting featurettes that detail the making of the movie and the whereabouts of the real mansion, though the best part of Spider Baby is pondering how bizarre this film must have seemed to the 1960s youth. -Trinie Dalton
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