The Spider (1958)

Truly Dreadful Film

Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Good start, but then it gets ruined

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

Near the small town of River Falls, a bird spider that's grown to enormous proportions is discovered inside a mountain cave. It's supposedly killed by the authorities, and taken to a temporary holding spot in a high school gym in preparation for transportation elsewhere. Wouldn't you know it: the beast hears the strains of some groovy rock 'n' roll and comes back to life! Among the intrepid heroes who must destroy the monster for good are the local sheriff (Gene Roth) and know-it-all science teacher Art Kingman (Ed Kemmer).Considered by some to be one of director Bert I. Gordons' best "giant thing on the loose" sci-fi thrillers, "Earth vs the Spider" benefits from a fairly snappy pace, and special effects that aren't TOO, too bad. Even though his character should know that spiders are arachnids and not insects, Kemmer is a decent enough lead. Roth is an absolute hoot as the lawman who is understandably skeptical of the idea of a giant spider. Eugene Persson and June Kenney are reasonably engaging as the kids who get themselves into tons of trouble by heading back to the caves to retrieve a bracelet. Hal Torey is good as Perssons' dad, as are Jack Kosslyn as Mr. Fraser, June Jocelyn as Kenney's mom, and Hank Patterson as Hugo the janitor. The eight legged menace is appropriately creepy, and it's amusing that these filmmakers have the thing screaming like a banshee.One effective, unnerving touch is to see two dead bodies that are victims of the creature. And another is a tracking shot that shows some of the devastation wrought by our villain, ending on a crying child.After this, Mr. B.I.G. wouldn't make another special effects, size oriented picture for several years, until he made "Village of the Giants". The man sure knew how to promote himself: posters for his past work can be seen at a theatre.Seven out of 10.

I wasn't really expecting too much from this, but compared to some of the "monster" movies made in the 1950's, this one actually stands up pretty well. To state the obvious strong points, there's a good opening as a guy is attacked by some unseen creature while driving along a highway one night, and given the limitations of special effects in the era, the spider scenes are quite well done, using for the most part shots of what seems to be a real tarantula superimposed over miniatures or backgrounds, and creating decent enough shots. According to the opening credits, the film also used Carlsbad Caverns for at least some of its photography (and perhaps some of its location shooting?) and that gave the cave setting a very realistic, claustrophobic atmosphere, which was effectively used in creating suspense. I also appreciated the fact that there was never really any attempt to explain the giant spider. I was half-expecting all the way through a typical 50's "radiation caused a mutation" theory, but it seemed to be just accepted that this was a strangely giant spider, with no real attempt to explain its size, which in some ways made this creepier.Now, this is certainly not perfect. I became very concerned about what the quality of the acting would be like early on as I listened to Ed Kemmer (playing high school science teacher Kingman) speaking to his class about electricity. He sounded completely artificial - like the monotone narrators of those science documentaries that are often shown in schools (at least when I was a kid.) Kemmer seemed to get better as the movie went along, but June Kenney as Carol also fell into that "artificial-sounding" trap on occasion. It also seemed to me that these high school students (Carol and especially Joe, whose car keeps getting borrowed) seemed too old to be easily accepted as high school students. The title also seems a bit overblown. "The Earth" was never really in on this fight - it seemed to be just the folks in River Falls, and they couldn't even get through to the state capital! Basically, though, this is an enjoyable and pretty well made movie. 7/10

To begin with, I have to wonder whether Universal ever brought charges of plagiarism against this film in view of their own superior take on the 'giant spider' theme i.e. TARANTULA (1955); the title, then, ripped off Columbia's solid alien invasion movie EARTH VS. THE FLYING SAUCERS (1956)! All of which suggests this was a pure exploitation flick aimed at teenagers (even incorporating a rock'n'roll number at one point) and, on that level, it is not too bad – being also thankfully brief at just 73 minutes – though clearly offering nothing we have not seen before! The Carlsbad caves used for a good part of the duration supply an ideal otherworldly backdrop, even if the special effects involving the spider itself are less successful (the spider often changes color from dark black to light grey!); the wizened make-up created for the blood-drained victims is rather creepy, however. One thing which can be said about Bert I. Gordon is that he was a shrewd promoter and, to be sure, two of his other horror/sci-fi efforts get namechecked here, namely THE AMAZING COLOSSAL MAN (1957) and ATTACK OF THE PUPPET PEOPLE (1958) – both of which, as it happens, I have acquired in time to be viewed this Halloween (along with three more of the director's work within the genre)

Really bad film. The acting is okay, but the plot is very thin.One of the teenagers looks to be forty. A giant tarantula lives in a cave. How did it get so big? No answer given. The special effects were very lame. The spider's web was just a rope net - crisscross square pattern - nothing like a spider's web. The spider kept making noises like a mountain lion. The spider kept changing sizes. One minute, it's larger than a two story house; then it's ten feet long. The corpses that had their juices sucked out by the spider resembled aliens - big white heads, huge almond-shaped eyes. Dumb. Spraying copious amounts of DDT into a cave, more than ten times the industrial strength, and nobody so much as rubs their nose. An unresolved scene where a crying,bloodied toddler walks past a car wreck in the wake of the spider's rampage. Unresolved, needlessly disturbing. The spider's shots were almost all live action shots of a real tarantula. The film never showed the spider killing anyone - all inferred. Cheap, unimaginitive production. The velveeta of cheesy films.