The Haunted Palace (1963): adapted by Charles Beaumont from the poem by Edgar Allan Poe and the H.P. Lovecraft novel The Case of Charles Dexter Ward; directed by Roger Corman; starring Vincent Price (Charles Dexter Ward/ Joseph Curwen) Elisha Cook, Jr. (Cheaplaughs), and Lon Chaney, Jr. (Simon): Delightful romp from Roger Corman loosely adapts H.P. Lovecraft's The Case of Charles Dexter Ward and quotes the eponymous Edgar Allan Poe poem.
Vincent Price plays both an evil 18th-century sorcerer and his late 19th-century descendant whose body the sorcerer needs to possess in order to finish his nefarious plan involving some extremely rapey elder gods. It's set in New England, which doesn't explain one character's bargain-basement Irish accent. Alas, the adaptation doesn't include the "essential salts" of Lovecraft's superior, weird original. Recommended.
The Fast and the Furious Presents Hobbs & Shaw (2019): written and directed by a Vic-20 computer; starring Dwayne Johnson (Hobbs), Jason Statham (Shaw), Vanessa Kirby (Shaw's Sister), and Idris Elba (Slumming It for Money): Basically a Roger Moore-era James Bond movie that has suffered grievious brain damage.
At this point in his career, Jason Statham's charisma has no gas left in the tank. Dwayne Johnson, so jacked he's cartoonishly bulbous, goes full-camp. Idris Elba actually seems to be doing something called 'acting.' Vanessa Kirby is intermittently charming as Statham's sister. Ryan Reynolds wanders through as a CIA agent who seems to be channeling Deadpool. Occasional ridiculous fun can't outweigh the tediousness of most of the writing. Not recommended.
Good Boys (2019): Produced though not written or directed by Seth Rogen and the other folks who brought you Superbad, this is basically a middle-school Superbad, sort of. There are some genuine laughs, but it's all a bit thin and ends with an interminable slog of sentimentality. Still, an adequate time-filler -- the most shocking thing about it is how innocuous it all is. Lightly recommended.
Spider Baby, or The Maddest Story Ever Told (a.k.a The Liver Eaters; a.k.a. Cannibal Feast): written and directed by Jack Hill; starring Lon Chaney Jr. (Bruno), Carol Ohmart (Emily), Quinn Redeker (Peter), Beverly Washburn (Elizabeth), Jill Banner (Virginia), Sid Haig (Ralph), Mary MItchell (Ann), and Karl Schanzer (Schlocker) (1967): The Merrye family has a problem: as they age, they gradually turn into cannibals. Then they turn into bipedal spiders. Then they turn into spiders. Yikes.
Made for the grand total of $65,000 in 1964 and unreleased until 1967, Spider Baby is a weirdly awesome piece of schlock cinema. It plays for the most part like a bleak horror comedy. The producers, perhaps not entirely sure of what to do with their movie, placed a jokey credit sequence at the beginning, complete with star Lon Chaney Jr. singing a title song in the vein of "Monster Mash."
Oh, Lon Chaney Jr.. He's a tribute to the working actor here, gamely playing the Merrye family's caretaker/butler/chauffeur with a sort of wounded, lunatic comic sympathy. He got all of $2500 for the role and earned every bit of it.
The actors playing 'normal' people are all pretty terrible, though that may be a matter of direction. The Addams Family-style farce they seem to be acting in doesn't seem to synchronize at all with the bleaker, blacker comedy of the merry mutating Merryes. Besides faithful Bruno, there are Virginia and Elizabeth, homicidal sisters, and Ralph, simple-minded devourer of cats.
The production's cheapness and crudity serve it in good stead, though. There's a perverted sense of authenticity to the movie, along with moments of horror and revulsion. There's no graphic violence to speak of, but what's implied is generally more than enough.
Whether or not later film-makers were actually influenced by the movie may be irrelevant -- though I"d certainly believe that The Texas Chainsaw Massacre shares more than a few DNA strands with Spider Baby. It's an authentic, primitive American horror original. Casual racism and what may or may not be a rape scene will almost certainly offend some people. Nonetheless, Spider Baby is a weird little masterpiece when taken on its own terms. Highly recommended.
