Spider Baby (The Maddest Story Ever Told)




Released: 1964

MPAA Rating: No Rating

Genre: Psycho-thriller

Nuts and Bolts: The Merrye family suffers from a very strange malady. Due to the nature of their condition, their distant cousins challenge their rights to the Merrye estate. Pete and Emily Howe visit to inspect the property and become entangled in the most bizarre housewarming event ever!

Summary: Peter Howe describes the events that occurred to him a decade ago. But before he begins his story he explains how the Merrye family suffered from a bizarre condition so rare that it was actually named after them. Merrye Syndrome is a deterioration of the mind wherein those who suffer from it mentally de-age until they become little more than wild animals. Ultimately, physical deformities may occur.

We now flash backwards to the year 1954. A mailman rides his motorcycle to the old three-story Victorian Merrye House. He has a very important letter to deliver. No one answers the door when he knocks so the carrier pokes his head through an open window. He sees eighteen-year-old Virginia Merrye. Virginia rants and raves about playing spider games and throws a net overtop of the old man’s head. She then goes after him with a set of steak knives, stabbing him repeatedly. Slicing the man’s ear off, Virginia packs in a small box, which she keeps in a roll top desk. Her sister Elizabeth appears and chastises her harshly for the deed. Although both girls are in their teens, they have the mental aptitude of five-year-olds.

The Merrye chauffer Bruno (Lon Chaney Jr.) returns home to find the dead man’s remains. He scolds the girls for their misconduct and finds the letter that the mailman had been delivering. It’s from a lawyer named Schlocker who represents the Merrye’s distant cousins the Howes. The Howes are suing for the rights to Merrye House despite the fact that the late Titus W. Merrye left in trust to Bruno. At this time, we met Virginia and Elizabeth’s brother Ralph. Ralph is in the advanced stages of Merrye Syndrome and is almost completely retarded.

Bruno takes measures to get rid of the body. Entering through a secret panel within the house, he takes the corpse into the basement. The basement contains a large pit where the elder Merrye family members are housed. Aunt Clara, Aunt Martha and Uncle Ned are cannibalistic animals and must be kept under lock and key. The body is left to their devices and it is up to our imagination to decide what becomes of it.

Before long Peter and Emily Howe arrive at the house. Schlocker and his lovely assistant Ann Morris meet them at the front gate and Bruno invites them in. Peter is very amiable and has no real desirable to upset the Merrye family. Emily however detests the macabre in breeders and is only too willing to take their house from them. Despite Bruno’s protests, the Howes insist on spending the night at Merrye House. Bruno prepares a very lavish (albeit fucking WEIRD) meal for dinner. They are served a flame-broiled rabbit under glass as well as mushrooms and greens. Although the guests don’t realize it, the entrée is not rabbit but instead Virginia’s cat Winifred. Bruno proudly serves the bowl of mushrooms in which he claims that Virginia has an excellent talent for selecting ONLY the non-poisonous ones.

After dinner, Peter and Ann decide to go into town to have some fun. Emily decides to stay at the house, as does Schlocker. Schlocker believes that Bruno is trying to scare them away and he is determined to prove that the old chauffer is a fraud. Virginia goes upstairs into her father’s room to give him a kiss goodnight. Inside the room is a skeleton wearing pajamas. Virginia doesn’t seem to mind though and gives him a peck on his bony old cheek.

Emily goes up into her room and strips down to this sexy little black bra and garters number. Ralph climbs down the outside wall of the house and spies on Emily through the bedroom window.

Meanwhile, Schlocker is poking around throughout the house. Winding his way through a maze of stuffed animals (As in taxidermy not teddy bears), he eventually finds the severed ear that Virginia had hidden. But Liz and Virginia find him snooping around and stab him repeatedly with sharp weapons. They load him up on the dumbwaiter and send him down to the basement. Bruno discovers the girls’ indiscretion but takes it in stride. He tells the two that he needs to go into town to get them a present. He promises them that no one is going to take the girls or Ralph away from him.

At this point, Emily finally finds Ralph spying on her. She freaks out and races out of the house. All three Merrye children chase her into a nearby field. Liz and Virginia try to stab her with knives, but it is Ralph who finally takes her down.

Soon after, a heavily inebriated Peter and Ann return to the house. Elizabeth takes Ann upstairs while Virginia and Peter play ‘spider games’. Liz shows Ann the dead daddy just before Ralph wrestles her to the ground.

Virginia ties Peter up in a rocking chair with rope and netting. Believing that Virginia is merely playing one of her quirky games, he humors her and lets her tie him up. Virginia is just getting ready to carve him up when Elizabeth calls upon her for help. She needs her sister’s aid in keeping Ann quiet. She joins Elizabeth and Ralph in the cellar where they begin torturing Ann.

Surprisingly enough, Emily didn’t die out there in the woods. Completely crazed, she stumbles back to Merrye House and savagely attacks Ralph. During the melee she stumbles backwards is drawn into the pit by the depraved elder relatives.

At this point Bruno returns home. He has with him a crate of dynamite. He cheerily tells the girls that he is going to ‘make big lights and loud noises’. Peter manages to break free of his bonds, and Ann and he manage to escape from the house before Bruno blows it up sky high.

We now return to the present and we find that Peter and Ann have since married and raised a ten-year-old daughter named Jessica. Peter is proud of the fact that his side of the family is so distant that he does not carry the degenerative disease. Meanwhile, Jessica goes outside to play with a spider.

Acting/Dialogue: The acting and dialogue are really well done in this. Even Lon Chaney (Who I’m not a big fan of) comes off really strong in this movie. Sid Haig is downright nasty as the malformed retard Ralph. Beverly Washburn (Whom I’ve had the chance to meet once) is disturbing as the child-like Elizabeth and Quinn Redecker and Carol Ohmart really do great jobs as Peter and Emily Howe. But the real show stopper is without a doubt Jill Banner who plays the demented younger sister Virginia. She is alluring and frightening all at the same time. She prances about crouched over with two kitchen knives ready to slice you to ribbons. But she’s never angry about it. Instead, she issues a sweet-as-candy smile even when she’s ready to slice your ear off. I can’t say enough about Banner’s performance. At eighteen-years-old this actress pulled off a performance, which truly IS award-worthy material.

Gore: We have a severed ear. That’s about it. Ears to you, folks!

Guilty Pleasures: There’s no nudity, but don’t worry. Carol Ohmart running around in that black underwear get-up is enough to satisfy.

The Good: I was so overwhelmingly impressed with this film it goes beyond words. It succeeds in being intimately disturbing and darkly comedic all at the same time. We have a family that is even more dysfunctional than the Munsters and yet they are as zany as the Adaams. I love how Bruno barely bats an eye when he finds the earless mailman hanging outside the front window. It makes you wonder how many others have fallen victim to the Merrye girls. Sid Haig is fucking creepy as Ralph. This weirdo has no speaking lines but he is often seen either gnawing on animals or riding up and down on the dumbwaiter. If he’s this fucking eerie in this flick, I can’t WAIT to see what he’ll be like in House of 1000 corpses.

The house itself is quite extraordinary. A three story Victorian home nestled on a windswept hill, it’s like something straight out of a Dickens novel. The interior hints at a strong family fortune but it is easy to see how it has fallen into disrepair over the years. Stuffed owls adorn the walls and cobwebs hang off of every corner.

The dinner scene is what really establishes this movie as a half-ass comedy. From the moment we see Bruno unveil the roasted cat to the point where Schockler crushes a spider on the dinner table we are treated to some of the most bizarre antics this side of the Donner party.

The music featured throughout is quite impressive as well. In the opening title theme we are treated to this interesting little upbeat ditty accompanied by some Vincent Price inspired poetry. There are some pretty smooth blues riffs that crop up here and there and every once in a while we hear a strained slowed down version of Itsy Bitsy Spider. Lets face it, Itsy Bitsy Spider is just a creepy fucking tune no matter HOW it’s played.

Spider Baby may not be everybody’s cup of tea, but this has quickly become one of my favorite films. So while others may disagree with my overall rating, I’m going to give this one a pretty fair shake. I think everyone should treat themselves to this inanely humorous cult classic.

The Bad: I didn’t really care for the ending too much. I suppose it made sense for Bruno to blow the family up, but at the same time it seemed as if lazy writing led to a rushed climax.  Mostly because we never really got to see the disfigured oldies cowering in the basement. There’s a quick shot of them right at the end, and I greatly appreciate it. But I really would have liked to see them in action one last time before they got blown into kibble.

Now although I enjoyed the dinner sequence, I do believe it ran a tad too long. We have already been shown that this is a house of freaks. We didn’t really need the extended scenes showing them serving fucked up food and whatnot. I think the director really let this scene get away from him because the comedy seemed to override the drama.

There’s a pretty funny blooper I noticed in the beginning. During the scene where the Howes pull up to the Merrye House, Peter rolls the window to his car up. In the reflection of the glass we can clearly see one of the production crewmembers standing in front of the car.

Great Lines:

“Please treat the children tactfully. You see, they’re not accustomed to strangers and…they may act wild if encouraged.”  --Bruno warning Emily about Elizabeth and Virginia.

“Ralph! Ralphralphralphralphralphralph!”  --Virginia calling for her brother.

“There’s going to be a full moon tonight.”  --Lon Chaney Jr. says this after Ann makes reference to her love for the movie The Wolf Man. As Chaney played the title character in that particular gem, I find it ironically hysterical that he should say this particular line of dialogue in this film.

“She has to tease him…to wound him and make him wiggle. So that his juice will taste better.”  --Virginia says this to Peter as she describes the rules of her spider game. Maybe I’m just a sick whacko, but this scene really turned me on.

Overall Rating: 8 out of 10 severed heads.
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