Thanks to the internet archive website, I was able to watch this old horror movie: Spider Baby.
Besides being an old horror movie, I was determined to see this movie because it had Sid Haig; who I first saw as Captain Spaulding in "House of 1000 Corpses" and later in the "Devil's Rejects" sequel. I had stumbled upon the Wikipedia article a couple of years ago but it slipped my mind until an article in "Rue Morgue" brought it back to the forefront.
Basically this movie is about three siblings who live with their chauffeur/guardian (played by Lon Chaney) after their father has passed away. Ralph, Elizabeth and Virginia Merrye suffer from a genetic mental illness that essentially causes them to regress to the age of children (Lon Chaney's character Bruno later implies that it might have been the result of inbreeding and that it has affected their family for generations). Bruno also states that the siblings are likely to be the last of their line.
But of course, no family horror movie is complete without bad relatives. The Merrye siblings distant cousins, Peter and Emily as well as their lawyer Schlocker and his assistant Ann, have come to reclaim the property from them. This is when things get really creepy and the siblings true natures are revealed.
Ralph can only communicate with grunts and leers as he is unable to speak and likes to travel by dumbwaiter; to say nothing about how sexually deprived he must be.
Elizabeth is quite the cruel one and possible the whiniest of them as she almost constantly talked about hating Virginia every time she did something bad.
Virginia is the titular spider baby, called for her habit of stalking and eating insects as well as the way she walked.
During the night with Emily and Schlocker staying at the house while Ann and Peter looked for somewhere else to stay, Bruno goes out on an errand and naturally mayhem ensues.
Without giving too much away, Spider Baby is a suspenseful story that you could only hope to never live and wasn't too bad. I could have gone without the scene of Ralph murdering a poor innocent cat for dinner, granted the killing itself wasn't shown but the cats' screeching did nothing to abate my nausea.
Final Grade: B+
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