Jayne Mansfield always reminds me of summer, as strange as that sounds. Perhaps it’s all the photos of the smiling, phosphorescent leggy blonde in bikinis, often lounging by a pool, sunning herself, sultry and white-hot in the bright sunlight. Jayne Mansfield is the summer of Americana, of bygone eras that always appear glamorous in photos, always feel nostalgic despite whatever reality they actually inhabited. Vacationers lingering by pools, by lakes; the heady smell of newly cut grass, of hot dogs and hamburgers grilling, of ice cream pops dispensed from musical trucks; lazy days that stretch on and on, skies at dusk fading to a burnt-orange color. All around the sound of kids shouting and laughing, adults drinking and talking until it was dark.
This is the history that is exhumed, minus the racial chasm, the gangsters, the junkies, the crooked politicians, all of the foriegn entanglements—shot through the lens of a movie camera. Mansfield was certainly part of that; the American movie-of-the-mind, a summer drive-in double feature of sand and sun and the and good-looking young men and women dancing to transistor radios blasting static-ridden bubblegum pop.
But then there is the flipside: her often bizzare later career which spawned such tacky treasures as The Wild, Wild World of Jayne Mansfield (1968), and her terribly sad death in a car crash that killed nearly everyone aboard. This is the dark side of my associations of Jayne Mansfield. I cannot help but imagine that car accident when I think of Mansfield, the lurid details not only played out in the tabloids, but immortalized in film maker Kenneth Anger’s tell-all book of the dark underbelly of Hollywood, Hollywood Babylon. Much of the book is wholly imagined of course–amplified rumors and innuendo, or out-right lies, but these are the details that stick, the images that remain, the hot-bed of a public’s collective memory. This is the evil twin of the cotton-candy nostalgia: the awful, turgid realities that are twisted and distorted for the bizarre glee of an audience wanting all of the dirt on people who seem larger-than-life.
Still, Mansfield occupied a certain space, along with her “blonde-bombshell” counterpart, Marilyn Monroe, in the American landscape. Monroe mixed sexuality with innocence, but Mansfield was all raw sexuality. She was uninhibited and wild; she held nothing back, or so it seemed. Surely Monroe has posed by enough pools, retained that same sun-kissed glow of summer, but somehow Mansfield has become indelibly linked to all of those thoughts of summer, remaining somewhere in the back of my mind.
She lingers in black and white, sometimes in color, a woman who symbolized a nation’s new-found sexuality, bubbling with optimism, the sun as bright and intense as her short-lived career.
“Movies are a magician’s forge, they allow you to build a story with your hands… at least, that’s what it means to me. What attracts me in movies is to be presented with a problem and be able to solve it. Nothing else; just to create an illusion, and effect, with almost nothing” —Mario Bava
Director Mario Bava’s stylistic influence on 60s Italian cinema—particularly the Giallo genre—goes without saying. His singular vision was always evident, no matter what genre he was working within. Often taking what could have been fairly pedestrian story material, and—with limited budgets—Bava created worlds that you can fall into; mysterious, often dangerous worlds. His films have a staged feeling, and maybe that’s the point; clearly atmosphere and mood are paramount concerns—and why should’nt they be? Film is, after all, a visual medium, and like another visually minded-director—David Lynch—Bava fashions dream-like worlds that tap into the primal, the visceral.
Certainly, as a result of Brava’s initial work as a cinematographer, his shots are always impeccably composed, and fascinating to examine as single images…
Jack Davis, like the other Mad artists, was a jack of all trades. Not only did he produce a wealth of outstanding comic book material, but he also did quite a bit of other freelance work. Ads, album covers and probably most notable of all, movie posters. During the 60s and 70s, Jack Davis illustrated dozens of movie posters and his work is some of the most iconic, hilarious and visually stunning work in movie history. You can’t mistake a Jack Davis movie poster. Besides his signature style and caricature work, Davis designed posters that were overflowing with life, an anarchistic bent that made it impossible to take in all at once. Scenes and characters from the films filled the composition, pushing into the white boarders. The wackier the movie, the better reference for Davis. His poster for Stanley Kramer’s It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963) might be his most famous: dozens of characters from the movie spilling forth from the cracked Earth globe, wrapping their way madly above the type face. It’s staggering to look at because, well, there is simply so much to look at. But it all works. The image may seem out of control, but the layout and composition isn’t. Another great example is Woody Allen’s Bananas (1971). Besides the dead-on caricature of Allen, Davis is able to sum up the entire film in a single illustration. Forget a trailer, I would rather have Jack Davis’ poster. Even when the film is utterly forgettable, Jack Davis’ art is not. It’s so fun and full of chaos, that sometimes the poster gives the film more credit than it deserves.
The Bates Motel Sign; the house on the hill; a swirling shower drain; Norman Bate’s tortured visage; Bernard Herrmann’s score. All of these images and sounds have become iconic, woven into the popular lexicon, so unmistakable, even without context. If by sheer dumb luck you have never seen Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960), you are likely to be familiar with some aspect of this film. (Like the theme for Jaws, Bernard Herrmann’s theme for Psycho is forever entwined with the action it’s amplifying.) This month Psycho hits the 50 mark, and despite many shallow imitations, a few sequels, a remake, and many, many movies attempting to tap into the sheer audacity and precision of its filmmaking, Psycho still retains the power to shock, even in contrast with the best modern horror picture. Perhaps, it’s that Psycho taps directly into the heart of the movie-going experience: voyeurism at its base level. We seek entry into other worlds, other lives, from the safety of the theater seat or living room couch. Norman is fellow who likes to watch, and the audience, in turn, becomes an accessory to this act, implicated— in a strange, passive way—in its fallout.
For better or worse it remains Alfred Hitchcock’smost famous film, which, in and of itself, is astounding considering the sheer number of influential and ground breaking works Hitchcock directed over his prolific career.
Happy Birthday, Psycho, you don’t look a day over 50.
There’s something wonderfully fatalistic in the oeuvre of Catherine Deneuve. Even in the more optimistic of her film work—TheUmbrella’s of Cherbourg (1964) for example—there is always the threat of ruin, that her steely resolve will somehow dissolve, fade away as the final credits roll. It’s that filmic resolve that sometimes gets labeled as “emotionally distant”, which is wholly unfair and misses the point of her amazing abilities as an actress. On the contrary, she has an extraordinary range, both when playing a character and in her choice of roles. From the emotionally fragile woman slowly coming undone in Roman Polanski’s Repulsion (1965), to an actress and theatre director in Nazi occupied France in François Truffaut’s The Last Metro (1980), to an aging vampire, of all things, in Tony Scott’s The Hunger (1983), Denevue is describing emotional wreckage that is more subtle, less overtly traumatic.
And then there is her work with director Luis Buñuel: Belle de Jour(1967) and Tristana(1970), a pair of films that, quite succinctly, encapsulate that range previously spoke of. The bored housewife of Belle Je Jour is certainly the most famous, but it is her turn as the optimistic orphan girl turned calculating woman in Tristana that is the weightier, the more deeply resonate of the two.
It is the elegance, and, OK, here comes that word, timelessness, of Catherine Deneuve that leads me to compare her with other actresses like Grace Kelly and Isabella Rossellini; that indefinable charm that far exceeds pure beauty, that makes her films endlessly watchable.
These days, short film ads are fairly ubiquitous. You know the sort: an ad disguised as a short film—which usually follows or precedes an ad about the same product— and presented as a story with characters and plot all wrapped around a-not-so cleverly hidden product placement.
Well, it seems David Lynch has jumped into this particular fray with obvious relish. The results are really intriguing, and certainly the best of this genre of advertisement. Lynch is not new to the world of ads. He has done spots for coffee and perfume in past years, always with his particular cinematic eye, and this series of short film ads for Dior’s new line of handbags called LadyDior, are no exception. True, the product placement is utterly blatant (it always is), but it’s done in a way that is funny and silly, with that sort of offbeat, Lynchian perspective. The ads themselves are Lynch through and through; from the writing to the lighting and music, David Lynch has been given free rein to do what he does best. And the very hands on nature of these ads harkens back to his earliest short films and first feature; he not only writes and directs the pieces, but he works the camera, edits, writes music and does sound mixing. It’s all very beautiful and mysterious, and you almost forget that it’s an ad for a handbag, which I guess defeats the purpose in way.
Directors: Albert Zugsmith, Richard E. Cunha, Ray Nazarro, Gustav Gavrin
“If you’re going to do something wrong, do it big, because the punishment is the same either way.” Jayne Mansfield
The name Jayne Mansfield carries a lot of baggage. Like Sharon Tate, Jayne Mansfield conjures more than simply an actress that never reached her full potential, but the way in which she died. In the case of Mansfield, the gruesome circumstances of her death are much more the fodder of urban myth than anything cemented in reality. At age 34, Mansfield was in a rear end car collision that killed all of the passengers in the front seat, including herself. While she sustained significant head trauma, she was not decapitated as tabloids would report. Regardless of the circumstances, it was a sad end to Jane Mansfield and a career that was peppered with highs and lows. Mansfield had a run of really great starring roles, Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (1957), Kiss Them For Me (1957) and Promises! Promises! (1963) among them.
Dog Eat Dog was one of the last films Mansfield made, one among a handful of b-movies like The Fat Spy (1966) and Las Vegas Hillbillies (1966). Good parts in mainstream Hollywood roles were evaporating and Mansfield began doing more live performances, as well launching a series of publicity stunts to stay in the public’s mind (who can forget the series of photographs depicting a horrified Sophia Loren staring at Mansfield’s cleavage spilling out from the top her form-fitting dress). In fact three of her final films were documentaries that followed her (among other stars) around, filming all manner of bra malfunctions and live performances: Spree (1967), Mondo Hollywood (1967) and the Wild, Wild World of Jayne Mansfield (1968).
Make no mistake, Dog Eat Dog is a terrible film. The acting is uniformly awful, the pedestrian caper plot is endlessly side-tracked and strangely convoluted. The fact that four directors were behind the lens of this picture probably didn’t help make the film feel as if it were one cohesive vision. Yet, there are scenes that are so weird, so baffling, and so funny in spite of themselves, that Dog Eat Dog is oddly alluring. Clichés about not being able to look away from a car wreck aside, there really is a compulsive element at work here. Like the worst junk food, B-movies have a way of making us stick around until the last gut-busting, calorie-killing bite and Dog Eat Dog is no exception.
To be honest, what pulled me into this death-trap of movie was the opening shot; Jayne Mansfield dressed in a baby doll nightie rolling around in a bed filled with falling money. It’s an amazing shot; over-sexed, over-campy, over-the-top ridiculous. Afterall, these are the traits that all good B-movies should have: an exploitative, no-nonsense grab at the audience’s attention by any means necessary.
Dog Eat Dog surprisingly enough has many of these moments. Utterly bizarre moments that do indeed catch your attention. Just before you’re about to eject this movie from your life for good, something else unexpected happens, some other unhinged character emerges that makes you stop, dead in your tracks. The dialogue is another unpredictable part of the equation. It’s hard to know if the script was written on purpose, or if it’s simply a weird, wonderful accident that many of the lines are so funny. Who could forget Darlene’s predilection for the word “crackers” which she punctuates the beginning of any sentence with (“Crackers, you’re cute!”).
Jayne Mansfield plays Darlene, the bubbly moll of an unbalanced gangster named Dolph Kostis played by character actor Ivor Salter, who laughs constantly, at everything. It’s annoying at first, then quickly becomes disturbing, a menacing cackle that carries throughout the film, infecting other characters. Kotis, along with his partner Lylle Corbett (Cameron Mitchell ) have stolen $1 million in cash that is supposed to be heading to the Treasury Department. But Kotis apparently wants the money all for himself, and at the opening of the movie attempts to kill Corbett by running him over (a scene underpinned by a lively jazz score and Kotis’ not-stop laughter).
Kotis and Darlene escape to their hideout, a strange hotel/villa on an apparently deserted island in the Mediterranean. We soon discover that Corbett is still alive, although badly beaten and has somehow trailed the pair to the island. Corbett is clearly looking for revenge, as well as his share of the rest of the loot. Meanwhile we are introduced to even more deranged characters: hotel manager, Morelli (Aldo Camarada) and his ruthless sister, Sandra (Dody Heath); Madame Benoit (Isa Miranda) a woman who is living out her remaining years on the island and her butler, Janis. Then the situation really spirals out of control; Kotis is found dead in a goldfish pond, Morelli and Jannis are killed and the stolen money vanishes (we later find out that Sandra has taken the money and hidden it on herself, beneath her negligee, making a sort of money dress).
This over-heated series of events does have a bright spot in Cameron Mitchell; as the movie ambles along, he becomes increasingly unbalanced, sweaty and bloodied, his insane on-going laughter transferred from the late Kotis Mitchell. Darlene has by now shifted her affections to Mitchell, the stolen money still paramount to her motivation.
In a ridiculous final shoot-out/chase scene near the sea, Sandra and Corbett wrestle each other for the money as it falls from Sandra’s money dress, both drowning as they do so (this mirrors, in some respect, Darlene rolling sensually in the same cash at the beginning of the film). Darlene witnesses the struggle and decides to wade in after them and the cash, screaming “Wait for baby!” as the credits roll.
Based on a novel by Robert Bloomfield called, When Strangers Meet and filmed in Yugoslavia, the film was helmed by four directors, perhaps the reason for this cinematic mess. Albert Zugsmith, wrote and produced Sappho Darling (1968), as well as Sex Kittens Go To College, while Richard E. Cunha directed Frankenstein’s Daughter (1958) and She Demons (1958), which gives you a hint at Dog Eat Dog‘s pedigree, so to speak.
It’s difficult to actually recommend Dog Eat Dog—especially to a fan of Jayne Mansfield—when there are better films that she starred in, films that would probably be worth their time. Mansfield doesn’t so much act as employee her vapid sex kitten routine; it’s all autopilot for her, but then again it’s the same for the other actors in the film. Yet there are those certain moments, strange, funny, curious moments, that populate this casualty of a movie, that you almost forgive the rest of the film for its transgressions. Almost.
In the illuminating collections of essays, Conversations with Woody Allen (2007) by New York Times and Vanity Fair writer, Eric Lax, Woody Allen discusses being at a sort of crossroads upon the completion of his film Sleeper (1973). He wants to do a departure film, what he refers to as a “real-person film”. In other words, a movie that does not propel the characters forward with the use of a plot based on a silly or “flamboyant” idea. He wanted the characters to exist organically, to deal with relationships and real conflicts that arise from those relationships. At the time he was working on three ideas, one of which would eventually become Annie Hall (1977)(his first film to eventually win four Academy Awards, including Best Director and Best Picture). The other was an earlier version of Annie Hall, which would resurface decades later as Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993), and the third, his Napoleonic farce, Love and Death, which would be made first.
It is interesting to note that Allen was truly struggling with his ideas at this point. He wasn’t sure that his established audience would respond positively to either Annie Hall, the relationship picture or Love and Death, the flamboyant picture. Even though Love and Death shared many of the same obvious qualities as his other “straight” comedies, it also signaled that Allen was no longer content being a stand-up comedian and writer turned director, that he wanted to be known as a filmmaker. For these reasons, among many others, Love and Death should be viewed as an important film in the Allen canon, its impact on everything that followed even more important than that of its follow-up, Annie Hall.
First and foremost, Love and Death is a funny film. Really funny. Probably the funniest of Allen’s “early, funny movies”. It has the same surreal slapstick and rapid fire dialogue of previous pictures like Take the Money and Run (1969), Bananas (1971), Play It Again, Sam (1972), andSleeper (1973), shot through keen satire–a send-up of Russian novels (if that was possible) and of period pieces. It’s Woody Allen doing some of his best Woody Allen shtick: awkward, over-sexed, philosophically astute, oozing false bravado, cowardly—loveably so. Indeed, Love and Death is a showcase of some of Woody Allen’s best comedic material. The film is endlessly quotable. By Allen’s own admission it’s him doing his impersonation of Bob Hope. It is his deep admiration of Bob Hope, of his delivery, of his self-effacing comedy, that influenced so many of his early films. And yet, this persona, the Allen persona, is so deeply ingrained in the history of cinema, to the point that it has ceased to be mere homage, that it really has become its own character, and, consequently, you have other actors trying to do their own “Woody Allen” (i.e. Edward Norton in Everyone Says I Love You (1996)). It’s Bob Hope three times removed.
And there are still other influences as work here; Groucho Marx and the Marx Brothers to be sure, and Ingmar Bergman, particularly Seventh Seal and Persona. Dostoevsky goes without saying. Allen lovingly embraces all of these seemingly disparate elements, re-imaging them into something that can only be the work of Woody Allen.
True to form, the opening of Love and Death is a monologue of the main character Boris Grushenko’s (Woody Allen) life growing up in Russia. We meet his family, consisting, by his own estimation, mostly of idiots and eccentrics. Boris eventually becomes a scholar in adulthood, who is more of a coward than pacifist, and is forced to enlist in the Russian army once Napoleon invades Russia. He is devastated to learn that his cousin, with whom he is in love/obsessed with, Sonja (Keaton), is about to marry a herring merchant who he feels is beneath him intellectually speaking. Boris, of course, is a disaster as a soldier, and it is only after accidently falling into a canon then shot into a tent containing a horde of French generals who he inadvertently kills, that he is viewed as a national hero.
Upon returning from battle, Boris pleads with Sonja to marry him. Sonja finally gives into Boris when she thinks he might be killed in a duel. Much to her chagrin, Boris survives, through dumb luck again, and they are married. But their subsequent life together is dull in comparison to the fields of battle. It is also marriage devoid of money. They spend their days contemplating all manner of human existence. Later, convinced that Napoleon’s invasion deeper into Russia will disrupt their attempt at having a family, Sonja and Boris concoct a plot to assassinate Napoleon (James Tolkan).
After an absurd and hilarious series of events leading up to Napoleon’s attempted assassination, Boris and Sonja are unable to go through with their plan, both laboring over the moral impact of killing another human being, even someone like Napoleon. After a long, anguished contemplation, an assassin, hiding in a closet, kills Napoleon. French soldiers happen upon the scene, and assume, naturally, that Boris is the killer and he is hauled off to jail. While awaiting execution in prison an angel arrives claiming that he will save Boris from the firing squad, which has Boris questioning his own atheism (an Allen hallmark). But when he is executed without interference, Boris is again thrown into a philosophical quandary, even after he is dead.
In many ways Love and Death lays the groundwork of the prolific auteur that would follow. The camera work and lighting is decidedly more artful than his previous films. The warm rich, colors provided by cinematographer Ghislain Cloquetset highlight the elegant set decoration. As a period piece, Love and Death demanded location shooting, which removed Allen from his comfort zone of New York.
Love and Death also marks the beginning of a decade’s long wrestling match with philosophy of all sorts; there had been hints of it here and there, but in this film in particular, Allen embraces his own love/distrust of philosophy fully and completely; matching his predilection for slapstick with more serious pursuits. He’s just starting to get to the meat of the matter and it’s both thrilling and hilarious to watch.
His admiration of Ingmar Bergman, which would manifest as direct homage two films later with Interiors, is alluded to in the ending of Love and Death, albeit a little more playfully with a direct parody of Bergman’s Persona (1966). In the final scene of the film, Allen can no longer avoid the specter of death, and is ushered off into the afterlife by a Grim Reaper that has a close resemblance to the one in the Seventh Seal.
And then there’s Diane Keaton. These early Allen films would have not been the same without her (who could imagine any other person in the role of Annie Hall—well OK, maybe that’s a hard argument to make given that Diane Keaton was the actress, still, it’s difficult to imagine). More than any other actress that has starred opposite of Allen over the years, Keaton is someone who can go toe to toe with Mr. Misanthrope. Keaton’s comedic timing is undeniable and her mannerisms, so distinct, so funny to watch, have been the blueprint for other comedic actresses like Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Meg Ryan (Sally in When Harry Met Sally is a terribly adept homage to Diane Keaton, especially the Keaton of Annie Hall).
Annie Hall was the film that would put Keaton on the map, and certainly Allen as well, not just as a comedic actor writer and director, but as a more serious, finely honed filmmaker, who’s skills would only continue to flourish, especially with the film that followed Annie Hall, Interiors. But it is Love and Death where they are at their most playful, their most charming. They are exciting to watch as on on-screen comedic couple. As with Burns and Allen or Tracy and Hepburn, the chemistry is undeniable. The dialogue crackles. The pacing is relentless. The script is studded with great lines, gems of every sort:
Boris: Sonja, are you scared of dying? Sonja: Scared is the wrong word. I’m frightened of it. Boris: That’s an interesting distinction.
And this:
Boris: Nothingness… non-existence… black emptiness… Sonja: What did you say? Boris: Oh, I was just planning my future.
Then there’s this wonderful exchange between Napoleon, Boris and Sonja which recalls a Marx Brothers routine:
Napoleon: This is an honor for me. Boris: No, it’s a greater honor for me. Napoleon: No, a greater honor for me. Boris: No, it’s a greater honor for me. Napoleon: No, a greater honor for ME. Boris: Well, perhaps you’re right. Perhaps it IS a greater honor for you. Napoleon: And you must be Don Francisco’s sister. Sonja: No, you must be Don Francisco’s sister. Napoleon: No, you must be Don Francisco’s sister. Sonja: No, you must be Don Francisco’s sister. Boris: No, it’s a greater honor for me. Napoleon: I see our Spanish guests have a sense of humor. Boris: She’s a great kidder. Sonja: No, you’re a great kidder. Boris: No, you’re Don Francisco’s sister.
Along the way, there are many discussions about love and life, death and the after life, the nature of reason, Allen and Keaton forever cracking-wise about all of these, sharp one-liners layered upon more sharp one-liners; the effect heady, a dizzy concoction that never lets up, that practically begs for repeated viewings. There’s simply no way to take in all of these verbal and visual gags in one sitting.
Love and Death is a significant film. It is the work of a comedy genius but it also represents a filmmaker on the verge of even greater works of cinema. It is Allen doing his best Bob Hope, but it is also Allen doing his best Bergman, the results totally and utterly his own. It is the culmination of a partnership with Diane Keaton that would result in Annie Hall, that would mark him, finally, as a filmmaker, as an auteur, as someone who could be compared against his heroes Bergman, Fellini and Renoir.
Spider Baby, Or The Maddest Story Ever Told (1968)*
Director: Jack Hill
It’s odd that I often forget how much I enjoy Jack Hill’s 1968 film, Spider Baby until I see it again. Years elapse and somehow I am able to disregard my own admiration for it. Well, maybe it’s not odd as much as an interesting phenomenon, really. Similarly there are those albums, only after returning to years and years later, that I am reminded how great they really are (The Wedding Present’s Bizzaro is one of those albums ( how on Earth could I forget how jaw-droppingly amazing that album is?)). I can only assume that the same thing is happening here.
Spider Baby is considered a “cult classic” (whatever the hell that means anymore), yet it’s rarely spoken about in the same company as the standard bearers of that classification of film. El Topo (1970), Pink Flamingos (1972), Eraserhead (1977), these are the midnight movies that readily come to mind. Of course, all three of these have a certain amount of shock value to them, something that clamors for your attention, whereas Spider Baby is much more reserved. Many aspects are alluded to rather than explicitly spelled out. Had it been made in the 1970s, it very well might have been a different picture, perhaps a gorier one, and maybe not as funny, if at all. It is indeed a black comedy, and it is its humor that sets it apart from many other b-movies, low-rent pictures of its day. Rather than being funny in an off-handed way—because the script is terrible, the acting third-rate—the humor is actually intentional, which makes the ways in which the more disturbing aspects of the film are delivered, even more unsettling.
Take for instance the opening to Spider Baby or, The Maddest Story Ever Told (as it’s also known by its longer title). It’s one of those scenes that make you laugh and cringe at the same time. It’s not that it’s awful or silly or stupid (I guess it may very well be all of those things to a degree) but it is unflinching and funny all at once. A hapless delivery man dressed like a Maytag repair man stumbles upon a rural mansion (driving a delivery truck that looks like a design for a contraption from a Hanna Barbera cartoon) that seems to be deserted. After approaching the house on the hill, the delivery man finds an open window which he, unfortunately, decides to poke his head through. The window slams shut and he is trapped. A young woman, Virginia (Jill Banner), appears in the living room carrying two knives, cackling about trapping “a big bug in her spider web”. There’s hardly any gore and no blood, but the scene is creepy nonetheless, mostly because of Virginia and her bizarre dance which precedes the kill. Cut into the scene is a shot from the exterior of the house—the delivery man’s legs wiggling about—which injects the events with a certain amount of slapstick.
This sort of juxtaposition occurs frequently throughout Spider Baby. There is a compulsion to laugh, but the events that unfold are so strange, so grim, laughing makes it all the more uncomfortable.
Lon Chaney, Jr. stars as Bruno who acts as the chauffeur and the guardian to the three Merrye children that live at the mansion: Virginia, Ralph (Sid Haig), and Elizabeth (Beverly Washburn), who all suffer from “Merrye Syndrome”, named after the Merrye family, a genetic disorder that causes its victims to regress mentally (this is all set up in the opening scene of the movie in which the entire movie unfolds as a flashback).
Bruno attempts to protect the children from the outside world as well as keeping the shocking history of the deranged family a secret. Of the three children that Bruno protects, Virginia and Ralph are the most peculiar. Virginia, nicknamed Spider Baby, has a fascination with spiders and relates any mundane task of daily existence with that of a spider; other people are simply giant bugs to catch in her giant web, especially outsiders. Ralph is a man-child with a sexual appetite that eventually grows to uncontrollable proportions toward the end of the film. Elizabeth seems to be the most “together” of the three, with less obvious quirks, if that can be said of a clan of lunatics.
Soon, two long-lost relatives Peter Howe (Quinn Redeker) and Emily Howe (Carol Ohmart) emerge from the past to take possession of the estate (which looks oddly similar to the set of the Munsters). They decide to stay at the mansion with their smarmy lawyer and his buxom secretary. This misguided decision unleashes a series of bizarre events, culminating in the apparent “dinner course” that is made out of the lawyer by several aunts and uncles that live in the basement of the mansion.
In the end, Bruno blows up the house with a stick of dynamite after deciding that events have spun out of control and that the Merrye clan must be destroyed for good. Peter and Emily are the only two to escape, and, as the film ends, to Peter finishing the whole sordid tale, we discover that he and Emily are now flush with money, thanks to the estate, and have a daughter. In the final scene of the film, we discover that the daughter has a peculiar fascination with spiders. Does this leave the door open for a Spider Baby 2? One can hope.
In some ways Spider Baby seems to foreshadow other movies about families of lunatics:The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974),The Hills Have Eyes (1977) and House of 1000 Corpses (2003) (which, coincidently (or maybe not), also stars a much older Sid Heig as Captain Spaulding). However, that’s where the similarities end. The former are all clearly exploitation films, whereas Spider Baby is not. And even though The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, The Hills Have Eyes and House of 1000 Corpses all have some sort of blackly humorous thread, it is fairly inconsequential to the main plot of the movies.
But because of the time in which Spider Baby was made, and possibly because of Jack Hill’s sensibilities as a director, the film seems to dwell somewhere on the borderlands of horror. It is planted in the gene to be sure, but it also has a touch of the surreal—nothing like Buñuel or Cocteau— but in some ways it feels, for lack of a better term, Lynchian. Of course, this is a label that gets thrown around a good deal and is often not even applicable, but in this case it seems appropriate (true, Spider Baby predates David Lynch’s film work by almost a decade). There is the black humor, often emerging at the oddest times; the characters, sometimes cartoonish in their motivations and development; undertones of sex and eroticism which drives the plot as well as the characters; and the overall mood, the very tone of the film that is set by the music, the lighting, the placement of the camera. Spider Baby has all of these elements in spades; from its macabre version of a UPA cartoon opening credit sequence, to the two sisters–Virginia and Elizabeth–and their twisted sex appeal, Jack Hill creates something that really is Lynchian in its sensibilities.
Jack Hill made other horror films during his career, most of which were standard fare, nothing as intriguing as Spider Baby. Most notably, he directed the seminal blaxploitation films Coffy (1973) and Foxy Brown (1974). He also directed the film Switchblade Sisters, which is often credited as the catalyst of the women in prison genre (even though this film is now seen as one of the highlights of his career, it was a box-office bomb at the time). These are the films which Jack Hill is known best for, but Spider Baby is his most likeable creation, if that’s even possible for a film about a family of cannibals.
Begun in the summer of 1963 and originally titled Cannibal Orgy, the film lost funding in post-production and the movie was shelved for four years. It was only until distributor David L. Hewitt acquired the rights to the film, that it was finally released under the title, Spider Baby. Over the years Spider Baby has been re-released in theaters, but it has lived in relative obscurity, with a small, devote following.
With Spider Baby there is the allure of the weird, the pull of the strange. It is always there, waiting for another few years to pass, its charms, however dark, to be revealed once again, retrieved from the grave of film history.
*For more reviews on Jack Hill’s Spider Baby, go to the Final Girl Film Club and check them all out…
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If you like ACTION, THRILLS, ADVENTURE and ARMED FLYING SQUIRRELS WITH DEGREES IN LITHUANIAN BASKET WEAVING, look no further, you have come to the right place! That's correct, folks, your entertainment dollars go further at this Website---SCOTT BROTHERS and his CATALOGUE OF CURIOSITIES---because it's FREE! Shake off feelings of BOREDOM, REGRET and SOUL-CRUSHING EMPTINESS just by looking through our pages! Nothing else to purchase to become the LIFE OF THE PARTY! With SCOTT BROTHERS and his CATALOGUE OF CURIOSITIES you can see through WALLS, produce SHRUNKEN HEADS and become as strong as CHARLES ATLAS! No money back if not 100 percent satisfied.
Catalogue of Curiosities 
