We have said this many times, but we love you Outposters. You make the site what it is, a mid-range movie site with about the same influence as an ex-exec from Cannon. We have another contribution from Hawkzino, who recently sent in a review of Tarantula. I had to edit this one, because a certain editor is still scared of a little spider.
Earth Vs. The Spider
Following my previous giant spider movie review, of 1955’s Tarantula, I thought I would stick around in the 1950s for a bit. I quite like it here.
Because of my age, personal biases and rose-tinted glasses, I believe that the late 1980s represented the absolute pinnacle of Western Civilisation; that narrow, magical two-year period between the fall of the Berlin Wall and the start of the Gulf War where everything seemed to be going great.
Mandela was released from prison. Only Fools and Horses moved to hour-long episodes. Concorde was in the air and the Space Shuttle was…mostly in the air.
The Commies were defeated, popular culture buzzed with originality and the stage four cancer of social media was decades away.
However, I must admit to having a soft spot for the USA of the late 1950s and early 1960s, at least the idyllic one depicted in the movies.
I’m talking about that narrow, magical four-year period between the invention of rock n’ roll and the start of the Vietnam War (goddamned war always killing the buzz).
Yes, I realise it’s probably bullshit, and every suburban family man was really a closet gay or something, but don’t burst my bubble, I’m rolling.
Chuck Berry blasted out the opening riff to Johnny B. Goode, babies boomed, boys drove hot rods, pretty gals wore swing dresses and danced the jitterbug on prom night and occasionally a giant spider turned up. But not just spiders!
The Event of the Monster Movie
Monsters were everywhere in the 50s in movies such as Them! (giant ants, not enough legs, sorry), The Blob (no legs at all), It Came from Beneath the Sea (ooh, eight tentacles, getting warmer), It Came from Outer Space (bipedal aliens), The Thing from Another World (frozen aliens thawed out), and Invasion of the Body Snatchers (alien plants; trust me, it’s scarier than it sounds).
These were all metaphors for the very real monsters that existed at the time: Russia, communism, the threat of nuclear war and the resulting radioactive fallout. Scary, to put it mildly, but was it a necessary evil?
Did America thrive in this period partly because it had an enemy to out-compete and thumb its nose at?
Maybe. All I know is that it seemed like an awesome time, even with the monsters, perhaps because of them, so I’ll review another one here before moving on.
This one is called Earth Vs The Spider. Earth wins (spoiler). A more accurate title would be ‘Small Town Vs The Spider’ because it doesn’t fight the whole of planet Earth. It’s not an Avengers-level threat – it can be handled locally, by local people. The title’s a bit melodramatic if you ask me.
The first scene involves a man driving home on a country road after buying his daughter a birthday present and getting cheese-wired by web that’s been strung across the road. That’s a unique and inventive trick for a giant spider: using its web as a weapon instead of a trap.
The next day, the man’s daughter, Carol, is worried that her dad hasn’t returned home, so she enlists her boyfriend Mike to go look for him. They arrange this using the 1950s equivalent of WhatsApp: passing notes back and forth in class.
While they do this, their teacher, Mr Kingman, drones on about electricity so much that it’s obvious what he’ll use to kill the spider later.
Foreshadowing is fine but it’s such a blatant signpost that I’m sure even 1950s audiences rolled their eyes. Also, he spots the kids passing the notes to each other, so you know he’s no fool.
Don’t Go In There!
Carol and Mike find the remains of the spider’s cheese wire trap and her dad’s empty car, smashed up just off the road next to a spooky cave with an incredibly large DANGER sign outside.
They also find Carol’s birthday present lying by the side of the road (a bracelet with a note for her inside) so it’s not all bad.
Weirdly, they don’t assume that Carol’s dad was cheese-wired by an enterprising giant spider and then dragged into the cave and feasted on by the same giant spider. Instead, they assume he took shelter in the cave after crashing his car (those dumb hicks).
They enter the cave and Carol calls out ‘DAD!!!’ so many goddamned times that her echoes dislodge a stalactite, which falls and almost kills them. I was rooting for the stalactite, to be honest.
Afterwards, they fall into a cargo net that is supposed to be the spider’s web, which tempts it out of hiding. It chases the pair out of the cave while uttering a creepy, echoing wailing sound. Imagine Steven Tyler from Aerosmith being flushed down the toilet.
If You Don’t Like Spiders – Look Away Now
The spider is a giant ‘bird spider,’ which isn’t very scary sounding. Its full name is the Goliath Bird Eating Spider, which is badass, so why not use it?
In real life, it’s the largest spider in the world. It’s a type of tarantula, but I guess they didn’t want to draw too many comparisons to that other movie released three years earlier, so they don’t utter the ‘T’ word once.
When Carol and Mike report the story to the authorities, nobody believes them except Mr Kingman, who is the obligatory authority figure who knows everything about everything. There seems to be one of these archetypes in every 50s monster movie.
He identifies the web as silk and appears to know all about spiders’ nervous systems.
It’s easy for him to persuade the Sheriff to send a posse to the caves with an entire truck full of DDT to kill the giant spider that the Sheriff doesn’t believe exists. He even tells the pest control guy what dosage to use.
He’s also a handsome family man with an even temper, a nice suburban home, a pretty wife, a baby, and a regal-sounding name. However, he keeps referring to spiders as insects when they are in fact arachnids. What a loser.
When they return to the cave, Carol finds her dad, who now resembles the Klingon version of Eddie from Iron Maiden.
Spidey emerges and they DDT the shit out of it (the poison, not the wrestling move). The spider is killed…twenty-five minutes into the movie.
What will they do with the remaining fifty minutes? A school dance? A street race against greasers? A visit to the malt shop?
They bring the spider back to town and put it on display in the high school gym, because why not? Carol is inconsolable. Not because she discovered her dead dad’s desiccated corpse, but because she dropped her present in the cave.
She persuades Mike to go back AGAIN (this is their third trip) to look for it. Screw that. What if there’s another one in there?
Don’t Worry, Just Dance
Meanwhile, students use the gym for band and dance practice and the spider comes back to life. I blame it on the boogie.
That’s right, in true ‘dead parrot’ fashion, it turns out that the bird spider was only stunned, not dead. It isn’t clear whether or not it was pining for the fjords. The kids take way too long to notice but once they do, they all escape.
This disappointed me. It could have been a great slaughter scene, but 50s monster movies weren’t brutal like that. Only grown adults tend to get killed. Teenagers were generally safe, which would sound odd to anyone who grew up with slasher movies from the 1970s onwards.
So the elderly janitor becomes the obligatory victim at the school. He could have run away, but instead, he uses the payphone to call Mr know-it-all and waits for him to pick up while the spider breaks through the opposite wall and kills him.
Mr Kingman heads into town to raise the alarm. By the time he arrives, the spider is already taking a stroll down the main street so it’s hardly news at this point.
Nevertheless, he provides invaluable assistance by cowering in a doorway and yelling pearls of wisdom such as ‘Get inside!,’ ‘Take cover!’ and ‘Get off the street!’ to the fleeing citizens. Thank God he was there, is all I can say.
The spider then makes his way to Mr Kingman’s idyllic residential street and heads straight for his house. It’s like it knew where he lived and was hell-bent on revenge on the fool who dared DDT him.
We get the now-familiar King Kong homage with the monster looking in the window before menacing the woman inside. Mrs Kingman is feeding her baby (no, not like that) and it’s always an effective scene when a baby is in peril too.
Giant Spier Attack
We then get a brief but impactful scene showing the aftermath of the spider’s devastation of suburbia. This includes an overturned wedding car with a ‘just married’ sign (and presumably dead newlyweds) and a crying toddler in the middle of the street covered with blood. At least I think it’s blood. The movie is black and white.
The scene is fleeting, but it gets to the heart of what 1950s monster movies were all about.
Mr Kingman finds out about the spider’s impromptu house call from an old man who is fleeing town in his car. He says the spider has run him ‘out of house and home.’
Even so, he still had time to pack up all his possessions, including the mattress from his bed, which is strapped to the roof. Everyone’s got their own priorities, I guess.
Mr Kingman arrives home to find the spider camped out on his lawn, so he drives his car up its arse. The spider chases him (further proof of its personal vendetta) but he gives it the slip. The spider then trots off back to his cave.
Still Not Over
Unfortunately, Carol and Mike are still there because they get lost looking for her bloody bracelet. A posse blows up the cave entrance, but then Carol’s mum arrives to tell them they’ve trapped the teens in the cave with the spider.
They dig a hole to get to them (Mr Kingman’s suggestion) and devise a new plan to kill the spider (also Mr Kingman. Seriously, can’t this guy just fuck off?).
To the surprise of absolutely nobody, they kill it with…wait for it…electricity! The plan goes off without a hitch, spidey is fried and Carol gets her bracelet back. Earth wins!
Except it doesn’t. Not when you consider that they never explain why the spider is giant. There’s no indication that it’s an abomination created by mankind, therefore we must assume that it was a miracle of nature, majestically honed by evolution over millions of years, that humans immediately hunted to extinction.
Well done, everyone.
Overall
I guess we’ll call it a draw then. Final score: Earth 0:0 Spider.
Rating: 2/5, or 3 spider legs out of 8.
