Spider Baby or, The Maddest Story Ever Told

A chauffeur (Lon Chaney Jr.) cares for the three demented children of this former employer in a creepy old house.

Spider Baby isn’t a good movie, to be sure. The acting is a mixed bag at best, the production values are next to nothing, and the dialog is pretty stilted.

But it’s so damn bizarre; you can’t help but admire it.

Writer-director Jack Hill takes his off-beat premise, a group of grown adults mentally reduced to children, and runs with it, full steam, from start to finish, and, while he misses a bit more than he hits, when he hits, he makes it count. There’s an exquisitely edited sequence involving a desk full of tarantulas, and Jill Banner provides more than a few genuinely disturbing moments during her performance as a petulant child in an adult body.

Headliner Lon Chaney Jr. (who also sings the theme song!) does a great job for most of the film, his sad-eyed and tired expression a perfect match for his character, but unfortunately, he goes completely over the top at toward the film’s end and the whole thing descends into total camp.

Not helping matters are the non-existent production values, and the so-so script. For every scene the Sid Haig, Beverly Washburn, and Jill Banner get right, they get three wrong. Granted, this results in a film that alternates between genuine horror and camp, but a bit more discipline from Hill could have gone a long way to making Spider-Baby less cult and more classic.

As-is, Spider-Baby falls squarely into the “so bad it’s good” category, which should tell you enough about whether or not you’re likely to enjoy it.