If Joel and the bots have to sit through Bert I. Gordon's 1958 horror flick Earth vs. The Spider, then you do, too. Gordon, a king of the giant monster B-movie, produced, directed, and came up with the plot for this one, leaving screenwriters George Worthington Yates and Lazlo Gorog to do the not very heavy lifting.
Imagine if you will, a small town (and not really the entire planet) being terrorized by a giant spider. Well, Bert Gordon imagined it and got Ed Kemmer, June Kenney, and Eugene Persson to star in the film.
Ne'er-do-well Jack Flynn (Merritt Stone, Sword of Venus, Problem Girls, and four episodes of I Led Three Lives as Comrade Mitch)) is driving home one night when his truck hits a giant spider web. the next morning, daughter Carol (June Kenney, Teenage Doll, Sorority Girl, The Saga of the Viking Women and Their Voyage to the Wateers of the Great Sea Serpent) is worried because Jack never came home, so she asks boyfriend Mike Simpson (Eugene Persson, who was one of the kids in Ma and Pa Kettle, co-wrote and co-produced the Broadway hit You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown, and was married to actress Shirley Knight for a decade) to help her search for Daddy. They find his body in a cave, are trapped by the giant spider, and escape. Sadly, their tale sounds too phony for Sheriff Cagle (Gene Roth, aka Gene Stutenroth, who has 283 IMDb credits, including a slew of Three Stooges comedies, a number of B-movie serials, and a gazillion uncredited roles). But -- huzzah! -- they are believed by their science teacher Art Kingman (Ed Kemmer, who played Commander Buzz Corry for 182 episodes of Space Patrol, 1950-1955); Kingman suggests theyn should load up on massive amounts of DDT. When that doesn't work, they fall back on electrocution, impaling the critter, and blowing it up with dynamite.
It should be noted that the flick's official title was shortened to The Spider when the Vikncent Price film The Fly became a hit, but nobody bothered to change the credits before the film opened, so it is known by both titles.
This movie was not enough to torture Joel and the bots, so they (and you) have to suffer through a short feature, Speech: Using Your Voice, an off-putting lecture from Professor E. C. Beuler, Director of Forensics, University of Kansas.
And if that waasn't enough, there are a lot commercials scattered throughout this YouTube presentation.
Despite that, I hope you enjoy this giant wad of cheesiness.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IiUQ78kozjk
BONUS: The "lost" spider pit sequence from 1933's King Kong, as reimagined by Peter Jackson:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOMKnhN7ABs
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