I was home over lunch, and I’m eagerly awaiting the arrival of a shipment of spiders, so I decided to indulge myself in a legendary movie from 1964: Spider Baby. It’s delightfully bizarre and macabre, and yes, it does include lots of spiders.
If that isn’t sufficiently enticing, check out this still:
It stars Lon Chaney jr., and look: a young Sid Haig! The plot — don’t watch it for the plot — centers on a twisted sort of Addams Family group afflicted with an imaginary genetic illness called Merrye Disease. The afflicted go mad and steadily regress to a savage state in which they become voracious cannibals. Along the way, they just develop weird obsessions. One girl likes to play spider, a game that culminates in the spider girl stinging her partner with a pair of butcher knives.
It makes no sense, but everyone seems to be having a ghastly good time playing up the grisly psychos. Recommended!
I am sad to report that my package of spiders hasn’t yet arrived. It may not get here until tomorrow.
Has a silly theme song.
And the underwear scene… well, just “It makes no sense” seems a good sum up.
Doesn’t that sorta harken back to fears of degeneration or the eugenics fueled studies of mischaracterized families way back when?
Of course Wrong Turn and other such movies play on similar themes of regression, atavism or devolution. We are Devo!
Merrye Disease. You say it’s an imaginary genetic illness. Is it possible that it’s transmissible? Is that’s what’s afflicted half the country since 2016?
Spiders don’t sting! The credibility of this film is blown!
chrislawson @4
It had credibility?
Subtitle: “Or the Maddest Story Every Told”…boy, would that make the Crisco-Fascistas pissy these days.
Jazzlet & chrislawson — It has incredibility, or as the more sophisticated might say, “incredulity.”
By the way, of the 4 people in that picture only the young woman on the left is still alive. Beverly Washburn is 81.
That’s okay, my snails haven’t arrived yet either.
@John Watts #3
This seems more likely
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4877736/
I hope this isn’t like fish, and when they’re late showing up they could possibly be harmed. But spiders are very different, so maybe not? Hope they arrive soon! I’d be pacing the carpets.
Spider baby?
Looks like something worthy of Rifftrax.