After her father fails to return home after a trip out of town to buy her a birthday present, Carol and her boyfriend Mike try to find him. The discover his wrecked truck, then thinking he may have taken shelter in a nearby cave, look there too. They find his desiccated corpse, and the reason behind it when they fall into a giant spider web. They escape just before the spider can reach them. Bringing the authorities and a lot of DDT, the spider is killed, then transported to the high school gym, where it will be taken away by university scientists. Before that happens, the spider revives and wreaks havoc on the town before heading back to the cave where Carol and Mike, once again find themselves trapped.
Bert I. Gordon has made a lot of movies about out of scale humans and animals (The Amazing Colossal Man, King Dinosaur, Empire of the Ants, Village of the Giants, The Food of the Gods, etc.), where he not only produced and directed the films but created the special effects. The Spider / Earth vs the Spider (1958) is among the best of these films and one of the best of the giant insect films, right up there with Them! (1954) and Tarantula (1955). The story is involving, and actually provides a believable reason for the two teens to wind up in the spider's cave twice. The special effects are solid and use a combination of real tarantuala matted into full size scenery, humans matted into cave scenery and som e oversized spider appendages created by Paul Blaisdell. What truly gives this film an eerie edge over other giant bug movies is the sound effects for the giant spider, which were obviously made by a human being. They are effectively unsettling.
This was always one of my favorite movies to catch on television, and I enjoy it to this day.
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