Spider Baby
After you've been watching obscure cult movies for years and years (in my case, about 20 years) you get to the point where you've pretty much seen it all and you've discovered just about everything worth discovering. I own a lot of reference books about cult movies, too, and many times they will tip you off to something worth searching out. So, it's practically impossible to find a treasure cold. In other words, it's almost impossible to be able to watch a good movie without any preconceived notions about the movie that you are about to watch, or knowing what the plot is basically about before you actually view the movie, and watching a movie without knowing anything about it is the ideal way to watch a movie.
I was browsing at the video store when I came across the movie Spider Baby. I had never heard of it before. I read the box and decided to take a chance on it. I watched the movie from beginning to end. I was so blown away, that I immediately watched the movie from beginning to end again, something that I have only done a handful of times in my life. It was the kind of experience that cult movie collectors cherish, finding an incredible masterwork and viewing it cold.
Spider Baby is a black and white film written and directed by Jack Hill in 1963. I'll tell you about the movie here, but I could never do the movie justice. This is the kind of movie that, if you have any interest in cult movies at all, you should search out and watch for yourself. It has my highest recommendation. It's the kind of movie you can watch over and over again, and always find something new to marvel at with each viewing. It's a darkly black comedy which is loopy, stupid, funny, creepy, outrageous, and shocking and it's not like anything you've ever seen before. The closest thing I can think of to compare it to is maybe an episode of The Addams Family gone horribly awry.
Here is a synopsis of the plot, such as it is: An unfortunate family, surnamed Merrye, are all inflicted by a disease called Merrye Syndrome, being as the syndrome has only affected the lineage of the Merrye family. The syndrome strikes as a progressive deterioration of the mental faculties, starting in childhood, and progressing until the afflicted Merrye becomes a complete idiot. Somehow, the deceased patriarch of the family, Titus Merrye, had acquired a decent amount of money, and hired a chauffeur, played by Lon Chaney, Jr. Before his death, Mr. Merrye made the chauffeur promise to take care of his offspring, two daughters and a son, and make sure that they are never held up to public ridicule. So Lon becomes the custodian of the children. His main goal is to just keep the children in the house, away from the public's eye. The son, played by the wonderful Sig Haig, is a bald headed man-child idiot who looks like something out of Tod Browning's Freaks. Since he is the oldest, he is the one whose mind has deteriorated the most. The two daughters seem to be around 17 or 18, but they act much younger. One of the daughters, Virginia, likes to play "spider" and trap the rare visitor who comes to the house and slice the victim up, or "sting" the victim with two large knifes. This upsets the caretaker, Lon Chaney, because he has to dispose of the bodies, and these incidents could trigger the curiosity of the world outside. Also, Uncle Ned and Aunt Martha, who are way gone mentally, are kept in a pit in the basement.
Two distant relatives of the Merrye family, an Uncle and Aunt, show up one day with a lawyer and his secretary. The Merrye estate is worth some money, so the Aunt wants to put the kids in a facility for retarded persons and divide up the proceeds of the estate. Lon had promised the father of the children to never let anything like this happen, so he is quite distressed by this development. He invites the visitors into the run-down mansion and hopes the situation will work itself out, but bad things start to happen. The children realize that these people are going to disturb their way of life, and take matters into their own hands on the first evening of their visit. Lon Chaney has no control over the horrible events that are taking place and he realizes that there is no way to cover up these unfortunate incidences. Other people will come and put an end to their lifestyle for good. Since Lon made a promise to the elder Merrye that he would never allow this to happen, he must now take drastic measures. In a very moving, emotional scene, Lon tells the children that he has a way of making everything better and that he can solve all of their problems once and for all. The children trust him enough to go along with whatever he thinks is best, and Lon does solve their problems once and for all.
I was being purposely vague in the plot synopsis. I want you to be able to watch it like I did, without knowing what is going to happen next. I don't want to ruin the viewing experience for you. True to all of the Jack Hill movies that I have seen, there's at least one jaw dropping scene. In this case, it's a scene in which Virginia, the daughter who likes to "play spider," ties up her Uncle Peter. As I said earlier, after years of watching cult movies, it's rare for something to have that effect on you, but it did and does.
The acting in the movie is superb. Sid Haig, Lon Chaney, and the two actresses playing the daughters are all incredible. This is some kind of masterwork, and is a desert island movie, so I'm giving it a rating of 6. Find it and watch it.
The video has a featurette about the 30th anniversary showing of the movie in Los Angeles.