The Spider/Earth vs. the Spider (1958) 4 stars ⭐ River Falls, a town of jerkwads…
The Spider/Earth vs. the Spider (1958) 4 stars ⭐
…I'd warn of spoilers, but the movie is so telegraphed, I'm not really giving anything away…
BASIC PLOT:
Carol Flynn (June Kenney) is trying to find her father, Jack, but her useless, jerk boyfriend Mike Simpson (Eugene Persson), doesn't want to help her. First he tells her it's no use looking for him, because he's off on a bender again. Then when they find Jack's wrecked car, Mike let's Carol come down and inspect the wreck, without knowing what they'd find. I mean, they could have found his decapitated head, but that's ok with Mike. He doesn't care what Carol sees or doesn't see, so long as he gets back to his movie theater job on time.
Carol and Mike think Jack might have been injured in the wreck, and crawled into a
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| Let's go look for your Dad's dessicated corpse! |
nearby cave system. They go into look for him, with lots of whining from Mike. They eventually find Jack's dessicated body, and two other skeletons. They also find a bracelet, with a note to Carol. She realizes the only reason Jack was on the road was to buy her a gift. As they are trying to find their way back out, they are accosted by a giant spider. In the fray, Carol drops the bracelet her father bought for her. They immediately run to warn the sheriff, but he doesn't believe them, and says all kids are liars.
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| Sheriff Inept says, "All kids are liars!" |
However, Sheriff Inept, I mean Sheriff Cagle (Gene Roth) is eventually convinced when he see's the spider for himself. Professor Art Kingman (Ed Kemmer), the local science teacher, wants the specimen, and they use super strong DDT to kill it. They think it works, and put it on display in the high school.
Carol realizes she lost the bracelet her father bought for her somewhere in the cave, and
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| Joe's a slow learner… He's 35, and still in high school |
His band's playing awakens the stunned spider, and it goes on a rampage, destroying the the town of twits and creeps.
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| Rampaging spider! |
Meanwhile, in the cave, Carol and Mike have found her bracelet, but lost the entrance.
The spider has also returned home hungry, and thinks Carol and Mike look like a delicious snack.
The remaining idiot townfolk think it's a good idea to blast the entrance to the cave. For some reason, they don't see Joe's borrowed car near the entrance, and so don't realize Mike and Carol are inside until after they've blown the hole. They only put it together after Joe calls the Sheriff to report his car missing.
There are some narrow misses for Carol and Mike, but they are eventually dug out, and the hole is blown again.
WHAT WORKS:
*THE BACKDROP OF CARLSBAD CAVERNS IS A NICE TOUCH Carlsbad Caverns is one of my favorite places, and it's nice to see it used here as the spider cave.
WHAT DOESN'T WORK:
*THIS IS A PREQUEL TO KINGDOM OF THE SPIDERS (1977) In Kingdom of the Spiders (1977) the premise is the over use of DDT by the idiots of the past, causes an imbalance in nature. I'm sure the good people of Valley Verde, Arizona, are paying for the idiot's of River Falls bad behavior.
*WHEN JOE CALLS THE SHERIFF TO REPORT HIS CAR MISSING HE CALLS MIKE BY THE WRONG NAME I think Joe would know the name of one of his closest friends, but when he talks to the sheriff's office, he says the people who took his car out are Carol and Mike Flynn. But Flynn is Carol's last name, not Mike's. Mike's last name is Simpson.
*WHY DOES THE SHERIFF THINK ALL KIDS ARE LIARS? It seems a bit contrived, and unbelievable.
*WHY IS JOE SO OLD? Joe is supposed to be a high school student, and friend to Mike, but he was 35 when this was made, and looks every bit of it.
*THE ACTING IS TERRIBLE Almost all of the acting is ridiculously bad.
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