Hitchcoc Who would have thought there was a spidery monster in a cave in Deadwood, South Dakota. Just living there would be scary enough; just think of the politics. But a group of stereotypical gangsters decide to rob the bank. Apparently, there are gold bars in Deadwood. What's the logical thing to do. Create a diversion by blowing up a random cave. That way everyone will be running to see what is going on and the bank's guard will be distracted. Unfortunately for these bad guys, there's a kind of half man, half spider thing living in the cave. He gets one of them early on, but when the survivors describes what happened, they think he is nuts. Well, we all know that these guys are going to see that monster again and who gets what is the question. They enlist a local guide to help them and, of course, he's in the wrong place at the wrong time. It's fun, even if it is low budget hokum.

Wizard-8 While you could get away with making a movie like "Beast from Haunted Cave" back in the 1950s, there's no way making a modern example of it that would appeal to contemporary audiences. While the title of the movie promises a lot of horror, that is not the case at all. In the first half of the movie, the monster barely makes its presence known. And while the monster makes a few more appearances in the second half, it's not worth the wait, since the monster looks flat out ridiculous and the direction of its homicidal rampage isn't particularly well done. I have a sneaking suspicion that the script for this movie was originally a straight crime drama, and that some quick rewrites made it into a (sorta) monster movie. Had the movie gone by that path, it might have been passable, but apart from some pretty good low budget photography there's not a lot here for B movie fans.

Red-Barracuda Thieves in a ski resort set off an explosion in an abandoned mine-shaft and use the distraction to allow them to easily steal some gold from a vault in town. They make an escape to the hills, taking two people hostage with them. Unfortunately, their earlier explosion unwittingly unleashed a giant spider-like monster, a creature that subsequently goes on a killing spree.Beast from Haunted Cave is a creature feature which doesn't play out nearly as generically as most of its peers. For one thing it is a hybrid of the crime and horror genres, which is not something you see as often as you might think. The much later From Dusk Till Dawn (1996) still stands out even now on account of this unusual combination, well Beast from Haunted Cave is a decidedly much earlier example of this genre mash-up. Maybe because of this, it has more emphasis on characterisation than most other creature features too. It even features Frank Wolff as the lead bad guy; Wolff, of course, would go on to star in several good B-movies as well as appear in Sergio Leone's masterpiece Once Upon a Time in the West (1968).This film also benefits quite a bit from being set in the snowy regions. I have an automatic soft-spot for films set in the snow but in all honesty it is relatively unusual for these types of flicks to be set there and it does help make the movie more distinctive. But perhaps the most considerable aspect of this one is its horror elements. We have victims of the creature entrapped high up in a web like thing, in a half-dead like state; this would be an idea that would be repeated twenty years later in Ridley Scott's Alien (1979) in disturbing scenes added later to the director's cut. Furthermore, the final showdown in the haunted cave of the title are genuinely scary, especially so for a movie of this vintage. The monster is a quite unsettling creation all things considered. The film itself is still no classic in fairness but it is distinctive in that it does do certain things very well and so can be considered a 50's horror flick of some interest.

wbswetnam This is a Roger Corman low-budget B movie from the late 1950s. Before you roll your eyes, though, this one is worth a look. The acting is solid, and the storyline isn't bad. Well, it's very slow to get started, but it gets there. Basically, a group of gangsters gets the idea of robbing some gold bars while in South Dakota, and they set off an explosion in a nearby mine as a diversion. The trouble is, they also awaken a giant hairy spider which is annoyed that the humans have disrupted its humble abode, apparently. The gangsters take off cross country with a ski instructor (who is simply their guide and is unaware of their connection to the robbery) with the spider in pursuit. A snowstorm forces them into a cabin, where they get picked off one by one by the spider. Actress Sheila Noonan, who plays the sultry girlfriend of the head gangster, is particularly fetching.