The Movie:

Jack Hill's Spider Baby (shot in 1964, released in 1968) is a guaranteed delight for cult film lovers. Director Hill may be best known, if at all, for his later exploitation pictures with Pam Grier, like Foxy Brown and the recently reissued Coffy, but Spider Baby shows off Hill's talent at its genre-bending best. With its story of a freakish inbred family who react murderously to outsiders wishing to encroach on their broken-down mansion home, Spider Baby must have played some part in inspiring Dan Aykroyd's misbegotten directorial effort, Nothing But Trouble, except that Spider Baby gloriously succeeds in the areas where Nothing But Trouble so gloriously failed. Spider Baby is a comic horror film that manages to be both funny and scary, and it even makes us care about its twisted main characters.

The neighbors already know to stay away from the Merrye House. When a messenger, played by comedian Mantan Moreland, asks for directions to the Merrye House, he is given no reply. When he finds the place, he probably wishes he never did. Although... can dead men wish for things?

The master of the Merrye House is long dead, but his teenaged children, afflicted with a disease that turns them into animalistic savages as they grow older, are cared for by the sweet and understanding chauffeur Bruno (a warm and wonderful Lon Chaney, Jr.). The two girls, Elizabeth and Virginia (Beverly Washburn and Jill Banner), are overgrown children in the mold of Carroll Baker from Baby Doll. They wield their burgeoning sexuality like a toy, but unfortunately Virginia also likes to wield frighteningly long knives as a toy too. She is obsessed with spiders and frequently tries to "play spider" with guests, which involves snagging the guest in a net and then using her "stingers" on them. Elizabeth tries to make Virginia feel guilty by saying that her actions will make Bruno hate her, but one gets the sense that Elizabeth would be willing to kill if it came right down to it. Their brother Ralph (Sid Haig, a Jack Hill regular) seems more regressed than the girls, with his pinhead looks and tendency to climb in and around all the open spaces in the house.

Life for the Merryes is thrown into minor chaos when it turns out that some forgotten relatives have decided to claim custody of the children and the mansion in which they dwell. House on Haunted Hill's Carol Ohmart plays the visiting, gold-digging aunt Emily Howe, who brings along her good-natured brother Peter (Quinn Redeker) and a shifty lawyer with a Hitler mustache named Mr. Schlocker (Karl Schanzer). Mary Mitchel plays Ann Morris, Mr. Schlocker's assistant who bonds with Peter over their shared love of classic horror movies.

As expected, the Howes' stay with their relatives does not go quite as they hoped. Dinner becomes a series of hilarious gross-outs. Sleep becomes an impossibility with Ralph peering in the second story window. Bruno, who is truly a loving and understanding presence, tries to get the children to behave, but the arrival of this fresh meat-- er, I mean, these visitors demonstrates that the children are a lost cause.

Spider Baby delivers plenty of genre thrills, with ladies running screaming in their underwear, gory murder scenes (most of them implied, but still effectively icky), and creepy-crawly spiders coming out of dark corners where you least expect them. What is surprising, though, is that despite the heightened campiness of much of the film, there's a genuine sweetness in the scenes between Lon Chaney and his surrogate children. If there's a reason that Spider Baby has lingered so long in the annals of low-budget genre classics, I suspect it is this touching, good-hearted core, even more than the cleverness or shockingness or sexiness of the film, that makes it continue to resonate with new viewers.

The Blu-ray

Notes on the Video and Audio:
Arrow Films provided DVD Talk with a white-label check disc as a screener for this title. As such, I cannot be certain that the A/V quality will exactly reflect the final Blu-ray/DVD combo pack which will be available from retailers. However, as fellow DVD Talk writer Thomas Spurlin pointed out in his review of Spider Baby, the video quality on the check disc is so excellent that one must expect it is at least comparable to what will be on the finished product. I differ from Thomas slightly on the audio, though, because to these ears, I would characterize the recording as inconsistent, with muffled passages and distracting audible crackles in places. Obviously, this is due to the age of the materials and probably the low budget of the film, which makes these issues potentially irreparable, but I think it's still worth noting. The check disc includes one subtitle option: English SDH.

Special Features:

• Audio commentary by writer-director Jack Hill and actor Sid Haig - Carried over from the 2007 DVD, this chat offers a nice dose of nostalgia from the longtime friends and collaborators.


• The Hatching of Spider Baby (HD upconverted from SD, 31:43) - Also carried over from the earlier DVD, this is a fast and frequently funny look back at the making of the film, with most of the cast, director Jack Hill, DP Alfred Taylor, and fellow employee of Roger Corman, Joe Dante, throwing in their respective two cents.


• Spider Stravinsky: The Cinema Sounds of Ronald Stein (HD upconvert, 10:58) - A brief profile of composer Stein, whose talent often exceeded the quality of the exploitation films he was scoring.


• The Merrye House Revisited (HD upconvert, 7:38) - Filmmaker Elijah Drenner drives Jack Hill out to walk around the grounds of the house where the film was set and reminisce.


• Alternate Opening Title Sequence (HD upconvert, 1:50) - Pretty much the same, except it features Jack Hill's original title Cannibal Orgy.


• Extended Scene (HD, 4:04) - A longer cut of the scene where the outsiders arrive at the Merrye House.


• Panel Discussion (HD, 33:08) - This discussion is taken from a recent screening of a restored print at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science's Linwood Dunn Theater. The first third is taken up with thank-yous and introductions of people who were involved in the restoration, but the rest is a fun collection of reminiscences with Jack Hill and stars Quinn Redeker and Beverly Washburn.


• The Host (HD upconvert, 29:49) - Jack Hill's UCLA student film, as previously seen on the Switchblade Sisters DVD. It's a low-key western starring Sid Haig, which the opening title intimates may have helped inspire the conclusion of Apocalypse Now.


• Photo Gallery


• Trailer

Final Thoughts:
Arrow Films delivers another top-notch cult classic release. The cast is memorably unhinged, and the story consistently delivers chuckles and chills. If you like your horror flicks a little funny and a little sexy and a lot twisted, then Spider Baby is the flick for you. Highly Recommended.

Justin Remer is a frequent wearer of beards. His new album of experimental ambient music, Joyce, is available on Bandcamp, Spotify, Apple, and wherever else fine music is enjoyed. He directed a folk-rock documentary called Making Lovers & Dollars, which is now streaming. He also can found be found online reading short stories and rambling about pop music.