I’m not an experienced criminal in the world of robberies (although if watching bad flicks is a crime, then hook up the ball and chain), but it seems to me what every criminal master squad needs is a smart leader in charge.. Now re-read what I just wrote: SMART leader. Unfortunately, for the hoodlums of this gang (and for us the audience) the Smarts bag was left in the getaway car! They say that two-thirds of all robberies are successful from start to finish and on average most of these yield around eighty bucks in total (you can get a large popcorn and soda nowadays for that). The only ones robbed successfully are the audience of a story that makes sense in this cheapy creepy camp classic Beast From Haunted Cave from Roger and Gene Corman (the thieves of quality cinema and every B movie lover’s heart).
Like most films made during Cormans’ FilmGroup period (which included such hits as High School Big Shot, Battle of Blood Island, and Queen of Blood to name a select few buried treasures) this film was shot simultaneously with Ski Troop Attack to maximize the budget, which explains the odd backdrop of the ski resort of the robbery. Stealing the plot from a previous hit of Corman’s called Naked Paradise (don’t get your hopes up. The title is the only hot thing in the film), which was a habit Corman tended to do. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” as the adage goes, but the main issue is the formula was busted before they even put one ski on the slope! Yet this film stands out mostly for being the beginning of a beautiful relationship with the Corman Brothers and its director, Monte Hellman, whose approach to the film was to make a horrific version of the Humphry Bogart/Edward G. Robinson classic Key Largo… with a giant spider! The film has fun with itself, smart direction, and the actors do the best with what they are given (which ain’t much) but what steals the show is the duality of the story: there is not enough crime to the be a true thriller and there isn’t enough spider for it to be a horror monster movie. What is left is a hodge-podge of beautiful locations, a decent-looking cast, and enough bug sound effects for a voice actor to happily be paid for a couple of hours, but to be labeled as a sure-fire pulled-off caper, it snowballs downhill real fast!
There’s gold in them there hills of Deadwood, South Dakota, and our group of not-so-savory heroes rides into the town to get their hands on gold bars. To pull off the perfect heist, they need to set up an explosion in a local mine as a distraction (why this would be a distraction is beyond even the savviest of criminal minds). Everything goes to plan, except for a hairy little situation… or more so a BIG hairy situation in the form of a giant man-eating spider! After the eight-legged freak-of-nature snatches one of the girls a member brings along for the ride (misery loves company), the gang steals the gold and escapes to the mountainside to the hideout. But like most crooked plans, their plans develop into a weekend of backstabbing, trust issues, and a few close moments of the spider snatching the gang for a quickie meal (or more so like long rubber legs due to the budget of the film of not being able to make an entire spider). Will the gang pull together and have honor among thieves, or will they be caught in a literal web of horrific depict?
Spurlunking at you at a chiseled seventy-four minutes, Hellman went on to helm such dynamite hits for Corman like The Shooting and Cockfighter but would find massive success with his cult classic Two-Lane Blacktop starring James Taylor. You can find this film on most streamers but try to get all eight arms on the special edition Blu-Ray from Film Masters, which includes a documentary on the whole Filmgroup period. So let’s get our alibies straight for the police: We came up here to do some skiing, have some fun with friends, and pay no attention to the car full of black rubber gloves and the massive can of Raid!
