Spider Baby

Some months back, TCM ran Spider Baby as part of TCM Underground. I recently got around to watching it so that I could do a review of it here.

A brief narration tells of a disease known as "Merrye's disease" that most don't believe to exist, but killed off all of the members of the eponymous Merrye family. Cut to a flashback of how that happened....

Mantan Moreland, in what is effectively a cameo, plays a messenger looking for the Merrye house, which clearly scares the bejeezus out of the people he's asking for directions. When he finds it, there are only a couple of adolescent children home, Virginia (Jill Banner) and Elizabeth (Beverly Washburn). Before the he can deliver the official-looking envelope he's got for them, Virginia decides she's going to play "spider" with him. This isn't the solitaire card game you might have on your computer, but a game that involves her trapping the unsuspecting victim in a rope, and then "stinging" the victim by stabbing him to death with knives!

The children's guardian, Bruno the chauffeur (Lon Chaney Jr.) returns home with their brother Ralph (Sid Haig) to find the dead body, and the message he was delivering. Apparently, a lawyer has found out that the children's father has died, and that lawyer, Schlocker (Karl Schanzer) is going to come to the house and settle the estate, along with a couple of cousins, Emily (Carol Ohmart) and Peter (Quinn Redeker).

It's here that we really learn the nature of the family's disease. Apparently, they've got some sort of genetic disorder that results in a situation where, when they hit about 10 years old, start regressing, a sort of de-evolution that eventually means they'll become animalistic. That would explain Virginia's playing "spider", and why Ralph doesn't speak and acts even more like a baby than his two younger sisters. Apparently they can regress and still go through puberty, although how any of them ever reached marriageable age is a good question.

But ignore such scientific quibbles. Bruno tries to stop the lawyer (who came with assistant Ann, played by Mary Mitchel) and relatives from figuring out what's going on, mostly because he really cares for them and realizes that if the truth comes out, the family is going to be broken up with even worse results for everybody, along the lines of the contemporaneous Our Mother's House. And he has good reason to be concerned. The lawyer discovers Ralph opening the secret passage to the cellar, while Emily announces she's staying the night out of curiosity. She hates these relatives, and wants to find out the truth to get their estate.

Everybody's right to recognize that there's more going on than meets the eye, and they're going to find out just how much over the course of the night, with tragedy for at least some of them.

Spider Baby is a low-budget movie, but one that's pretty darn well made. The story is super creepy, but also a good deal on the quirky side. The acting is mostly well done, especially Chaney and the three actors playing the regressing children. And while Spider Baby is a horror movie, it's got enough black comedy to be something less than disturbing.

It's easy to see why Spider Baby wound up as a cult film, and also easy to see what it's a movie that should be watched, as it turns out to be quite an interesting little movie.