MST3K Earth Vs. The Spider - Review

This is a great episode that I really had fun watching. It starts with a hilarious short called Using Your Voice, hosted by a mean looking old guy who mumbles a lot. It's filled with countless charming extreme closeups of ugly mouths and crooked teeth. And hilarious scenes of awkward public speaking gone terribly, terribly wrong. The feature is some fun old 50's giant bug goodness that's pretty entertaining on it's own. It's got some actually fairly decent looking effects, plus, the girl in the movie, June Kenney, total babe. You can't see the spider in the screenshots, but I assure you, there is a spider. And it is big. Just wanted to assure you that the spider part of the title is not misleading. However, it only attacks this one small town, so I don't know where they came up with this "Earth vs." business. I guess "Earth vs. The Spider" sounds better than "Dumb White Teenagers in a Small Town vs. The Spider".

Earth Vs. The Spider is one of the several Bert I. Gordon pictures to be featured on the show over the years. By my count they did 8 films directed by the notorious B.I.G. (sorry, I had to do it). Bert was a man absolutely obsessed with the idea of big-ass people or creatures wreaking havoc on regular sized people or creatures. Just look at his filmography: Beginning of the End, The Amazing Colossal Man, Village of the Giants, Food of the Gods, Empire of the Ants....roughly half of the 20 or so films he directed feature some kind of giant living thing, or things attacking people. He's the reverse Charles Band. While Charles can't get enough killer puppets or dolls, Bert loved to have giant mutants killing people.

I'm submissive in a 50's kinda way
Oops, slipped on a little bit of your dad there

Here's the very cool poster from the movie. If anyone has some decent quality artwork from the movie, higher resolution poster or a still or something, I can get a DVD cover made for this one.

And for no good reason here's also a little logo I came up with. Making logos for shows that stopped being made 10 years ago, yep, I know how to get the most out of my valuable free time.

If you miss the show, fear not, Mike is still in the movie heckling business with both Rifftrax, which has been around for about a year now, and he's just started The Film Crew along with MST's very own Bill Corbett and Kevin Murphy. They've only released one Film Crew DVD so far, for a Rue McClanahan stripper movie called Hollywood After Dark, but it's very funny and well worth picking up. Killers From Space is the next Film Crew DVD, it's out in August and I can't wait.

Cover art can be downloaded here. See the post above this one for a look at the image.