Spider Baby – DVD Review of the Cult Classic

1964 Horror Film Directed by Jack Hill – Starring Lon Chaney, Jr.

Sep 28, 2009

Spider Baby is genuinely creepy, and in many ways surpasses Hitchcock's Psycho in style and humor to capture the poignancy of what it is to be freaks in a world gone mad.

Originally entitled Cannibal Orgy, or The Maddest Story Ever Told in its initial 1964 run, writer-director Jack Hill's film was re-released in 1968 under the title, Spider Baby.

Spider Baby is a classic; and not just a classic in the quaint B-movie horror-schlock, throw-some-crap-on-the-wall-and-see-if-it-sticks way; but, in the sense that any wholly original work of macabre cinema is worthy of praise and respect.

The Kids Are Not Alright

Lon Chaney, Jr. plays Bruno, the family patriarch to three lovely children; two wily girls, Elizabeth (Beverly Washburn) and Virginia (Jill Banner), and a mischievous boy named Ralph (Sid Haig).

One day Bruno is away from the house taking Ralph to the doctor, when Virginia decides to play her favorite game, spider; during which an unsuspecting messenger arrives at the house to deliver a letter, and becomes ensnared in Virginia’s spider web, where upon Virginia proceeds to slice the messenger up.

It seems, the kids are not alright; as a matter of fact, they’re not really kids, but full-grown adults afflicted with the rare and unusual disease called The Merrye Syndrome; so rare and unusual is this syndrome that it’s actually exclusive to this family. The viewers are told that the disease causes one to slowly revert back to a prenatal condition; oddly enough, a prenatal condition which involves homicidal cannibalism.

Even after Bruno learns of the children's mischievous ways, he always finds it in his heart to forgive. Because, Bruno made a promise to their real father to never let them hate one another and to always take care of one another; after all, they are a close-knit family with troubles just like everybody else.

Soon their happy home is disrupted by a clan of extended family members with the unsavory intention of tearing apart the fabric that holds them together.

But, the family unit is strong, and when the outsiders invite themselves to stay overnight, Virginia convinces Elizabeth to play spider and rid the house of the uninvited bugs. Because the family that plays together, stays together.

Jack Hill Returns to Merrye House

In The Merrye House Revisited, a short documentary feature on the smashing DVD release of the cult classic, director Jack Hill takes a ride to Glendale, Ca. to revisit the Gothic house on the hill that served as the exterior for the film he wrote and directed over 40 years ago.

Mr. Hill talks along the way about Spider Baby, and his life and career; and at one point he talks about how in the beginning he felt a great deal of embarrassment and displeasure at having to make B-movies, while all his film school friends were off making studio pictures (only years later did he come to realize that his movies are considered classics, while most of his friend’s studio pictures are all but forgotten).

The exception of course being Jack Hill’s schoolmate Francis Ford Coppola (Mr. Hill served as second unit director on Coppola’s first feature Dementia 13).

Jill Banner R.I.P.

Jill Banner was an 18-year-old Goth goddess with big doe eyes and pasty white skin and an oddly hypnotic manner that turned many a reform schoolboy’s head over the last 40+ years since Spider Baby was released.

Ms. Banner left Hollywood soon after the re-release of Spider Baby in 1968; but, eventually returned to Hollywood, only to die in a tragic car accident on the Pacific Coast Highway in 1982; forever leaving her radiant performance in Spider Baby to live forever in posterity, however perverse.

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