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Someone described it as "Luis Bunuel meets the Addams Family" but even that doesn't really capture the tone.Īnd the tone is set by some amazing acting.
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It's not supposed to be a comedy but can't stop quietly cackling to itself be a real horror movie. "Nothing is really bad" as the wrinkled retainer Lon Chaney Jr says at one point. The best artfully artificial cinematic chiaroscuro since "Night Of The Hunter" – which also shares the same demented noir fairy tale approach.īut "Spider Baby" serves up the old ingredients with a flavour that's like nothing else you've tasted. Weird genetically disordered family in gothic mansion, the loyal old family servant as surrogate wrinkled-browed father, distant grasping rellies who come to a sticky end, creaky cobwebbed corridors, moonlit forest strolls, disgusting dinners and something really foul lurking in the cellar. The fixings for this feast are all tried and true. Alternative titles were "Attack of the Liver Eaters" (no livers are actually eaten) and "Cannibal Orgy - or the Maddest Story Ever Told" which is sorta half right. T'was actually shot in 1964 by horror and exploitation schlockmeister Jack Hill ("The Big Doll House", "Foxy Brown" and "Coffy" are some of his more notable accomplishments) but not released until 1968 – mainly I suspect because no one knew how the fuck to market the thing. Score: Ronald Stein with Lon Chaney Jr singing the title song.) If you really want hot sexy killer gothic chicks, then you cannot afford to pass by "Spider Baby". The film has also appeared under the misleading titles Cannibal Orgy and The Liver Eaters, as well as Spider Baby, or the Maddest Story Ever Told.Suicide Girls? Hah! Middle-class art school dropouts who have never hacksawed to death an innocent postman in their tiny little lives. But after it appeared on home video in the early '80s and was the subject of an enthusiastic essay in the book RE/Search: Incredibly Strange Films, the film began to develop a potent cult following and is now regarded as a minor classic of '60s horror. Shot in 1964, Spider Baby sat on the shelf until 1968, when it was briefly released as the second half of a horror double-bill on the drive-in circuit.
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But not long after they pay a visit to Bruno, they start to have serious regrets about their decision to see the family. Redeker), who are interested in laying claim to the family mansion and any money remaining in the Merrye Estate. While it might seem best to let nature to take its course and allow the family's sad legacy to die out, the Merrye siblings have two distant cousins, Emily Howe ( Carol Ohmart) and Peter Howe ( Quinn K.
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Bald, inarticulate Ralph is supposed to be a vegetarian, but "can eat anything he can catch," while Virginia, who seems to be in a perpetual dream state, imagines herself as a human spider and catches people in her "web" (a large net) and then kills them. All three Merrye siblings suffer from the same rare disease that felled their father and the other members of his family - "Merrye Syndrome," a neurological ailment that begins to manifest itself at the age of ten, causing the brain to slowly decay and sending its victims into an alternately violent and infantile state. Merrye, who represent the end of his family's line, live in a dilapidated mansion where patient servant Bruno ( Lon Chaney, Jr.) watches over the increasingly eccentric Virginia ( Jill Banner), Ralph ( Sid Haig), and Elizabeth ( Beverly Washburn). Exploitation titan Jack Hill, who went on to make such cult favorites as Switchblade Sisters, The Swinging Cheerleaders, and Foxy Brown, made his solo directorial debut with this fascinating, offbeat shocker.