Karl Schanzer

The Hatching of Spider Baby

Documentary focusing on Jack Hill's classic film, Spider Baby. Featured on the new Special Edition DVD.

Spider Baby

In a dilapidated rural mansion, the last generation of the degenerate, inbred Merrye family lives with the inherited curse of a disease that causes them to mentally regress from the age of 10 or so on as they physically develop. The family chauffeur looks out for them and covers up their indiscretions. Trouble comes when greedy distant relatives and their lawyer arrive to dispossess the family of its home.

Blood Bath

A painter of morbid art, who becomes a murderous vampire by night and kills young women, attempts a daytime relationship with a woman who resembles a former love and is also the sister of one of his victims.

Dementia 13

A widow deceives her late husband's mother and brothers into thinking he's still alive when she attends the yearly memorial to his drowned sister, hoping to secure his inheritance, but her cunning is no match for the demented, axe-wielding thing roaming the grounds of the family's Irish estate.

Tonight for Sure

On the Las Vegas strip, two unlikely men rendezvous: Samuel Hill, an ill-kempt desert miner, and Benjamin Jabowski, a John Birch Society dandy from the city. Intent on some sort of mayhem, they enter the Herald Club before the burlesque show starts, and they wire something to the electrical box, set to blow at midnight. They sit at the back of the club to get to know each other. As they drink and glance at the stage, Sam tells of a partner driven mad by visions of naked women in the sagebrush; Ben tells a tale of trying to rid his neighborhood of a pin-up studio. As they get drunker and the clock ticks toward midnight, they pull their chairs closer to the women on stage. Although, technically, it was Coppola’s feature directorial debut, the film is a combination of an unreleased Western-themed nudie cutie directed by Jerry Schafer called “The Wide Open Spaces” and a short film directed by Coppola called “The Peeper”.