Film

Earth vs the Spider (1958)

Director: Bert I Gordon

Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

Routine creature feature in which a small town teenage couple, looking for the girl's missing father, stumble on a giant spider lurking in a network of caves and narrowly escape its trampoline-style web (dad, of course, is already a victim). A sheriff's posse manages to knock the creature out with DDT; and supposedly dead, it is parked in the school gym to await shipment for scientific study. Cue for teenagers to break in for some rock'n'roll larks, while the monster revives and goes on the rampage before being finally electrocuted. The special effects are nothing to write home about, with the spider fitting comfortably into the gym, but once outside, towering over two- and three-storey buildings. The Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico provide a spectacular setting used to remarkably little effect. Altogether inferior to its obvious model, Jack Arnold's Tarantula.

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