Earth Versus the Spider  1958

This was one of those giant Spider films made shortly after the very successful 1955 film Tarantula. Also low budget science fiction was in its hayday with stories of giant insects or in this case a giant archnid.

Earth Versus the Spider is the typical story of a giant spider who attacks a small town (not the whole earth as the title suggests) and the local sheriff and adults in the picture are rather limited in their acting ability and of course the teens in the film are the ones who are the smart ones. One of the problems though, is the cast portraying the teenagers are not teens at all (and some of them were in their late 30s or early 40s.)

Plot: Average is about all I can say. Teenagers discover a giant spider living in a cave (after falling into it's web and managing to escape again.) Now they have to try and convince the town sheriff to take action.

Special Effects - Typical of Bert Gordon, mostly backsceen projection shots thrown together without much accuray. Plenty of bloopers and errors you will spot in this film.

The dialogue is rather uneventful and even silly in parts.

Mr. Kingman states: "It was a spider that drained all the liquid out of his body," after finding the first victim's remains.

The Sheriff replies: "Just put down "cause unknown" and let the coroner worry about the rest. I know what I see and I see a dead man, but, uh, I don't see any spider."  

But if you want to turn up the enjoyment factor on watching this film - then try getting a version that was done by the Mystery Science Theatre 3000 team. It is really pretty funny with some great one liners ad libed in by Joel and the Bots.

 I would rate this movie about average 5/10

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