L'Araignée

With the exception of a few A titles Sci-fi was mostly considered kids stuff especially in the 50's. The studios had such low expectations that even a gem like Forbidden Planet was used as a premium for cornflakes boxtops.

That being the case it was profitable to crank out as many as possible as cheap as possible with as much action as the budget would allow and that was the only criteria. It worked because kids hungry for any kind of monster and teens needing a good background for the drive-in flocked to these B pictures so much that you could expect one to open a couple of weeks or so.

It's not like anybody got suckered into these things as well.I don't know how many previews I saw at the drive-in or matinée even if the monster looked fake or stinky in the trailer I still wanted to go see it. For the most part I had a good time and I still love these B creature Features from the fifties. This one in particular is highly re-watchable.

Unfortunately I can't say much for their current counterparts it seems like the bad bug movies of today are mostly just bad and not fun like these were. Recently I watched Ice Spider,Lord Of The Spiders and Scorpius Giganticus on the sci-fi channel and they all blew so bad I could barely finish them.

The special effects here are bad but they're fun because they're bad plus they fit right in with the naiveté and unsophistication of the times and Bert I Gordon didn't skimp on them either. Once the monster showed up you got tons of bad special effects right up until the climax . Today we know so much more about effects and budgeting and story structure and science and credible actions that it seem a shame that so many sci-flicks are blatantly disregarding this without giving us the fun of old school. It's a lose lose situation.

Currently this is on DVD with War Of The Colossal Beast and I recommend it highly as a cheap disc worthy of a rainy night filled with cherry Cokes and Sloppy Joes

Somehow I'd missed seeing this AIP '50s monster flick, so I recently gave the new Lions Gate R1 DVD a spin. It's rightly considered a rip of Universal's TARANTULA, but this still turned out to be brisk and enjoyable, and a lot of cheesy fun. When a young girl and her boyfriend search for the girls' missing father, they stumble across a giant spider's cave and, naturally, the monster eventually crawls around town. Better-than-average special effects for this type of cheapie, with some surprisingly vivid shock moments and the required helping of some typical teenage 1950's rock n roll music. Gene Roth is a hoot as the doubting sheriff, and there are some shameless plugs for some of Bert I Gordon's other pictures like THE AMAZING COLOSSAL MAN and ATTACK OF THE PUPPET PEOPLE. *** out of ****

When you sit down to watch a Bert I. Gordon picture, you know you're in for a bad movie.

And, knowing that you can have a real good time.

The story is about a giant spider that attacks a town. No more need be said about the plot. The acting is horrendous. It's awful inconsistent too, half the time the characters do really dumb things, and half the time (well part of the time) they are actually smart too. That's the bad news, here's the good news, it is fast paced and fun. While the movie came out the same year as "The Blob", and both movie feature "kids" (AKA teenagers) who first witness the monster, in "The Blob" nobody believes the teens until it's too late. Not in Earth vs. the Spider! At least some of the adults totally accept that there is a giant spider on the loose, right from the get go. And that's what you, the viewer have to do here to - there is no explanation for what caused the giant spider, or why there are no other giant spiders, it just is, and you have to accept it. It also features a great rock and roll number, effects that run the gamut from real cheesy to real impressive, the world's oldest teenager, "hep" 50s dialogue, a theremin soundtrack and "spider noises"!

At just 73 minutes, it never gets dull, it's up there with some of the best so-bad-it's-good movies ever made. So grab some friends and a 12 pack, and check out this - the original 1958 version of "Earth vs. the Spider"!

Jack Flynn is attacked while driving home. His teenage daughter Carol and her boyfriend Mike go searching for him and find a giant spider in a cave. The Sheriff doesn't believe them. Their teacher Kingman is able to convince him to send a posse. Armed with DDT, they are able to kill the giant spider. They bring the spider back to town and store it in the high school gym. As the kids practice rock and roll, the spider revives and terrorizes the town. Meanwhile Carol and Mike go back to the cave to find her lost bracelet.

It's a campy 50s creature feature. The giant spider is a fun visual. The acting is bad. The story is simplistic which actually helps. I certainly don't want too many explanations about giant spiders. That can't be any good. It's a B-movie with a few fun unintentional silliness.

There are few film genres which can evoke such a wonderful sense of vintage entertainment as classic monster horror films. Whether perused in more depth to explore resonant themes and cultural tie-ins or simply taken at face value for comically poor dated special effects and pulpy entertainment, the particular cocktail of entertainment offered by almost any given similar film from the era is unlikely to disappoint - and Earth vs. the Spider is no exception. Despite a somewhat misleading title (then again, 'Small Rural American Town vs. the Spider' does lose some dramatic flair), the film's small, self-contained scope proves to be its greatest advantage, with few more profound aims than to entertain, and, despite whatever other faults, almost unwavering dedication to that front.

While firmly ensconced in genre conventions, the film's tongue in cheek tone promotes such a wholesome sense of enjoyment that such clichés feel warmly familiar rather than suffocatingly so. Like many of its contemporaries, the film explores notions of adults versus teenagers (one particularly comical yet chilling scene has the titular creature awoken by a rock 'n roll song and dance interlude) and science versus good old fashioned American values, though the film is politically correct to not outright condemn scientists as nonsensical lunatics as many other such films do. Similarly, the much alluded to cause for the spider's abnormal growth is crucially never discovered, feeding into cultural notions of post-war nuclear paranoia. However, the film boasts surprisingly strong production values (the spider's cave is a wonderfully grotesque setting) and above par special effects given its inevitably low budget, and again manages to bend convention to its advantage through use of an eerie theremin score, giving it a sturdy enough veneer to make for a surprisingly entertaining 73 minutes.

Despite the cast's typically universally flat performances failing to infuse much life into the shoddy script, one would hardly peruse such fare for the acting, making the cast's lackluster efforts endearingly amusing. Ed Kemmer interestingly melds the 'scientist voice of reason' and 'charismatic protagonist' figures into a single character, and feels all the more fresh and appealing because of it. June Kenney is often embarrassingly and comically melodramatic as a teen mourning her missing father, and Eugene Persson counterbalances her overacting with a dull, unenthusiastic performance as her earnest, "gee whiz" boyfriend. Gene Roth delivers many an (intentionally) comical moment as the town's ineffective sheriff, who also intriguingly shifts roles into a voice of reason figure later on.

Despite a slew of expected faults given its genre, Earth vs. the Spider is never less than supremely entertaining, making for a wonderful comedy (intentionally or not) and easily worth investigating for any fans of classic horror, or those willing to derive amusement from envisioning how frightening it must have been to 1958 audiences, or simply ridiculing it throughout.

-5/10