On E List of Movie Reviews
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Earth vs. the Spider (1958)
Rate:
2
Viewed:
10/08
10/08:
Bert I(Am Stupid). Gordon created another clunker during the 50's called Earth vs. the Spider for
who-knows-what reasons.
There are more logic problems than I can count on my fingers. The biggest question of them all is: why not
pour gasoline on the spider from a tall building and light it on fire? Surely, it'll be a great avoidance
of the problems that occurred after the spider woke up from its coma. Even worse, I slipped into a coma of my own.
For a while, there's a nice black-and-white photography going on, but the more I see the cavern scenes, the more
distracting the switchovers are. What's the need for the double reel inserts? The idiot girl has to go back to the cave
to find the lost bracelet, so which is more important to her: that or her life? Speaking of bodies in the cave, a skeleton
is lying on the ground, and nobody freaks out.
Spider webs make it super hard for insects to escape, but humans have no problem getting out of them. By the way, spiders
aren't insects but arachnids. Arachnophobia, get it? Why is it every time I see a movie that when a person runs to the car,
he has trouble trying to get inside, and when he finally does, the car won't start until the very last second?
The best scene is when the seemingly-too-old-for-high-school boys cajoled Hugo the janitor by letting them inside the
auditorium. This raises another question: why did they bring the huge tarantula there? Why risk the danger? Where were the
security guards?
Back to the proportion of the spider, it appears small inside the auditorium but huge when compared to the teacher's
house. Basically, the spider can be enlarged and shrunken as it pleases. One hilariously stupid moment appears when the guy
decided to skedaddle out of town by driving a car with the bed mattress atop the roof.
All in all, A Small Town of Stupid People vs. the Spider is more like it.