Spider Baby or, The Maddest Story Ever Told (1968)

Attack of the Liver Eaters
Cannibal Orgy, or the Maddest Story Ever Told
Spider Baby
The Liver Eaters

Cast:

Lon "The true Wolf Man!!!" Chaney Jr. is Bruno, The Chauffeur
Carol "I wasn't a scheming shrew in the House on Haunted Hill" Ohmart is Emily Howe
Quinn K. Redeker is Peter Howe
Beverly Washburn is Elizabeth
Jill Banner is Virginia
Sid "How'd I get in Lambada, the Forbidden Dance?" Haig is Ralph

What the IMDB says:

A caretaker devotes himself to three demented adults after their father's death.

Plot:

Lon Chaney Jr. is singing the theme song?

A man is reading about the Merry Syndrome how they mentally de-age beyond humanity into primitive savagery including cannibalism. However, the family was wiped out 10 years ago…Let the flashback ensue…

Mantan Moreland, the mailman, asks some locals where the Merry House is. They won’t tell him anything. He eventually finds a run-down mansion. No one answers the door, Mantan looks in a window. The window falls on him trapping him when Virginia spots him. She has 2 knives and wants to play spider…

A limo is heading to the mansion. Bruno, the chauffer, finds Mantan’s body hanging out of the window. Ralph gets out of the limo. Bruno tries explaining not to play Spider to both girls: Virginia and Elizabeth.

Girls, "Even a man who is pure in heart and says his prayers by night, may become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms and the autumn moon is bright." It's true.... Ralph finds the letter Mantan had brought. A lawyer will be bringing some relatives to become the girls’ legal guardians today.

Bruno hides Mantan body while the girls clean up the blood. Bruno checks on Uncle Ned, Aunt Liz, and Aunt Claire in the basement.

Peter and Emily, some distant relations of the Merrys’, are heading to the mansion. Emily wants to sue them or force them to settle for big money, big money…Reaching the mansion, she is freaked out by Ralph.

Bruno brings Larry Slocker, the lawyer. Elizabeth and Virginia meet their cousins. Bruno tries explaining the malady that rots the Merrys’ brains. This will be the last generation of the Merrys. Larry the lawyer wants to meet Ned, Clair, and Liz. He’s not happy about how Bruno has been running things.

Emily and the rest want to stay the night at the mansion. Bruno tries explaining how they shouldn’t stay overnight.

Virginia is doing another spider impression. Ralph is outside chasing a cat.

Gene Simmons bald and unsuccessful cousin..

Dinner is being set. Emily wants to know about the estate finances. Ralph is dressed in as a schoolboy costume. Bruno serves the “rabbit” that Ralph had caught earlier. Bruno explains how meat seems to advance the disease and keeps trying to get them to leave. Peter will take Ms Morris, Slocker’s secretary to nearby motel.

Larry and Emily suspect something funny is going on at the house.

The girls pay a visit to daddy who is mummified.

Emily braces her bedroom door shut while the lawyer is snooping through the house. She’s getting ready for bed unaware that Ralph climbs down the side of the building to peep on her.

Bruno locks the main gate. Lawyer finds the secret entrance to the basement. Something grabs his leg. He threatens to call the police. The girls pitchfork him to death.

Bruno finds the body carried up in the dumbwaiter. The girls are scared. Bruno promises to take care of them. Getting rid of the lawyer will only bring more people. Ralph will soon have to be with Uncle Ned. Soon, Bruno will have them all stay forever. He goes to get a surprise for them. .

Emily still dancing around when she finally spots Ralph. Running out of her room, she sees the girls carry the lawyer’s body. They chase after her. Outside, they search for her. Ralph is close to finding her.

Ms Morris and Peter are still on the road. There are no vacancies in any of the motels. They’ll have to stay at the Merry mansion.

Bruno is getting nuttier as he’s driving to get the surprise.

The girls see Peter and Ann return. They’re afraid of being reported. Welcoming them, Virginia gets out her web. Elizabeth takes Ann to daddy’s room where Ralph grabs her.

Bruno steals some dynamite.

Virginia ties Peter up to play spider. Sitting on his lap, she gets her knives when Elizabeth stops her.

In the basement, Ralph is holding Ann. The girls try to decide what to do with Ann. How to keep her quiet? Apparently, a gag isn’t good enough but draining enough blood will quiet her down.

Peter wrangles out of the chair.

The girls have a hacksaw to drain some blood to make Ann quiet.

Emily gets back to the house and attacks Ralph.

Bruno gets back to the mansion.

The aunts drag Emily into the pit. Bruno announces the surprise to the girls. Lighting the fuse, he tells Peter to take Ann and leave.

Uncle Ned and the aunts climb from the pit when the Big Badda Boom ensues.

Peter inherited all the Merry fortune and married Ann. They have a daughter, Jessica. There is no more Merry Syndrome. Peter’s side of the family is quite distant. Outside, Jessica is staring at a spider.

What I say:

What can make a low budget horror movie from the late 1960s an unknown classic? Jack Kill as the director. Some of you may not know the man but are sure to know some of his later movies: Coffy and Foxy Brown. Having Lon Chaney is a definite plus though he's had some pretty bad movies at this point including Hillbillies in a Haunted House.

When Lon Chaney Jr. sings your movie's theme song, that is a true sign...It'd be so easy to make a few snarky pseudo-jokes about it. While the theme song is more deranged than "Night Train to Mundo," that song was song by John Carradine. I'm one of the people that will admit to thinking that the theme to Green Slime is one of my favorites. There's no shame in singing the theme to Shaft or the Blob.

But back to my point...Lon Chaney plays Brouno as maybe the considerate caretaker in movie history. Tries to do everything to protect the kids. Have to admit him talking about a full moon being out tonight and being scared by it, did bring a gleam to my myopic eyes. Lon who besides being the son of Lon Chaney Sr. and giving the world the 1940s Wolfman, his career was pretty much on the downhill throughout the entire 1960s. At least one of his last movies was Spider Baby.

Mantan Moreland was known for his roles in many of the Monogram Poverty Row movies such as King of the Zombies. The scared black sidekick role which was pretty much the only role he could get at the time. By the mid 1950s, he was pretty much person non grata for what was considered his negative roles. It is pretty surprising for him to pop up in what is slightly more than a cameo to be the first victim in the "Spider" game.

Sid Haig is one of the character actors that no one knows unless they see him. He's more known over the past few years mainly thanks to Rob Zombie. In this movie, Sid doesn't talk he only grunts and sticks out his tongue. The 1970s had Sid as the villains lackey normally getting beaten by Pam Grier.

Take the Addam's Family mansion, paint it white and let it get decreipt, that's the Merry house. The Merry's are a definite a more realistic(no sword-swallowing, lighing cigars with fingers) and more psychotic version of the Addams. Picture the Leatherface family from Texas Chainsaw Massacre operating on an almost normal level excluding the breaks of murder and cannibalism.

This movie does have a kind of Lovecraftian feel. How many of his stories involved wealthy upper classes families slowly devolving over the generations? The feeling of a family paying for the sins of the father. Now many authors before him used that concept in their works from Nathaniel Hawthorne's House of the Seven Gables to Edgar Allan Poe's Fall of the House of Usher. Though Lovecraft was more interested in never really showing the face of his monsters. Even with as much detail as he put into the details of Cthulu and Dagon, they were never the real focus of his stories...Spider Baby shows us the Merry family monsters in all their black and white gory...I mean glory...

Quotable Dialogue
"I got a big fat bug in my spider web."
"Just because something isn't good, doesn't make it bad."
"Ralph.."
"It's dead. We don't eat dead things."
"I love the mummy."
"There's going to be a full moon tonight."
Morals of the Story
Humans can regress before the state of fetuses and become cannibals.
All kitches have secret passages.
Cat meat can be substituted for rabbit.
Children must kiss their mummified fathers goodnight.
Everyone who skulks in a house must be smoking.
A negillee is camoflauge.
Knifing jigsaw puzzle pieces makes the puzzle easier to solve.