Cult Classics: Earth vs. the Spider/War of the Colossal Beast

MOVIE DESCRIPTION:

This cult duo begins with an unstoppable giant spider destroying everything in its path in, what else, The Spider (73 min.). Appropriately following is another giant this time in the form of an insane and disfigured man who wreaks havoc on a small town in War of the Colossal Beast (69 min.). 1958/color-b&w/NR/fullscreen.

DVD FEATURES:

• Region: 1
• Number of Discs: 1
• Screen: Color
• Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1 (Pre-1954 Standard)
• Audio: Dolby Digital Mono
• Features:
  • cc

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

• Cast:

  
       Ed Kemmer - Mr. Kingman
       Dean Parkin - Col. Glenn Manning
       Gene Persson - Mike Simpson
       Gene Roth - Sheriff Cagle
       Charles Stewart - Capt. Harris
       George Becwar - Swanson
       Mickey Finn - Mr. Haskel
       Rico Alaniz - Sgt. Luis Murillo
       George Alexander - Army Officer
       George Navarro - Mexican Doctor
       Howard Wright - Jake
       Bill Giorgio - Sheriff Sanders
       Hank Patterson - Hugo
       Jack Kosslyn - Mr. Fraser
       George Milan - Gen. Nelson
       Warren Frost - Switchboard Operator
       Bill Giorgio - Bus Driver
       June Jocelyn - Mother
       Jack Kosslyn - Newscaster
       George Stanley, Jr. - Man in Cavern

• Director:

  Bert I. Gordon

• Producer:

  Samuel Z. Arkoff, Bert I. Gordon, James H. Nicholson, Henry Schrage

• Screenwriter:

  George Worthing Yates, Laszlo Gorog, Bert I. Gordon

• Cinematographer:

  Jack A. Marta

• Composer (Music Score):

  Albert Glasser

• Editor:

  Ronald Sinclair

• Production Designer:

  Walter E. Keller

• Set Designer:

  William F. Calvert

• Costume Designer:

  Marjorie D. Corso

• Special Effects:

  Bert I. Gordon

• First Assistant Director:

  John W. Rogers

REVIEWS:

• Earth vs. the Spider is the most consistently entertaining, if not the best of Bert I. Gordon's various size-oriented fantasy-sci-fi films. Among his best-known movies, The Amazing Colossal Man has a more intelligent script and much better developed characters and Attack of the Puppet People is a more serious and better devised and designed movie (and both are referred to obliquely in this film), but Earth vs. the Spider is more fun than either of them. For starters, it has more comic relief than any of the other Gordon titles, mostly by virtue of the fact that much of the action in the first third of the movie involves teenagers. The vignette with the rock & roll band is, in fact, downright funny, though it also leads to the horror payoff for the picture. The film benefits from the presence of a surprisingly decent cast; June Kenney was an above-average player in low-budget films of this period (most memorably in Teenage Doll) and Gene Persson was a promising male lead (who later became a successful off-Broadway producer in New York). Among the actors representing authority figures, Gene Roth and Ed Kemmer hold that end of the picture together, with help from Hank Patterson in an all-too-brief vignette. The giant spider effects look primitive today, but in their time they were good enough to get picked up for use in other movies, including Have Rocket, Will Travel and Journey to the Seventh Planet. ~ Bruce Eder, Rovi
• This sequel to The Amazing Colossal Man isn't nearly as strong dramatically as its predecessor, but it does offer some diverting chills and a short running time, even by the standards of late-'50s sci-fi B-pictures. The film's low budget shows when the makers avoid having the titular monster wreck Los Angeles as he'd previously demolished part of Las Vegas -- instead, the script has a 70-foot giant with a face out of a nightmare and no "social skills" whatsoever (or even the ability to string together two coherent thoughts, or to breathe without grunting loudly) hide out effectively in Los Angeles until he turns up in Griffith Park, holding a single busload of junior high school students hostage (that is, literally holding their tour bus, which ought to have been nearly as big as he is) until he comes to his senses. Producer/director Bert I. Gordon saved a gimmick for the end, one which had been used the previous year in AIP's I Was a Teenage Frankenstein, by suddenly switching to color for the final shot. Appropriately, War of the Colossal Beast was originally released on a double bill with the more dramatically coherent Attack of the Puppet People, another Gordon film that actually uses footage from The Amazing Colossal Man in one of its scenes. ~ Bruce Eder, Rovi