Spider Baby a late 60s spooky flick that feels like it's out of the early 50s.
Originally I was going to describe this film as a typical Haunted House story. Only without an actual haunting or Supernatural elements.
But then I remember there's a point towards the end where a woman miraculously comes back from the dead (or maybe she was just knocked out) and becomes possessed in a kind of evil manner.
Spider Baby is the story of this degenerate family who all suffer with a mental condition that rid them of their mental capacity after the age of 10.
Essentially regressing them down to bumbling newborn children and then somehow breaking their brain down even further as to create these kind of mindless zombie people.
Or at least that's the whole idea.
Really it's just a story about this awkward eccentric Family of Misfits who chained up their older residents in the basement, refuse to bury the former Master of the home (who also happens to be the father of the children) and then attempts to act normally when having too interact with a group of family members from a long almost forgotten family tree.
They want us to believe in this weird syndrome that supposed to reflect the family but this doesn't explain why their housekeeper Bruno act so weird. He's just as nutty as the rest and from the best of our knowledge he has no connection to the family at all.
But I'm getting lost in something that doesn't matter.
The reason you come to this film is to watch the awkward and fascinating performances of the Sisters and they're mentally deficient brother.
I suppose they all suffer with some sort of mental abnormality but he's conflicted with it the worst. Having the mental capacity of a five-year-old at best.
But it's Virginia and Elizabeth that really shine out as the stars of the movie. One of them believing she's some sort of spider infused being who traps people in her own ''web'' and then kills them with her bite.
Her bite being kitchen knives she uses to slaughter people.
It's very fun to watch a movie with psychotic people that you're not supposed to learn the background of.
(I mean you do learn about these people but they don't dwell on anything.)
You just see them for what they are and you kind of go along with them. You even root for them with most people because this long extended family tree of there's only wants to come down to their estate so they can throw the rest of them into some sort of Asylum and then sell off the property for Mass profit.
So you have no problem watching these people get slaughtered later on. Except for maybe Peter.
He's the narrator and supposed protagonist of the movie. He's not really the protagonist. We don't spend that much time with him, he goes off screen for a while along with this other woman back to a motel. Where the two of them get intoxicated and then have to head back to the manor because all the hotels are filled up for the night.
Spider Baby is a definite recommendation if you're a fan of cheap horror B movies from the 1950s but you also really like the more intense psychiatric horror that would become so prevalent the 1970s. Spider babies able to take inspiration from both sides.
It's a slow burn film. There's a lot of lingering shots on rooms and people wandering around from place to place and countering all kinds of spooky and awkward details. Or just weird performances by the crazy family as they go about their business finding bugs eating bugs dancing around food Ashley sneaking into their basement to feed the corpses of the recently deceased to there more crazy relatives.
Honestly they feel like a more extreme version of The Addams Family like an Addams Family that got lost in 'The bush' for a couple of generations.
It should really say something when I'm more disgusted by the external family in their greed than I am by the main family on there unorthodox ways.
I almost forgot but Mantan Moreland is in this movie too.
He was the only person I was legitimately sad to see die
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