Spider Baby

Another welcome Blu-ray release from Arrow Films, Spider Baby, or The Maddest Story Ever Told (to give its full title) is a wonderful slice of 1960s comic horror. It centres on the ramshackle home of the Merrye family, a clan who make the Addams Family look like the Waltons. Afflicted by a unique hereditary condition that causes them to de-evolve into a savage, cannibalistic state as they enter adulthood, the Merryes have reached the end of the line with only three remaining family members – or, at least, only three who are allowed out of the cellar.

Working with a tiny budget, exploitation auteur Jack Hill created in this, his debut feature, a classic piece of sun-drenched Gothic shot through with moments of great invention and deranged humour. What grounds the film is its affectionate allusions to the Universal horror films of the 1930s, and it stars the Wolf Man himself, Lon Chaney, as the Merryes' long suffering butler. [Keir Roper-Caldbeck]