UPDATE 10/2023: This review was originally written back in 2017, I have now polished & updated it to include talk of Film Masters new 2023 double feature release that includes the movie, Ski Troop Attack. See various ‘UPDATES’ below. 

Early in life, when I was a little kid, Earth Vs. The Spider (1958) was my favorite giant spider movie; coming in second was Tarantula (1955). In the late 70s my next favorite became the 1977 made-for-TV horror film Curse Of The Black Widow, followed up by The Giant Spider Invasion (1975). I don’t know how Beast From Haunted Cave flew under my radar? More importantly why did I never know it was about a spider monster? I think I had heard of it in passing in the monster movie books I read as a kid, but was never on my must-see list. At some point in my youth, I’m taking either late single digits or very early teens, I bumped into it on TV and as I watched I was genuinely shocked to see this “beast” from this “haunted cave” was indeed displaying arachnid traits.

Beast’s human characters centers on a crew of four career thieves led by Alex Ward (Frank Wolff) who are in the wintry wilds of South Dakota for a new heist, the pilfering of gold bars from a small town’s bank. Ward’s squeeze, Gypsy Boulet (Sheila Noonan), is twenty-six but looks like she’s in her late thirties, a nice plot point to illustrate the tough life she’s had with him. The movie’s hero, Gil Jackson (Michael Forest), is a local ski instructor who loves living the simple life, a trait that instantly attracts Gypsy.

Ward’s plan is too plant a bomb in a nearby mine and blow it up, using the distraction to attract the local cops and then break into the bank to take the gold. After befriending Gil he learns he has a cabin two days journey in the woods, which makes the next stage of the plan to hole up in it until another never seen member of the crew flies in and secrets them out of the area. Of course this means Ward has to eventually kill Gil, something he really won’t mind doing after he sees how hard Gypsy is falling for him. This also means he’s going to have to also take out Gypsy.

This whole plan might have gone off without a hitch had it not been for the “beast.” Marty (Richard Sinatra), while out on a date with this chick stops off at the mine, using curiosity as an excuse to get inside and plant the bomb, but while both of them are making out they encounter the “beast!” We don’t see how that encounter ends, but when Marty gets back to the bar to inform Ward the bomb had been planted, it’s only Marty, where’s the chick he left with? He’s frazzled, and manages to spit out that Natalie is dead and something not a cougar took her. The next day the mine blows and they steal the gold, but from this point on Marty is a changed person. As Gil takes them into the woods to his cabin (not knowing what they did), Marty swears they’re being tailed. They are, by the “beast,” and it’s dragging along its dinner (aka Natalie).

Once at the cabin Marty is a man on a mission to kill this creature, but no one else knows why he’s acting so fucked up. He refuses to tell anyone what he saw; that it’s just the cougar Gil mentioned was roaming the area, but Ward and his other goon, Byron Smith (Wally Campo), finally end up seeing it in the final act. One night when he and Gypsy try and flee Ward and his men casually mentions there’s a cave nearby he refers to as “Haunted Cave” (he never expounds on why it’s called that). Both of them are forced to hole up in it as a blizzard strikes torpedoing their journey back to town. Earlier in the movie, the “beast” snatched Gil’s Indian maid, Small Dove (Kay Jennings), and since Byron ended up liking her he goes off to rescue her, which is how he ends up in the cave. Ward and Marty end up in the cave because Marty wants to kill the creature and Ward’s pretty sure that’s where Gil and Gypsy are waiting out the storm. It seems Gil and Gypsy are the only two who never saw the monster and have no idea Haunted Cave is its new lair, or perhaps, one of its many lairs. And, yes, they are surprised as shit when they go in and find a monster! We do get a happy ending of sorts as the “beast” whittles the cast down to only Gil and Gypsy, but like how most of these monster movies of yore ends the credits roll the very instant the creature is killed.

As for the monster itself, the FX it is obviously crude, but its puppetry crudeness is what lends it the creepiness it inherently exudes. It’s kept off screen for most of the movie with glimpses only being granted of its two tentacles, and the side of its head. I’m not sure I would call them bonafide tentacles either. It only has two but when you see them fully at the end they’re more like half-tentacles at the tips of stiffer appendages. Eventually, in the third act confrontation we get to see longer takes of those tentacle-sticks, more of its bobbing head and part of its back. What it crawls around on is left to your imagination. Its back and its connection to the head reminded me of something either turtle-like or beetle-like. The head is much larger than a human’s, but human-ish, and the whole thing is covered with gossamer hair and cobwebs, essentially masking any and all detail of what this thing actually looks like, though in a couple of scenes beyond the hair blocking its face you can glimpse long sharp teeth jutting up from a lower jaw, and, maybe, hollow eyes. It’s the creature’s gait that gives it that extra creepy edge; the head bobs around weirdly, and I remember that aspect giving me the willies when I first saw it.

As I mentioned earlier it’s spider-like, and what I meant by that is it cocoons its victims. The first time you see this is when the men are hiking to Gil’s cabin and one night Marty, hearing the creature’s growling and mewling (sounds that are similar to the sounds the giant tarantula makes in Earth Vs. The Spider), goes off into the woods with his rifle and sees Natalie cocooned between two trees! And in the final act when everyone starts to converge on “Haunted Cave,” the creature has its victims webbed to the cave’s walls. The thing feeds on human blood and we know this because when Byron, Small Dove and Natalie are webbed up close to one another, the creature lumbers over to Natalie and we hear Byron say. it’s drinking her blood! But you really need to check out the movie’s included trailer, because there’s a scene that isn’t in the movie and it really should have been. In the film it just cuts to the thing feasting on Natalie’s blood, but since the creature is essentially just a tangle of long, white hair and cobwebs it’s hard to tell what it’s doing to her. It’s close to her and Natalie is screaming, but how exactly is it drinking her blood? The scene in the trailer shows the thing creeping up to her and extending this weird tongue at her. She screams and then collapses dead staring directly into the camera. Why that’s not in the movie is beyond me.

Bullets don’t seem to harm it, but like most things fire is the great equalizer and this is how it’s killed. Marty finds a couple of flare guns in Gil’s cabin, and after it fatally wounds him and kills Ward outright, he has enough strength to shoot it with the flare guns and up it goes in flames. The last scene is quite a good one as we see the thing burning in the distance, Gil and Gypsy moving away, and off to the left you can see the bodies of Natalie, Byron and Small Dove still webbed to the cave’s wall.

There are, however, a couple of perplexing shots of the creature earlier in the movie, when Marty first sees it, and Natalie cocooned between the two trees, and later on as it stalks them at the cabin, these two extremely brief glimpses of the thing when I first saw the movie made me wonder if it was some kind of entity, because in those two shots you can actually see through it. Same thing happened in Earth Vs. The Spider, there were a few shots where the superimposed spider was momentarily transparent, so I’m guessing the “see-through beast” might be an FX mistake. I do like the ambiguity of the beast’s nature though, and that “FX mistake” does add more mysterious flavor to it, if you choose to believe the transparency was deliberate.

I liked the winter setting in South Dakota and the places they shot all the outdoor scenes. And even without a monster, the plot, characters, and actors are interesting to watch. This also would have made a great watch had it just been a caper flick.

Michael Forest is the only actor in the movie I’m familiar with, since he played Apollo in a Star Trek (’66-‘69) episode, “Who Mourns For Adonis,” and Professor Stuart Peters in The Outer Limits (’63-‘65) episode, “It Crawled Out Of The Woodwork.”

UPDATE (10/2023)—

The more logical secondary movie Film Masters could have put on this release was Corman’s, Creature From Haunted Sea (1961); they have a newly restored release coming, mind you, in January, as the secondary feature to The Devil’s Partner (1961), but, man, it sure would have fit perfectly on this one. However, I can understand why they decided to pair these two flicks up, since Ski Troop Attack (1960) was filmed right after Beast From Haunted Cave using the same actors, crew and locations.

There are some genres I’m just not a fan of war movies being one of them, I am if there’s a supernatural or creature feature element in them, like the World War II horror flick, Overlord (2018). Having said that I noticed I do own White Ghost (1988), a late 80s flick with William Katt set in the Vietnam War, and that’s because I have this floating half memory of coming across it on cable and liking it, I have yet to revisit it despite owning the blu for some years. I’m also a fan of Off Limits (1988), though that one’s more of an action thriller also within Vietnam War starring Willem Dafoe and Gregory Hines; I even saw that one in a theater, and by the way where the hell’s the blu-ray of that one? So far it’s only been released on DVD, at least here in the US.

Before going into this I did half wonder if this was going to be a slog to get through, but hoped it wouldn’t be since I enjoyed the cast from Beast, and thank God I was right, having a good cast in a film helps, and it did here with me. Frank Wolff is mostly the standout, but not so much for his character (I thought his character in Beast had more meat on its bones), but for his change in appearance. In Beast he was playing an older guy (he was only 30), and playing it very plausibly, at least in appearance, with slight graying of his hair and a mustache. In the commentary I was stunned when it was revealed he was in his early 30s. So, when I see him in this movie, I’m equally stunned; the hairstyle is different, shorter, the gray is gone and he’s clean shaven, now he looks as young as he actually was. The dynamic between Wolff and Michael Forest isn’t as homicidally aggressive as it was in Beast, but there is a seething animosity between the two, as this time out Forest is the leader of this squad as Lt. Factor and Wolff is subordinate Sgt. Potter, who wants to be on the front lines killing Germans and not part of this special reconnaissance team with a mission to keep tabs on the Germans and report back to headquarters their locations and what they’re doing.

This time out Wally Campo and Richard Sinatra are Pvt. Ed Ciccola and Pvt. Herman Grammelsbacher respectively; Campo isn’t as comedically frantic in this movie, while Sinatra sports a Southern accent for this new character. Sheila Noonan also returns, though this time being billed as Sheila Carol, and having a small role as a German living out in the remote woods the soldiers are forced to home invade in search of food. She’s shot dead after she pulls a gun on Potter and tries to kill him. Director Roger Corman himself has a cameo as the leader of the German ski troop who stumble upon dead Carol and begin tracking Factor and his men. The mission changes for Factor and his men when they happen upon a bridge that if destroyed could alter the trajectory of the war since this is how the Germans are mostly transporting their equipment. This is war, so slowly but surely Factor’s men are killed off, leaving only the two stars (Forest and Wolff) to survive and tell the tale of that bridge’s destruction. 

I’d say 99% of this flick is filmed outdoors in the cold South Dakota snow, and you have any idea the workout your body gets trudging through deep snow? As a viewer I felt the fatigue these actors must have been going through, not to mention the deep ass cold that had to be slithering into their bones.

I was pleasantly surprised to see how competently Corman was able to pull off a war movie, with just the right level of props, costumes, extras playing Germans, stock footage and what appeared to be a very good miniature in the bridges destruction he convincingly allowed me to suspend my disbelief and believe I was seeing a war movie and nothing more.

Synapse Films was the first distributor to bring Beast From Haunted Cave (1959) out on DVD in any truly legit form back in 2001. I think, for the most part, this version is now out-of-print, but if you really want a copy Synapse still sells it through their site here, and it’s affordable too. Fred Olen Ray also released this movie on blu-ray, as a double feature with another another Roger Corman creature feature, The Wasp Woman (1959), through his own boutique label, Retromedia, but that version is now out-of-print. It does included commentaries exclusive to that release, one for Wasp Woman with Ray and filmmaker David DeCoteau, and most notably with star Michael Forest on Beast From Haunted Cave.  

UPDATE (10/2023): Unexpectedly, and most welcome especially by this reviewer, boutique label, Film Masters, has restored Beast From Haunted Cave in high definition and released it on blu-ray in a new, nifty, double feature with one of Corman’s war movies, Ski Troop Attack (1959), which has also been restored in high definition! You can order it now on Amazon (they’ve also released it on DVD, for those who haven’t gone high definition yet).

2001 SYNAPSE FILMS DVD

INSERT INCLUDED WITH THIS VERSION

2023 FILM MASTERS DOUBLE FEATURE BLU-RAY

VIDEO/AUDIO/SUBTITLES (Synapse Films): 1.85:1 Widescreen (Theatrical Cut) & 1.33:1 Full Frame (TV Version)—English Dolby Digital Mono—No Subtitles

VIDEO/AUDIO/SUBTITLES (Film Masters): 1.85:1 Widescreen (Theatrical) & 1.37:1 Full Frame (TV Version)—2.0 English DTS-HD Master Audio, 2.0 English Dolby Digital—English SDH Subs Only

In the widescreen version (the preferred version in my book) the movie goes full frame for the opening credits, then back to widescreen afterwards. For the most part the audio and video are good, but there are moments when both get rough looking and sounding. This is the longer TV version. In its original theatrical form the movie only runs 62-minutes. When it was sold to TV additional scenes were shot to pad out the run time; most of it, as I understand, is “character development.”

UPDATE (10/2023): This is another win for the newly formed boutique label Film Masters, the high definition restorations of both, Beast From Haunted Cave and Ski Troop Attack, look amazing! Especially, Beast, that one looked the best. Film Masters even restored their respective trailers too! Keep in mind, though, the “new” footage Corman created for Beast’s TV airing was not restored, so when you watch that version it’s easy to tell where the theatrical restoration ends and the unrestored TV footage begins; having said that the TV footage is entirely watchable, and I do like that Fim Masters includes whatever alternate TV cuts that exist for these Corman films, because with Beast From Haunted Cave I do like the extraneous insertions he created to pad out the length for television, and I like having that option of watching the entire film with or without them. Below is a screenshot taken from Film Masters’ website of a scene from Beast From Haunted Cave and you can easily see the better detail and clarity in their restoration. Also, be aware, while Beast comes with two versions in two different aspect ratios, Ski Troop Attack only has one version (since it runs 13-minutes longer than Beast, I assume it’s runtime was long enough for TV to not force Corman to pad out it’s length with reshoots) and one aspect ratio (1.37:1).

EXTRAS INCLUDED (Synapse Films) . . .

  • Trailer (1:38)

EXTRAS INCLUDED (Film Masters) . . .

  DISC #1 (BEAST FROM HAUNTED CAVE)
  • Audio Commentary With Tom Weaver and Larry Blamire
  • Original Trailer For Beast From Haunted Cave (1:38)
  • 2023 Re-Cut Trailer For Beast From Haunted Cave (1:38)
                   DISC #2 (SKI TROOP ATTACK)
  • Audio Commentary With C. Courtney Joyner and Howard S. Berger
  • Hollywood Intruders: The Filmgroup Story: Part One (16:22)
  • 2023 Re-Cut Trailer For Ski Troop Attack (1:56)
  • Color Booklet With Essays By C. Courtney Joyner And Tom Weaver

UPDATE (10/2023): As usual, a great collection of extras, learned a lot from Weaver and Blamire’s commentary on Beast, and got an education on the acting talents of Frank Wolff, who sadly killed himself in the early 70s at the age of 43 by slitting his own throat with a straight razor. Ballyhoo Motion Pictures creates yet another informative featurette, this one broken up into, so far, three parts that chronicles Roger and Gene Corman’s first company, The Filmgroup, in an effort to control the making and distribution of their own films. C. Courtney Joyner is the host and he chronicles Beast From Haunted Cave, Ski Troop Attack and The Wasp Woman on Part One. Subsequent parts can be found on December’s release of The Terror/Little Shop Of Horrors double feature, with Part Three showing up on January’s release of The Devil’s Partner/Creature From Haunted Sea double. As of this review I don’t know if this multi-part documentary ends at three or keeps going. Time will tell.

The included booklets Film Masters puts together are just as informative as their parent company’s The Film Detective was; Weaver interviews the dude who created and played the Beast, Chris Robinson; while Joyner talks about Ski Troop Attack and the other war movies Corman made, something I wasn’t aware of.