{"id":3177,"date":"2013-07-08T08:03:42","date_gmt":"2013-07-08T07:03:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.electricsheepmagazine.co.uk\/reviews\/?p=3177"},"modified":"2014-04-14T23:34:46","modified_gmt":"2014-04-14T22:34:46","slug":"spider-baby","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.electricsheepmagazine.co.uk\/reviews\/2013\/07\/08\/spider-baby\/","title":{"rendered":"Spider Baby"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Spider<\/a>
Spider Baby<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\n

\nFormat:<\/B> Dual Format (DVD + Blu-ray)

\nRelease date:<\/B> 17 June 2013

\nDistributor:<\/B> Arrow Video

\nDirector:<\/B> Jack Hill

\nWriter:<\/B> Jack Hill

\nCast:<\/B> Sid Haig, Lon Chaney Jr., Carol Ohmart, Quinn K. Redeker

\nUSA 1968

\n81 mins\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Jack Hill\u2019s uncategorisable cult nasty is part Old Dark House<\/i>\/Addams Family<\/i> black comedy, part Texas Chainsaw Massacre<\/i><\/a>, before the whole thing winds up somewhere in Eraserhead<\/i><\/a> territory.<\/p>\n

In Spider Baby<\/i>, Hill sets out his stall at the start, bringing on Mantan Moreland, an eye-rolling, black comic actor from the 1940s whose career had taken a hit as soon as the civil rights movement kicked in. Moreland does his trademark spooky-house face, glancing hither and thither \u2013 and is then knifed to death by a demented teenager, something that could never have happened back in the days when horror movies played by a safe set of rules\u2026<\/p>\n

Equipped with a budget of only $60,000, nearly half of which was paid to star Lon Chaney Jr., Hill approached his first professional, solo directing gig (his filmography is littered with odd part-works, sharing credit with others or receiving no credit at all) with a take-no-prisoners bravado, seemingly hopeful that a movie subtitled \u2018The Maddest Story Ever Told\u2019 might get by just on being completely different from anything ever before attempted. Disastrous previews nearly stopped the movie coming out at all.<\/p>\n

From its insistent theme tune, sung with gravelly enthusiasm by Chaney himself, to its gleeful embrace of inbreeding and genetic disorder as a plot point, the film is a bad-taste banquet. With little money to spend, Hill nevertheless cast extremely well, with pixie-like Beverly Washburn and baby-faced Jill Banner impressive as two psycho teens whose minds have regressed into infancy \u2013 and possibly to a pre-human state; hairless, gash-grinned Sid Haig (a Hill favourite) is a wondrous, appalling sight in his Little Lord Fauntleroy uniform; and Chaney himself enjoys a late-career renaissance in a role that actually treats him with some respect as an actor and a horror icon (all his most famous monster roles are name checked). Years of alcoholism left the lumbering actor looking puffy and leonine about the face, and he\u2019s neither quick on his feet nor with his delivery, but as with Lennie in Of Mice and Men<\/I> (1939), his finest role, he has material that plays to both his strengths and weaknesses. Forget the likes of Dracula vs. Frankenstein<\/i> (1971), as I\u2019m sure Chaney did, and look upon Spider Baby<\/i>as a final grace note in a long and disorderly career.<\/p>\n

The straight characters are fun too, as they rarely were in Corman movies: Carol Ohmart excels as the nasty heir, intent on kicking the freaks out of their decaying mansion, and Quinn K. Redeker is both hilariously square and curiously lovable as the hero. And there\u2019s even something appealing about the more exploitational elements of the flick: the sexual content is limited to the more attractive female cast members running about in their undies. It all seems so innocent.<\/p>\n

The limitations of budget and schedule are seen in some inconsistent, but often eerily beautiful, black and white photography, and some quite noticeable sound problems, plus the movie, having set up its premise too hastily, is then required to remain in a holding pattern until the crazed climax. But it\u2019s all so much more inventive, and more good-natured, than a movie shot under the title \u2018Cannibal Orgy\u2019 has any right to be, so how can one quibble? At its best, it achieves camp irony, serious psycho-horror and pathos all more or less at once, which is more than most movies achieve sequentially. <\/p>\n

Arrow\u2019s Blu-ray is typically handsome, with the misty, diffuse whiteness of Alfred Taylor\u2019s photography attaining a mysterious, chalk-and-charcoal dustiness that\u2019s truly dreamlike. A cluster of extras trace the movie\u2019s fascinating genesis, and Hill himself comes over as a far nicer guy than most practitioners of supposedly \u2018legitimate\u2019 mainstream cinema.<\/p>\n

David Cairns<\/B><\/I><\/p>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jack Hill\u2019s uncategorisable cult nasty is part Old Dark House<\/i>\/Addams Family<\/i> black comedy, part Texas Chainsaw Massacre<\/i>, and Eraserhead<\/i>.
\nReview by David Cairns<\/B><\/I><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[11,3],"tags":[425,97,673],"class_list":["post-3177","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-check-it-out","category-dvds-and-blu-rays","tag-1960s-american-cinema","tag-horror","tag-jack-hill"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","wps_subtitle":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/purUP-Pf","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":4350,"url":"http:\/\/www.electricsheepmagazine.co.uk\/reviews\/2014\/04\/14\/pit-stop\/","url_meta":{"origin":3177,"position":0},"title":"Pit Stop","author":"Pam Jahn","date":"April 14, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Jack Hill\u2019s follow up to Spider Baby transcends its budget, featuring a fine, offbeat cast and an intelligent approach to its subject matter. 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