Movies Seen Recently: Spider Baby, Raven, A Time For Making

Spider Baby (1967) – That’s right, I’d never gotten around to seeing it before. Don’t judge me.

In a surprising instance of “art by happenstance,” this movie works despite no reason that it should.  Ernest but unpolished actors (plus functional alcoholic Lon Chaney Jr. at the end of his career) populate a story with a glaring error in the premise.  See if you can spot it: “And old mansion houses the remnants of a family with a bizarre syndrome that starts everyone regressing developmentally from about age ten.” (Then how does the property-owning family exist? How did the departed father manage to sire the three extant children and make arrangements for their care?)

And yet, despite or because of that, it’s creepy and off-kilter in just the right way.  Maybe the best piece of accidental cinema on record.

Raven (1996) – Burt Reynolds is the tough-as-nails leader of a crack commando team who finds out that he’s been used by corrupt senators to run their own little missions. Unfortunately, he’s so tough-as-nails that he’s extremely unlikable, so I didn’t care.  And he’s not actually the hero/protagonist; that would be Martin (Matt Battaglia), the only other survivor of Raven’s last ill-fated mission, who’s gone deep underground to get away from the repercussions of his work for Uncle Sam and now lives as a boat repairman who’s also banging Krista Allen, star of six early-’90s Emmanuelle movies and… sorry, what were we talking about?

Basically there’s no one to like in this movie except Martin, who’s such a personality-free milquetoast that he’s not even a good protagonist by default.

A Time For Making (2018) – This documentary covers the artistic community on British Columbia’s Gabriola Island, with interviews and lifestyle footage of a silversmith, a guitar maker, a basket waver, a boatmaker… I can’t remember the rest.  What I admire most about this documentary is that “artist” is used as a term that overlaps with “artisan” — everyone involved creates something useful to people, something that the end owner or user wants and will appreciate.  I find this use of “artist” much more inspiring than “someone with an MFA who lives by grant applications.”

Abandoned movies:

Werewolf (2018) – Children liberated by the Russians from a Nazi concentration camp are left to fend for themselves in an abandoned mansion against packs of feral dogs.  There is literally NOTHING to enjoy about that.