313 - EARTH VS. THE SPIDER with short: USING YOUR VOICE

Synopsis:  The feature is one of Bert I. Gordon’s cheesy Monster Movies from the ’50s.  In this one, a man is driving home to give a gift to his daughter when he finds out first hand what happened when the spider-met-the-fly.  His daughter Carol is worried about him, so she recruits a peon in her class named Mike to help her look for her dad.  They first find his wrecked truck near a cave and inside the cave, they find a Giant Spider!  So they tell the sheriff but he just laughs at them... and basically everything else (he’s one happy sheriff).  Eventually they convince their science teacher to get the sheriff to investigate.  So a group of grownups finally goes to the cave and sees that the Giant Spider really exists.  To kill it, they fill the cave with a lot of DDT (which is worse: the spider or the cure?) and apparently kill the monster.  The scientist convinces the sheriff that the Giant Spider should be studied, so they drag the monstrosity to the local high school and put it in the incredibly huge gym.  Soon, though, a local conductor-lead swinging rock ’n’ roll band begins to practice next to the Spider in the requisite ’50s teen dance scene.  This blaring rock ’n’ roll racket wakes up the sleeping Spider and when he gets up, he is not in a good mood.  The first to feel his wrath is Mr. Ziffel the janitor, and the Giant Spider then goes on a rampage through the town.  Eventually, it leaves town and heads back to its peaceful, rock ’n’ roll-free cave.  But Carol and Mike are in there, looking for her bracelet and sniffing DDT fumes.  The rest of the town doesn’t know they are in there, so they blows up the entrance to the cave, trapping Carol and Mike inside with the Giant Spider (oops!).  To get them out, a new entrance has to be dug and electrical wires are run into the cave to give the Spider one hell of a shock (although it’s not nearly as rude a shock as waking up to that awful rock band in the gym!).

Don’s Review:  This is a fun episode, easily one of my favorites of the many Bert I. Gordon films seen on the show (the rest of Mr. BIG’s flick seen on the show were 210 - King Dinosaur, 309 - The Amazing Colossal Man, 319 - War of The Colossal Beast, 411 - The Magic Sword, 414 - Tormented, 517 - Beginning of the End, and 523 - Village of the Giants).  And, like Mr. BIG’s other films, this one also features cheesy effects, as the monster is only an ordinary tarantula blown-up to look big (although they did built a single, cheesy-looking puppet spider leg for a couple of scenes).  The riffing is great most of the time and the host segments – in particular “Earth vs. Soup” – are very enjoyable (with the exception of the Spydor rock band skit, which fell rather flat).  And these host segments contain an interesting ordering goof:  the host segment featuring a janitor happens BEFORE the janitor character even shows up in the movie, really hurting the spoof nature of the skit.  Still, this is a great episode, one I return to again and again.

Don’s Rating:    [ S: F: ]

Forrest’s Review:  Earth vs. The Spider is an example of a movie that is both nail-bitingly bad, and extremely enjoyable at the same time.  First of all, as I have expressed many times before, I love 50’s American monster movies.  I would always love it when American Movie Classics (AMC) when they would show an old monster movie, whether it be a classic like Dracula, The Creature From The Black Lagoon, The Wolfman, or the ultra cheesy Reptilicus.  Earth vs. The Spider is super enjoyable, but it also is painful.  I don’t know how to explain it.  I love this movie, it’s just so outdated and fun.  This cannot be said about the more recent The Giant Spider Invasion which is shown in Season Eight.  That movie just plain sucked.
      Earth vs. The Spider contains some of the most clever riffs I’ve ever heard in an MST3K experiment.  And I discovered something.  A lot of MST3K episodes aren’t enjoyable purely because of the quality of the tape duplicate.  My first copy of this episode was terrible, and I didn’t like the episode that much.  But then I got it as the always excellent castleforrester.com and I enjoyed it 100%.  Some of the riffs were so incredibly clever and funny, I especially liked it when Joel and the bots would make fun of Carol’s boyfriend Mike; those riffs had me on the floor laughing, as well as the laughing jokes with the sheriff.  And a riff that had me on the floor crying from laughter was when the scientist says: “Isn’t it odd that there isn’t any wild life in this cave, usually there’re mice or bats…” and then Crow blurts out: “...The occasional Japanese soldier.”  And, as most of the time, Crow was in tip-top form throughout. Trace sure did an outstanding job in his days as Crow.
      The riffing, sadly, does fall back a bit towards the end of the film, but it’s not too uncommon with MST3K.  I mean the writers simply cannot find anything else to say, they’re already given all they got, and there just isn’t anything more to say.  And despite the low-keyed last 5 or 6 minutes of the film, the rest of the riffing is rapid fire and hilarious.  The short is also very funny, but I wouldn’t go as far as saying it was one of the best, actually it was one of the weaker classroom shorts of Season Three, but still, it was hilarious and contained more laughs and hilarity than everything episode of Seinfeld rolled into one.
      The host segments were, well... must I tell you how good they are?  Season Three never had a single poor host segments.  I liked the bit about Crow’s Earth vs. Soup.  And I really liked the invention exchanges, as well as everything else.  But I really liked Joel’s little bit about Creeple People, and why cool, but dangerous toys aren’t available anymore.  Joel: “Heck yeah, we’d get burned, we’d get burned all the time.” All in all this is an excellent episode.
      Trivia Note: Crow’s play Earth vs. Soup is referenced in a few future episodes, but it is actually turned into (or more specifically attempted to become) a movie in episode 704 - The Incredible Melting Man.

Forrest’s Rating:    [ S:   F: ]

Related Link:
   (1) Mighty Jack’s MST3K Review (Episode Review)