Relax, he’s just in town to get the groceries.
If you’re a fan of movie monsters, you should be seeing Earth Vs The Spider (1958), for, well, Mr. Eponymous. When a man fails to return from a shopping trip, his daughter and her boyfriend go searching for him. In a cave not far from his wrecked truck, they find clues: skeletons, a sucked-dry corpse, a spider web reminiscent of those climbing ropes often seen slung over the sides of ships, and one big ol’ spider that likes to scream and make dinners out of people.
Making it back to town in one piece, they tell the skeptical town sheriff, who, with a few townspeople, including the local exterminators and a scientist, visit the cave and soon have an encounter the spider. One dead sheriff’s deputy later, the spider’s dead and en route to the museum for examination by the scientist, and all’s well.
Until the spider wakes up and lays waste to the town.
While the plot is a little creaky and the characters are made strictly from cardboard, there are some good elements. For example, the early rock band earned a nod of approval from my Arts Editor, and when the spider is awakened by their music, they’re a bit of a hoot as they make their escape. But more importantly, the cave cinematography, actually performed at Carlsbad Caverns, is tremendous, although I’m not sure about this ‘luminescent algae‘ to which they refer.
But exceeding the cinematography is the spider itself. This is a real, live spider, creeping around in all its hairy splendor, the microphotography, if you will, spliced almost flawlessly into the rest of the film. The exception to the generally excellent monster depiction is the final scene, where it appears they couldn’t get the spider to creep down a wall properly, so they replaced it with a very disappointing spider-dummy. But, overall, the spider is a lot of fun and is not ridiculous, unlike some monsters we’ve seen munching on hapless victims.
Whether or not the monster and the caves make up for the mediocre plot is up to the viewer. Enjoy!
