Seductive Innocence of Lolita Savage Hunger of a Black Widow! A Taste For Blood! Once likened to “a television sitcom directed by Luis Bunuel,” Jack Hill’s Spider Baby is probably the most...

Seductive Innocence of Lolita Savage Hunger of a Black Widow! A Taste For Blood! Once likened to “a television sitcom directed by Luis Bunuel,” Jack Hill’s Spider Baby is probably the most bizarre of a number of offbeat, even experimental, mini-budget independent horror films produced during the early to mid sixties, including Carnival Of souls, the Sadist, Night tide and Creature from The Haunted Sea, among others. And for decades it was the most elusive. Filmed in twelve frantic days in 1964 under the title Cannibal Orgy, or The Maddest Story Ever Told (a nod to George Stevens’ then famous biblical epic). The film was soon locked up in litigation that dragged on for three years. Eventually retitled Spider Baby and distributed as a drive-in second feature, it was re-issued to equally little avail in 1968 as The Liver Eaters, one of the last theatrical black-and white programmers. In the ensuing years, fuzzy dupes occasionally surface in the 16mm collectors’ market, but for all intents and purposes, Spider Baby was a lost film. Thanks to the efforts of psychotronic archivist Johnny Legend, the original negative was located, and new prints struck for revival. What’s all the fuss about? Well, Spider Baby is that rarity among movies, especially B-pictures – something different – and genuinely creepy to boot. Lon Chaney, Jr. in what has been defined as “a restrained and even touching sunset performance,” stars as Bruno, world – weary chauffeur and guardian to the last remaining members of the luckless Merrye family, all of whom suffer from the dreaded “Merrye Syndrome” – defined in the Dictionary of Rare and Peculiar Diseases as “a progressive deterioration of the mental faculties…a rotting of the brain, so to speak.”