Merrye Doings in the Old Dark House

It’s mad, all right. I’m referring to Spider Baby, or the Maddest Story Ever Told, to give its full title. How do you explain Spider Baby? I’ll try. Is there a spider in it? Um, yeah… Ok, is there a baby in it? Uh, nooo… So, what’s it about? Well, like, it’s about this, like, weird family of sort-of cannibals, living in this weird old dark house… While not evident in the title, the cannibal theme is stated in the title song, sung by Lon Chaney, Jr.—try wrapping your head around that—which ends with the line, “This cannibal orgy is strange to behold/And the maddest story ever told.” Per Wikipedia, the line’s a play on the film title The Greatest Story Ever Told, which premiered around 1965, near the time Spider Baby was made (though it wasn’t released until several years later). Whatever. Still, I will state outright that I’ll take Spider Baby over that elephantine Bible-flick disaster any day. It’s a lot shorter, a lot less pretentious, and a lot more fun. It’s got its spiders—a few…