Looking back at the eccentric pleasures of Jack Hill’s oddball family saga.
“Nothing is VERY bad.”
I first saw Spider Baby in the mid-1980s, when it was very much the unknown part of a remarkable double bill issued by the eccentric British video label Hikon – the other film being Reefer Madness. The two films were packaged with sleeve art that suggested more than just reefer had been consumed by the artist and the pairing had gone almost unnoticed even by the most determined collectors – there were other versions of Reefer Madness out there for the connoisseur, and just what was this Spider Baby film anyway? There was certainly no mention of it in any of the horror film books of the era – this was pre-Psychotronic and Re/Search’s Incredibly Strange Films, the latter of which was the first book to give the film any sort of attention. By that point, some of us had already seen it on through this tape and had been preaching the word to anyone who would listen – which was precious few people back then. In a world of Video Nasty tape traders, few people were interested in a strange black-and-white horror comedy that played like a particularly dark episode of The Addams Family combined with The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. The film’s cult status would grow slowly but steadily as it eventually became more available – and rarely has a film deserved a revival more.
Spider Baby began life in 1964 as Cannibal Orgy (it also managed to be titled The Liver Eaters at some point) and is subtitled The Maddest Story Ever Told – quite a boast, but one the film comes close to living up to. This highly eccentric horror comedy manages to match laughs and shocks perfectly, creating a bizarro atmosphere that even now is unlike anything else ever made. It feels like a curious fever dream, one that only briefly touches on recognisable elements of a horror genre that it is clearly in love with and which flits from the oddball to the slapstick to the unsettlingly questionable, never allowing the viewer to quite settle into what they are watching. It’s perhaps understandable that the film didn’t get released until 1968 and was sold over the years as everything from psycho horror to kinky erotica – even the people who were promoting the film didn’t quite seem to know what they had. I think in a way, it remains a hard sell – look at the Arrow Blu-ray cover art and it’s obvious that the film is still a tough one to promote to those who might not be familiar with it.
Spider Baby tells the story of the Merrye Family, an unfortunate brood that suffers from an incurable regressive brain disease caused by in-breeding, one that sees them slowly devolve into sub-human monsters over their lifetime. The only surviving members of the family are a couple of aunts and uncles who are so far gone that they are locked in the basement, and three teenagers – the mute and child-like Ralph (an unrecognisable Sid Haig), Virginia (Jill Banner) and Elizabeth (Beverly Washburn), all of whom are looked after by doting family chauffeur Bruno (Lon Chaney). Into this insular world come four outsiders to upset the apple cart – just like in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, it’s the intrusion of outsiders into the family dynamic that causes all the problems. Emily (Carol Ohmart) is a grasping relative with designs on the Merrye estate, while her jovial bother Peter (Quinn Redeker) is just along for the ride; smug lawyer Schlocker (Karl Schanzer) turns up with secretary Ann (Mary Mitchell) to see to the legal details. Despite Bruno’s best efforts to explain that none of this is a good idea, Emily and Schlocker are determined to take over, and soon things start to go very badly wrong.
After one of the most uncomfortable dinner scenes in cinema history (right up there with Chain Saw and Eraserhead in terms of unsettling weirdness), Ralph – who we assume must be an adolescent and is certainly in a more advanced state of Merrye madness than his sisters – has his hormonal urges triggered by peeping on Emily’s posing in lingerie (a gratuitous bit of cheesecake from former pin-up Ohmart), Schlocker meets a sticky end at the hands of the two girls (in a scene that moves from comic to disturbingly brutal in a heartbeat) and Virginia takes a fancy to Uncle Peter, leading to one of the creepiest, sexiest and most uncomfortably wrong attempted seduction scenes you’ll ever see. Knowing that the demise of Schlocker will just lead to more people investigating the strange family set-up and the ‘kids’ being institutionalised, Bruno is forced to drastic measures.
The weirdness of Spider Baby is in no doubt – from the opening scene with the legendary Mantan Moreland (best known as Birmingham Brown in the Charlie Chan film series) meeting his sticky end at the hands (or, more accurately, knives) of Spider Baby Virginia, we know that this will be a very odd movie, one that mingles comedy and horror in a way that few films manage. But while the black comedy and oddball horror are the more obvious elements that make the film so appealing, there’s a lot more going on here. This is a film of unexpected substance and emotion. The tragedy at the heart of the narrative is genuinely moving, while it is also disturbingly nasty and just plain odd. It’s a unique experience that keeps you unnerved simply because you never quite know which direction it will take next.
Jack Hill, who would go on to be one of the great names in exploitation cinema with films like Coffy, Foxy Brown and Swinging Cheerleaders, makes his feature film directorial debut here – as brilliant as the rest of his career was, he never quite matched the creative delirium of this film again. Here, he crafts a story that is about people who are, by any normal standards, monsters (after all, they are killers, cannibals and Ralph is -a arguably – a rapist), but then makes them appear to be the victims with manipulative, scheming relatives out to rob them of their birthright and expose them to the outside world. The Merryes are, after all, unable to control their behaviour but everyone is just greedy and self-centered. This is, essentially, a story about family – the love of people (in this case Bruno, the father figure for the family and the only one who really loves them unconditionally) who will ultimately forgive all because he knows it’s not the fault of the ‘children’ and the children who want nothing more than that level of unconditional acceptance. When Virginia makes her clumsy attempt to seduce Peter, his unspoken rejection is genuinely heartbreaking, even if it is the right thing to do.
The film is full of astonishing performances and characters. Haig, as the child-like but psychotic Ralph, is incredible, one moment a ridiculous man-child squeezed into a far too small sailor suit, the next a true horror movie monster chasing and attacking Emily (the off-screen ‘rape’ scene – or more accurately Emily’s subsequent reaction to it, suggesting that she found the experience pleasurable – is possibly the most contentious moment in the film for modern audiences). Redeker, as the perpetually cheery Peter, is the closest we get to a ‘hero’ character, but he’s not quite right somehow – you get the impression that the Merrye Syndrome hasn’t entirely passed his side of the family by and he feels like a slightly off-centre version of the classic bland horror movie hero. Ohmart is impressively nasty and remarkably sexy as the film’s main villain, matching her role in The House on Haunted Hill for mean-spirited bitchiness, while Mitchell, like Redeker, makes her potentially limp character fun and rather oddball – the pair’s conversations about old monster movies (including a reference to Chaney’s old role as The Wolfman)are not what you’d expect from the romantic leads and white bread heroes of a horror movie.
But of course, the film belongs to Banner, Washburn and Chaney. As Virginia – the ‘Spider Baby’ of the title – Banner steals the show. She’s pouty, flirty, excitable and deranged, wholesome and psychotic. Her demented ‘spider dance’ and dangerous innocence give her crazed character a sinister charm. Washburn has, rather unfairly, been overlooked by many critics over the years in comparison. Elizabeth is the more knowing of the two girls – she’s the one who tends to instigate the attacks on the ‘invaders’ and immediately recognises that their presence will be dangerous for the family – and Washburn plays her with a knowing, gleeful malevolence (one fantastic moment sees her face literally light up as she thinks of a cunning plan). The two girls together make a remarkable team who, as we see early on, are capable of switching from their sweet insincerity to murderous psychosis without warning.
But Chaney is the film’s real revelation, if only because our familiarity with his work doesn’t even hint at the idea that he is capable of anything like this. While a beloved genre icon, he was not exactly the world’s greatest actor and by 1964 his time in the spotlight was pretty much over, with his alcoholism affecting his work and his connection to a long-gone era of horror cinema reducing him to increasingly low-rent exploitation movies where he barely even tried. Somehow, all that bitterness and disillusionment seems to come together here to work in his favour. Bruno is a tired old man, angry at the modern world intruding on his family and it’s hard to imagine anyone playing the role better than Chaney – his world-weary sense of resignation, his sadness and his beaten down desperation feel all too real for an actor who must have seen much of himself in the character (what Chaney made of the film – whether or not he recognised it as special or simply just saw it as another cheap horror movie that he had to make to pay the bills – is unknown). The scene in which he explains to Virginia and Elizabeth that there will be more and more Schlockers coming and that their simple lives are over forever won’t leave a dry eye in the house.
Careful lighting and crisp photography from Alfred Taylor give the film a look that belies the low budget and almost makes you wish all movies were shot in black and white. The atmosphere is helped by Ronald Stein’s music that mixes horror and whimsy – and of course, the theme song enthusiastically performed by Chaney is one of the weirdest things you’ll ever hear on a horror movie soundtrack. Don’t take my word for it – listen here. This is, all around, a genuinely astonishing film – certainly one of the most unique films that you’ll ever see. It’s creepy, funny, unsettling and oddly charming for a film that dabbles in murder, rape, necrophilia and incest. This is horror cinema at its most inventive and inspired. The maddest story ever told? Well, it might be.
DAVID FLINT
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