Cruising through podcasts, getting inspired to watch a werewolf movie specifically, but I hear this recommended as well and then I go start the movie several minutes later.
Spider Baby was a small budget black and white horror movie that came out several years after it was filmed in 1964, and marks a later era film for star Lon Cheney Jr. Lon plays the uncle of two demented young girls and one full on insane boy. Sid Haig plays the boy in an early role for him.
The story begins with the delivery of a letter to Lon Cheney's family. The mailman is killed when one of the girls lures him into the window of the house and the other girl stabs him with a knife. This has clearly happened before, and Lon emotes a bit of disappointment and disapproval, but more bad news comes when the letter reveals that some of their distant family is to arrive that day.
When the family arrives, the characters are more revealed. One of the girls is obsessed with spiders and basically considers herself to be one, her killing game akin to trapping a bug in a spiders web. The other girl is a bit more sane than that, but not by far, and Sid Haig is just a complete insane weirdo who is also a bit butal and/or blood hungry. We go from there as the family meets, and the characters get roped into each others lives.
It's a very strange movie, and it's for sure a forerunner to what I feel would become the groundwork for some of the psychological horror present in a filmmaker like Rob Zombie's work. This was a prime hunting ground for like 2002-era horror movies where the characters are not just evil but also twisted, and their twisted obsessions were explored as almost equal to their destructive desires. I'm sorta glad that trype of horror is gone, but yeah this was definitely an early foray into it.
This being an early exploration, it does manage to unsettle a bit. The sheer perversity of these characters gets under the skin a bit, and tiny moments speak volumes. There's also quite a high body count, and the movie moves quickly, and overall I would say this was quite a head of it's time. I think this is a great horror movie perfect for those who want to explore the genre, and I give this 4 stars.
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