Film Year: 1958
Genre: Horror
Director: Bert I. Gordon
Starring: Ed Kemmer, June Kenney, Eugene Persson, Gene Roth, Hal Torey, Sally Fraser, June Jocelyn, and THE SPIDER
MST Season: 3
Featured Short: "Speech: Using Your Voice"
The Short
"I said MISTER I said thi...::cough:: this inn't your seat you see I've been sittin' here a whole lot longer than you seemed to think I have..."
Listening to this guy is like my life story, man.
Listen, we all talk. That doesn't mean we can all do it well. Hell, we all probably suck at it. That's why I have a blog and not a vlog, because nobody wants to hear me ramble. Reading it is perfectly fine, though. Speech: Using Your Voice gives us helpful tips on how to present your words in a more precise and interesting manner to help captivate your audience.
Now, pardon me as I ignore every one of them.
That's not to say the advice isn't sound, as it likely is. But the examples of careless speaking in this short are so hilarious that no matter how much the short tries to portray them as "boring and uninteresting," I can't help but be more enchanted by them than the examples of proper speaking. Therefor I use them as my speech teachers and not the narrator. Life's more fun that way.
The Movie
Legendary MSTed director Bert I. Gordon has thrilled us with King Dinosaur and The Amazing Colossal Man thus far in his career (as well as Attack of the Puppet People, referenced in this film, which was later featured on Rifftrax), and now his attention turns to giant arachnids. Our story details teenage couple Mike and Carol (Brady?) as they search for Carol's missing father, which leads them to a cave just outside of town. Investigating the cave, they find it's inhabited by a giant spider, who has eaten Carol's father. The couple bring the authorities back to the cave where the spider is thought to be killed. They bring the spider into town for study, where it wakes up and begins devouring civilians.
Earth vs. the Spider was originally titled The Spider, only to have "Earth vs." slapped onto it in the aftermath of the success of Earth vs. the Flying Saucers. In turn, the marketing for the film shortened it back to The Spider in an attempt to cash in off The Fly, though the onscreen title remained the same. This is some weird Inception shit right here, man. At any rate there isn't much of Earth fighting the spider in this movie, as the spider only seems to be a local problem as opposed to a global one.
The movie is mostly cheesy goodness by the man who specialized in cheesy goodness. Like just about all of Gordon's creature features, the titular spider is brought to life using a real spider that has been blown up with camera tricks and miniatures. Also in traditional Gordon fashion, they don't look very good in execution. There are a lot of static shots of the spider crawling around unconvincing stand-ins for actual locations, and a couple of matte shots where you can plainly tell where the matte ends, which kills any sort of suspense for the spider attacking people in the same shot.
For the most part, Earth vs. the Spider is a wonderfully fakey and by-the-numbers creature feature, and I feel more joy than I care to admit while watching it. Though the fun can be dogged down when Gordon takes his film more seriously than he should. There is a shot midway through the film of a crying toddler alone in the streets after the spider has presumably eaten his parents, and it deflates the fun of the film because it doesn't fit the tone. It's just a depressing image thrown into a silly giant spider movie.
But mostly it's a movie about people who scream at a camera on a crane as it looms toward them, and how I enjoy that. Earth vs. the Spider has some hiccups, but when it's on point, it's about as fun as a B-movie can be.
The Episode
It's hard for the theater to not light up when the words "Directed by Bert I. Gordon" appear onscreen. This is the type of shit I watch the show for! Earth vs. the Spider sees them at their most playful for the director yet, and the movie deserves it. The hot force-perspective spider action of helpless victims screaming into a vacuum is nothing if not humorously fun, and our riffers help push the tone of the piece into that direction. Even in the above mentioned toddler scene, Crow counteracts the bleakness of the sequence with a well-placed "Damien? Damien?" The riffing of the film keeps the whole proceeding light and airy, with targets inclufing our teenage heroes and less-than-convincing effects work, making Earth vs. the Spider an even bigger breeze to watch than it would have been by itself.
This is actually something of an ideal prototype of the spirit of the show is to me: a delightfully cheesy movie and a wonderfully fun commentary that enhances its best aspects. This is what Mystery Science Theater 3000 is supposed to be in its purest form.
There is also a callback to the classic season 1 character of Dr. Erhardt in this episode, as they comment on a character who resembles him getting killed by the giant spider. They speculate this was his fate, and for a while I think that's what we all presumed, until J. Elvis Weinstein returned to the role in the twelfth season of the series all the way in 2018. Good to know you aren't spider chow, Larry!
But it's not just a movie this week. First we've got a short with plenty of "lip 'n' tongue action!" Speech: Using Your Voice gets the episode off to a rousing start with a small instructional film that is really just a gift from the heavens. There is so much to comment on here, as it's constantly using exaggerated speech examples which, to be honest, are kind of funny on their own. It doesn't take much for Joel and the Bots to latch onto these examples and give them a good working over. Plus the introspection of the short is properly played with, as they add on to the advice given in their own fun ways.
The host segments are a bit rocky for me, with a few high points. The first obvious one is Crow's Earth vs. Soup sketch, where Crow decides he wants to be a screenwriter and delivers his first screenplay (which would be revisited in a big way in The Incredible Melting Man). I also enjoyed the Invention Exchange, which sees Frank playing with the Cheese Phone, and thinking it's delicious (which culminates in a hilarious ending in Deep 13 for the episode). I also enjoyed Crow's report on Bert I. Gordon at the end. I'm a little more weary of the Spidorr segment which sees the SOL crew starting a band and being interrupted by a space janitor, which is a reference to a scene in the movie that hadn't happened yet (Poopie?). Even after the reference comes into place, I found I didn't care for the segment that much. The Creeple People segment is okay, but largely goes nowhere.
But given the strong riffing, I can forgive a few host segment duds. The question is that since the balance between movie and commentary so harmonious does that make it one of the best of the series? I'm going to be a little restrained and say no. It's a fun episode to watch, though my favorites usually feel to be a step higher than this. But as far as these solid but not exceptional episodes go, Earth vs. the Spider is fairly high up on the ladder.
This is actually something of an ideal prototype of the spirit of the show is to me: a delightfully cheesy movie and a wonderfully fun commentary that enhances its best aspects. This is what Mystery Science Theater 3000 is supposed to be in its purest form.
There is also a callback to the classic season 1 character of Dr. Erhardt in this episode, as they comment on a character who resembles him getting killed by the giant spider. They speculate this was his fate, and for a while I think that's what we all presumed, until J. Elvis Weinstein returned to the role in the twelfth season of the series all the way in 2018. Good to know you aren't spider chow, Larry!
But it's not just a movie this week. First we've got a short with plenty of "lip 'n' tongue action!" Speech: Using Your Voice gets the episode off to a rousing start with a small instructional film that is really just a gift from the heavens. There is so much to comment on here, as it's constantly using exaggerated speech examples which, to be honest, are kind of funny on their own. It doesn't take much for Joel and the Bots to latch onto these examples and give them a good working over. Plus the introspection of the short is properly played with, as they add on to the advice given in their own fun ways.
The host segments are a bit rocky for me, with a few high points. The first obvious one is Crow's Earth vs. Soup sketch, where Crow decides he wants to be a screenwriter and delivers his first screenplay (which would be revisited in a big way in The Incredible Melting Man). I also enjoyed the Invention Exchange, which sees Frank playing with the Cheese Phone, and thinking it's delicious (which culminates in a hilarious ending in Deep 13 for the episode). I also enjoyed Crow's report on Bert I. Gordon at the end. I'm a little more weary of the Spidorr segment which sees the SOL crew starting a band and being interrupted by a space janitor, which is a reference to a scene in the movie that hadn't happened yet (Poopie?). Even after the reference comes into place, I found I didn't care for the segment that much. The Creeple People segment is okay, but largely goes nowhere.
But given the strong riffing, I can forgive a few host segment duds. The question is that since the balance between movie and commentary so harmonious does that make it one of the best of the series? I'm going to be a little restrained and say no. It's a fun episode to watch, though my favorites usually feel to be a step higher than this. But as far as these solid but not exceptional episodes go, Earth vs. the Spider is fairly high up on the ladder.
As fer the ratin'...well, I thin::cough:: I think that I liked this episode quite a bit and you get the feeling that I should give it some sort of positive rating so I just might have to call this...Good
The DVD and Blu-Ray
It was MST3K vs. the Spider on Shout Factory's Volume XXXIII set. Audio and video were exceptional, while bonus features were led off by a ten minute documentary hosted by Tom Weaver called This Movie Has Legs: Looking Back at Earth vs. the Spider, which briefly covers a bit of director Bert I. Gordon's career and the making of the film. Rounding out the disc is a set of MST Hour wraps and a theatrical trailer for the film.
This episode was also one of the few episodes released on blu-ray, where it was featured as a bonus feature on Shout Factory's release of The Spider (the film's original title). The episode presentation is equal to that of the DVD (the episode was filmed in standard definition and not HD), and the main feature is a pretty pristine cut of the unriffed feature. The only othe bonus features are a photo gallery and a trailer, so those who are interested in a documentary and the MST Hour segments over an HD version of the film should stick with the DVD.
The short, Speech: Using Your Voice, was compiled into Shorts Volume 3, which was released by Rhino as on online exclusive with The Essentials DVD set. Shout Factory later rereleased Volume 3 as a part of The Singles Collection.
This episode was also one of the few episodes released on blu-ray, where it was featured as a bonus feature on Shout Factory's release of The Spider (the film's original title). The episode presentation is equal to that of the DVD (the episode was filmed in standard definition and not HD), and the main feature is a pretty pristine cut of the unriffed feature. The only othe bonus features are a photo gallery and a trailer, so those who are interested in a documentary and the MST Hour segments over an HD version of the film should stick with the DVD.
The short, Speech: Using Your Voice, was compiled into Shorts Volume 3, which was released by Rhino as on online exclusive with The Essentials DVD set. Shout Factory later rereleased Volume 3 as a part of The Singles Collection.
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