Rainey Dawn One of Bert I. Gordon's best films. This is what I call a "crazy fun" creature feature. Arachnophobes beware! I recall this seeing this one many, many years ago and have always remembered it - it's so hard to forget, it was a creepy and very memorable experience watching this. I think I got a few nightmares from it as a kid.The film poster does it justice - it says it all. It's about a giant spider vs the nearby town. A couple of teens discovered it and have enlisted the help of their science teacher and local police. It seems nothing can kill it, not DDT nor bullets. You'll have to watch the film to find out how it ends, I'm not telling.It is a worthy creature feature. It's a HUGE blast to watch.8/10

ofpsmith It's fun to make fun of how stupid this movie is but there are a lot of other movies where that's more fun. Earth vs. The Spider has your general monster movie set up. Monster attacks on person, one person declared missing, police and witness investigate death, monster attacks again, town fights monster in big showdown. That's pretty much the movie for you. The acting is funny, the story is the usual formula, and the spider effects are obviously superimposed. The film is a good target for MST3K when they riffed it and most people could probably find lot's of things to make fun of. But that's really about it. There's nothing more to say.

Paul Andrews Earth vs. the Spider is set in the small US town of River Falls where high school teenager Carol Flynn (June Kenney)is worried that her father hasn't returned home having been out all night, along with her boyfriend Mike Simpson (Eugene Persson) she searches for her father. Eventually they find his crashed truck sitting at the bottom of a hill, they decide to explore a nearby cave to see if he crawled in there for shelter but are horrified to discover a huge Spider living there. Making a run for it Mike & Carol make it back to town & tell Sheriff Cagle (Gene Roth) who doesn't believe them but is convinced by high school science teacher Professor Kingman (Ed Kemmer) to investigate their story, at the caves they find the giant Spider & gas it with DDT. Thinking that it is dead the giant Spider is put on display at the high school but returns to life & rampages through the town...Originally filmed under the simpler title The Spider before the it was changed by production company AIP, produced & directed by Bert I. Gordon (affectionatly called Mr. BIG by some his fans) this giant insect film was probably inspired by the success of Universal's monster flick Tarantula (1955) made a few years earlier & is a fun little rip-off. The script mixes the giant monster mayhem with a teen aspect as the main cast are teens, the high school plays a big part & there's even a rather daft looking rock'n'roll scene which has dated very badly. The film only lasts 72 minutes which means it's mercifully brisk & to the point, the action starts straight away & never really lets up until the end with the film divided into scenes set in the caves & scenes set in the town. A bit of shoddy writing & some really dumb moments stop Earth vs. the Spider being anything more than silly, good natured fun as the school caretaker just stands there as the giant Spider approaches him yet he's standing against a door that all the teens had just run through, why the hell doesn't he just open the door & run? Then there's the woman who gets her dress stuck in a car door so she can 't run, instead of opening the door & freeing her dress she tries to tear the dress where it's caught, why not just open the damn door woman? The fact that Carol wants to go back to the cave to find that stupid broach is also hard to relate to & understand the logic behind. Overall though despite a few badly written scenes Earth vs. the Spider is enjoyable 50's monster fare that should please fans of the genre & pass an hour or so harmlessly enough for everyone else, I liked it despite some unintentional laughs.The giant Spider effects vary, there's the giant hairy model leg, there's the shots of a real Spider walking around model sets & there's the shots of a real Spider projected against real people & places. While the Spider does change size between the various effects shots at times (one moment the Spider can easily fit inside a school gym yet the next it's bigger than a two storey house!) none of the effects work is terrible considering the age of the film, I have certainly seen a lot worse. Another huge error in logic is that when Mike & Carol fall into the Spider's web they don't stick to it & seem more than capable of just climbing up it & to safety, aren't Spider's webs meant to be sticky? There's not much scare value here & no real build-up of tension or suspense, the giant Spider is seen within the first ten minutes or so & the only real horror are a few shrivelled bodies & skeletons.There's a really funny schoolboy error in the opening credits as just after the Earth vs. the Spider credit Starring is spelt Starring with three R's! Filmed in the back-lot at Universal studios & the much used Bronson Canyon. The acting isn't great, it's a bit wooden as you would expect from a film of this type from this era & all the high school kids look far too old, I would have though most of them were about thirty at the time of filming.Earth vs. the Spider has it's faults sure but at just over an hour it moves along a brisk pace, is never boring & quite fun. Director Gordon got some self promotion into the film as a cinema is showing his The Amazing Colossal man (1957) & Attack of the Puppet People (1958) is vaguely mentioned. Remade as Earth vs. the Spider (2001) but this time it features a scientist mutating into a Spider monster.

zardoz-13 Despite its lack of credibility, "Earth Vs. the Spider" is an entertaining monstrous arachnidan horror movie which appeared three years after director Jack Arnold's "Tarantula." This low-budgeted American International Pictures release takes place in a small, isolated town. Unlike most of the giant monster movies made in the 1950s, this Bert I. Gordon helmed hokum neither explains the origins of the gigantic spider nor does it blame it on nuclear radiation testing. Instead, the county sheriff and a high school science teacher acquit themselves admirably in taking care of this eight-legged menace. Basically, all Gordon has done is use rear-screen projection and blown up footage of a real-life spider. Indeed, there is a scene in the sheriff's office when a spider like the giant one is crawling across a desk and the sheriff knocks it on the floor and stomps on it.Basically, Gordon and scenarists László Görög and George Worthing Yates play this larger-than-life action in a thoroughly straightforward fashion. Like his later outing "War of the Colossal Beast," Gordon opens the film with a man, Jack Flynn (Merritt Stone of "The Magic Sword"), driving his pick-up truck home late one night when something mysterious (which we're never shown) gets in his way on the highway and then hits him. The following day, Jack's daughter Carol (June Kenney of "Teenage Doll") worries about the disappearance of her dad and persuades her boyfriend Mike Simpson (Eugene Persson of "Bloodlust") to help her search for the old guy. Mike has to borrow a jalopy from one of his friends so he can take Carol to look for her father.Eventually, they find the truck off the side of the road, but nobody is in it. Nearby is a cave with a warning sign posted to keep intruders from entering the cavern. Our teenage hero and heroine enter the cave, prowl around, and then fall into a giant net that turns out to be a spider web. Not long afterward, they are attacked by a huge spider. Miraculously, they manage to escape, but skeptical Sheriff Cagle (Gene Roth of "Young Dillinger") does not believe the teenagers. Carol and Mike approach their high school science teacher, Professor Art Kingman (Ed Kemmer of "Calyso Joe") and he convinces Cagle to investigate. They discover the giant spider and spray down with DDT and kill it. At least, they believe that they have killed it.Professor Kingman persuades Cagle and his men to help him move the giant spider out of the cave and mount it in the high school gym. Kingman uses some of his savings to get the critter moved and he hopes that a university will take it off his hands to study it. Later, our hero learns to their shock that the spider was only knocked out. The spider hears some early rock and roll music, recovers, smashes its way out of the high school, goes on a rampage through the town, attacks the home of Professor Kingman, and scrambles back to the cave. Sheriff Cagle and company assemble a team to blast the cave entrance to seal the spider off. Little do they know, however, that Carol and Mike have gone back into the cave looking for the necklace that Jack had brought for his daughter before he died.Altogether, "Earth Vs. the Spider" is not a bad as it could have been. The spider certainly poses a threat to the community, and it seals off the community from the outside world by knocking down long-distance telephone service so our heroes must fend for themselves against their adversary. They never get a call through to the National Guard or any kind of higher authority, even though a sheriff deputy takes a motorcycle and rides out of town. The spider waylays him and sucks the moisture out of his body. Professor Kingman, Cagle, and other open a hole in the top of the mountain and descend into the cave. Mike and Carol are trapped by the spider. Kingman has arranged for electric cables to be taken into the cave and they catch the giant spider between the cables and fry it. This 73-minute, black and white feature is good fun, with decent performances. This is better than most of its kind. Incidentally, if you look closely, you will see a movie poster one-sheet at a movie theater for "The Amazing Colossal Man."