Classic Film: Spider Baby (1968)

 

Behold one of the most dysfunctional families imaginable. The three main psychopaths in writer-director Jack Hill’s twisted cult classic are inbred siblings (two girls and one dude) who live in a literal house of horrors.  One of the girls, Virginia (a.k.a. Spider Baby, played by the sexy Jill Banner) kisses her dead dad’s skull every night before bedtime. Dinner consists of freshly killed cat with a side of crunchy insects. And their brain dead aunts and uncles live in the basement and eat whatever humans are tossed down the garbage disposal. Aside from all of that, though, the house in Spider Baby is quite idyllic. 

 

Hill’s sick imagination is on full display throughout this black-and-white tingler. The conceit behind the title character is enough to send Spider Baby straight into the hearts of sleazy exploitation devotees: Spider Baby gets off on trapping people in a giant web and stabbing them with butcher knives, which, in her disturbed mind, simulates a spider’s stings. We’re all for experimentation in the bedroom, but that’s the wrong kind of freaky. 

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>>>CLICK HERE TO WATCH SPIDER BABY<<<

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Classic Review: Dark Star (1974)

Imagine stripping away all the tension and terror of Alien (1979) and replacing it with a babbling, stoner vibe and that is, pretty much, what you find in Dark Star (1974). Co-written, starring and edited by Alien co-creator Dan O'Bannon and directed by John Carpenter, Dark Star is a rough edged film about a low-rent crew working their fingers to the bone in deep space, destroying planets for The Man.

The space crew workers' ever-malfunctioning ship (with its lack of toilet paper) faces increasing obstacles, like a pesky alien mascot (the art director's painted beach ball) who won't go where he's told and the quarrelsome sentience of one of their world-killing bombs. The film also features bearded space hippies trying to calm down this freaked-out “Thermostellar Triggering Device” through a dialogue of rather heavy post-grad philosophy. This is indeed a cult classic to remember.

While the director's later films such as The Thing (1982) and Escape From New York (1981) would feature memorable endings of their own, few films in the Carpenter collection can compare with mass death spawned by robotic Cartesian doubt. Carpenter's early synthesizer score only makes it better.

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Classic Review: The Centerfold Girls (1974)

The Centerfold Girls (1974) is like any other sexploitation film; beautiful women being terrorized in the nude. However, unlike most of the others films in this genera, The Centerfold Girls (1974) has a great story to accommodate and justify the nudity and violence.

“The most beautiful girls in the world…” refers to the cast of twelve beautiful centerfold models whose lives are about to be cut short for their lack of shame. A thin, creepy man wearing saddle shoes and an ill-fitting suit drags the nude body of a young woman along an otherwise empty beach. Soon a number of other beautiful women turn up dead. Nurses, students, stewardesses… what’s the common thread? All were centerfold models for a popular men’s magazine, prey to a bloodthirsty psychotic with a straight razor!

Andrew Prine's take on the depraved religious fanatic who sets out to punish all the "immoral" women who posed for the tasteless men's magazine is fantastic. His creepy charms and manorisums match that of a deranged psycho; the way he delivers 'crazy' through wide cold eyes is most memorable. And the simple yet classic straight razor murder weapon works to the films advantage adding a more elegance to the murders as opposed to the typical over the top butchery of other similar films.

"The most beautiful girls in the world! He was their JUDGE... JURY... and EXECUTIONER!"

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Classic Poster: Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)

Classic Review: Demon Seed (1977)

Demon Seed is a cult classic sci-fi/horror film ahead of its time. In the tradition of Cronenberg or Polanski's Rosemary's Baby (1968), instead of dealing with supernatural forces, it deals with the dangers of technology, how machinery can acquire its own will and start harming its creator in order to transcend their state similar to what we found in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)'s malevolent HAL 9000.

Scenes of vexations and torture are hunting by themselves; however, when accompanied by Jerry Fielding's score and the amazing performance by Julie Christie the film leaves viewers question the hold technology has on or lives, now more than ever.

Watch Demon Seed (1977) Here: