Each October, the Unsung Horrors podcast does a month of themed movies. This year, they will once again be setting up a fundraiser to benefit Best Friends, which works to save the lives of cats and dogs across America, giving pets second chances and happy homes.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Adam Hursey is a pharmacist specializing in health informatics by day, but his true passion is cinema. His current favorite films are Back to the Future, Stop Making Sense, and In the Mood for Love. He has written articles for Film East and The Physical Media Advocate, primarily examining older films through the lens of contemporary perspectives. He is usually found on Letterboxd, where he mainly writes about horror and exploitation films. You can follow him on Letterboxd or Instagram at ashursey.

Today’s theme: Lon Chaney (Jr. or Sr.)

The horror landscape in the mid to late 1960s was a bit fractured, in a sort of limbo, almost waiting for a subgenre to emerge. Hammer had a stranglehold on gothic tales of horror. Herschell Gordon Lewis was busy inventing the splatter film. Jose Mojica Marins brought his boogeyman creation of Coffin Joe to life in Brazil. Mario Bava had planted the initial seeds of giallo with Blood and Black Lace, waiting for Dario Argento to come in and reap the benefits a few years later. For mainstream America, everything changed in 1968 with the release of films like Rosemary’s Baby and Night of the Living Dead. But before those landmark films changed everything, most horror films were pulling from the past rather than pushing the genre forward. Spider Baby is an interesting representation of where horror stood in 1967.

Spider Baby was written, edited, and directed by Jack Hill. Out of the Roger Corman school of filmmakers, Hill would go on to direct some of the most famous exploitation films of the 1970s, including Coffy, Foxy Brown, and The Switchblade Sisters. Prior to Spider Baby, Hill (along with a personal favorite director of mine, Stephanie Rothman) directed the troubled production of Blood Bath (the very first film covered on the Unsung Horrors podcast). For Spider Baby, Hill seemingly pulled from what was popular in horror films at that time—an old, dark gothic house filled with a family who is not quite right, and cast an actor (in this case Lon Cheney Jr.) who might need a sort of comeback vehicle, similar to what Robert Aldrich did in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? and Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte. 

Inflicting the family with a fictional genetic condition called “Merrye Syndrome”, where the unfortunate inflicted begin to regress mentally after puberty, Spider Baby is infused with colorful characters where anything can happen. The “children” act in feral ways, particularly Virginia, who captures victims in a makeshift spider web before “biting” them with a pair of knives. Bruno (Cheney Jr.) has taken charge of the siblings as his wards, trying his best to protect them from themselves, and perhaps society from them. Everything changes though when some desperate distant relatives show up, hoping to claim a stake to the family’s inheritance.

While the film might mostly resemble a typical gothic nightmare (spiderwebs, skeletons, and subterranean pits in the basement abound), it also offers aspects not seen in a lot of horror movies at that time. There is definitely a comedic tone to the whole story. A character breaks the fourth wall to directly address the audience at the beginning and end of the story. Perhaps most striking to me was a meta moment where a character at the dinner table references The Wolf Man, Lon Cheney Jr.’s most iconic role.

I’m not sure if Spider Baby is going to be the most memorable film I watch this month, but it is a solid start for sure. 

I watched this one on Arrow Player, but it must be in the public domain, because it is streaming just about everywhere.