As of 9/28/2020 this review has now been updated to included specs for Scream Factory’s blu-ray. 

Just to keep from reiterating info I’ve placed in other Memory Movies reviews, for a full picture of my interests in insects and spiders when I was a kid, see my Spookies review on this blog, I’ll keep the memory portion of this review confined to the movie’s airing, but before I do that I’m going deviate for a paragraph or two to talk about the TV Guide. If you’re young and reading this the TV Guide doesn’t really play a part in your life, if you have cable, you can get access to a guide of what’s on that way, or if you watch solely from the internet you can get your info from there. The TV Guide nowadays has become a TV magazine, but back in the day with limited channels it was essential to have and it was formatted more like a booklet.

My grandmother introduced me to it when I was a kid. All I knew of it was she liked to get it and do the crossword puzzle in the back, but this one day she circled Land Of The Lost (1974-1976) and showed it to me and said it was coming on today and I might be interested in it. Aside from insects and spiders, my brother and I were also into dinosaurs. After that I began to pay more attention to this book, and this is how I knew about Earth Vs. The Spider.

Back in the mid-70s there was this thing called Science Fiction Theater that came on Saturday afternoons, noon, I believe, and this is how I saw a lot of those black and white ‘Big Bug’ movies, and I was amazed one day to find it’s opening on YouTube. God, that opening brings back a lot of fond memories!

When I first saw the listing of this movie in the TV Guide it was only listed as “The Spider,” but when the opening credits came on its full title was Earth Vs. The Spider. I wasn’t unfamiliar with “versus” movies, since I had seen many Godzilla films and he was always “versing” something, but that “Earth Vs.” didn’t sound right to me. THE Earth Vs. The Spider” is how I thought it should have been presented, and even then it sounded weird to have the “Earth versing” anything, and for most of childhood I refused to acknowledge its full title. When I talked about it with anyone it was always “The Spider,” and most movie posters  and even the TV trailer agreed with me. Of course I acknowledge the full title now, and I always refer to it as that, because now it actually sounds original, and the only movie I know of that has Earth taking on any monster in its title. It makes the movie sound “big,” “grave,” “earth shattering,” an “omega level event!”

Now, the opening credits, because this movie had me at the opening credits. You get the requisite creepy scifi 50s music overlain on an image of a spider web, with a spider at its center. When the credits come on they slowly zoom down and disappear into the spider as the camera gets closer to it, and it’s glowing!!

The very start of the flick has the spider setting a late night trap for any vehicle driving the road near its lair, and for a 50s scifi flick it had some gore I was not prepared for. Apparently the spider put a thick line of silk across the road, and when this guy (Merritt Stone) driving this pick-up slams into it the windshield is smashed and the side of his cheek is splattered with blood. That’s pretty strong stuff for this kind of flick and it made me flinch. The movie never expounds on whether this was some new tactic by the spider, or something it routinely did. I can’t imagine it was the latter because the disappearance of that particular dude triggers the whole revealing of its existence. That dude was Carol’s father and he was coming back from town with a birthday present for her. His absence gets her curious and when Carol’s curious she pulls in Mike and he in turn borrows Joe’s (Troy Patterson) car and away they go to find him. By the way these are supposed to be high school kids, but the actors are obviously way too old. I don’t know why they just didn’t have them be college students.

Carol and Mike come upon that strange rope-like substance, a broken windshield, and Carol’s birthday present. The discovery of her father’s bashed up truck in a nearby ditch gets them to the cave thinking he may have crawled into it during the night for warmth, and this is how the giant spider is discovered! It’s also made a web, positioned vertically over this area where any curious person could slide off into it right at the point where the path unexpectedly gives way, this is what happens to both kids, triggering its appearance!

This entire scene excited me, especially when the tarantula appeared, and this movie is where I began to attribute human qualities to spiders, at least with tarantulas, and the human hand is kind of configured to mimic a spider. All the spider shots are of an actual tarantula superimposed into the movie, but there are a few of not-entirely-accurate practical legs, with tips that kind of reminded me of an upturned fingertip or a human foot! The spider also makes a sound, a creepy, mewling that sounds like it could come from human vocal cords. I had to be aware of the existence of tarantulas at this time, because I remember owning a few books on spiders, but I don’t believe I had ever seen any of them in action in something like a movie, mostly still photos is what they had always been to me up until this point.

The couple manages to get out of the web by pulling themselves under it and then out of the cave. When they get home they tell people about the giant spider. I always found this hilarious and unbelievable, because their science teacher, Professor Art Kingman (Ed Kemmer), actually gives them the benefit of the doubt. He even calls the Sheriff to meet him and the others at the cave the next day with a tanker of DDT, and the Sheriff while thinking the kids are nuts goes along with this.

The next venture to the cave gets Carol’s father found finally, but not in the condition she ever wanted to be found in. That’s right the dude’s dead, sucked dry by the spider. There’s one other sucked dry body in this movie and it’s that one that left an impression on me. It’s of one of the deputies, after the spider rampages through town, he was supposed to go off and alert the military but Kingman finds him later and brings him back to the police station and lays his body out on a table. It was the sudden appearance of his head that shocked me. For some reason it looked like a shrunk puppet head to me, and that always stayed with me.

Once the Sheriff and the deputized townsfolk see the giant spider web they haul in the DDT guy, and leap into the web to combat the spider. Really?! Getting into a web to combat a giant spider might not be the smartest thing, but whom I to judge? They shoot a stream of DDT at it when it approaches, but one of his deputies freaks out, gets actually stuck in the web and the spider kills him with a swipe of its leg. This was another milder gore moment, but not that bad. Kingman climbs into the web to see if he’s alive and we see blood all over his face. The spider has been knocked out; of course they think they killed it.

It gets into town because Kingman wants to study it and temporarily stores it in the gym of the high school (calling in the press too) before transporting it to the university the next day, but that never happens, it wakes up and runs riot in the town. Hilariously its music that wakes it. A bunch of kids can’t rehearse in the room they want so they get the janitor to unlock the gym for them, and they rehearse in there, that’s when the spider comes-to.

The superimposed spider isn’t as convincingly inserted into the movie as the one in Tarantula (1955), there’s a scene where you can briefly see through parts of it legs and body and the size isn’t consistent. In some scenes it’s not bigger than the structures around it and in another scene its gargantuan. There are two memorable scenes during the town rampage, one where Kingman and Sheriff Cagle bump into  near the school (left photo) and one where they’re watching it skulk by from inside the Sheriff’s office (right photo).

It makes it back to the cave and the entrance is blown up thinking without access to food now it’ll just starve to death, but Carol and Mike went back there, because Carol thought she dropped Mike’s birthday present, so now they’re trapped in the cave with a rampaging and still alive giant spider. Jesus, those kids are having a terrible week, especially Carol.

So, now the townsfolk have to dig back into the cave and rescue them, this brings me to the next two memorable scenes, the spider’s demise and its corpse. Kingman plan is to electrocute it, so using these portable rods, one in the hands of Kingman, and one in the hand of Mike, they catch the spider in an electrical arc between them as it’s in the progress of scuttlin’ down the cave wall. It falls impaling itself on a clutch of extra pointy stalagmites, and this is where ‘The End’ is overlain upon on its deader than dead stuck corpse.

The only DVD release of Earth Vs The Spider here in the US was back in 2006 from Lionsgate Films and it was part of a double feature with War Of The Colossal Beast (1958). That DVD is out of print now, but it can be acquired from third party sellers on Amazon. Have no fear Scream Factory is releasing it on blu-ray (for the first time) on April 21st. When I get that version I’ll update this review!

LIONSGATE’S 2006 DVD (OUT-OF-PRINT)

VIDEO/AUDIO/SUBTITLES: 1.33:1 full frame—2.0 English Dolby Digital (mono)—No subtitles

Both movies are full frame and have decent transfers.

EXTRAS INCLUDED . . .

  • None

SCREAM FACTORY’S 2020 BLU-RAY 

REVERSE COVER ART (BELOW)

VIDEO/AUDIO/SUBTITLES: 1080p 1.85:1 high definition widescreen—2.0 English DTS-HD Master Audio—English SHD subs only

Transfer looked spectacular and it was great finally seeing it in widescreen!

EXTRAS INCLUDED . . .

  • Commentary By Filmmaker/Film Historian Ted Newsom
  • Mystery Science Theater 3000 Episode—Earth Vs. The Spider (97:41)
  • Earth Vs. The Spider 8mm Version (9:01)
  • Theatrical Trailer
  • Still Gallery (21:20)

UPDATE 9/28/2020: The most impressive extras was the Still Gallery, there were a ton of photos I had never seen before! The most disappointing extras was the commentary, and that was due to the fact Ted Newsom didn’t feel like a fan of this movie. I dug all the historical facts he laid down about the production, the actors, and Hollywood, but when he turned his attention back to the film he picked apart everything that didn’t work. These kind of commentaries never work for me. The ones where the commentator sounds contemptuous of the final product, I mean. Other than that the widescreen print should be the main reason any fan of this flick would want it, so have it. Go buy it, and thank the movie gods Earth Vs. The Spider finally got blued. I did.