Cursed with a dozen different titles, Spider Baby has been known variously as Cannibal Orgy, The Maddest Story Ever Told and even the evocative, The Liver Eaters. It was made for a mere $65,000 in 1964, then when the investors lost all their money in real estate, it sat on the shelf until 1968 when it was finally dumped into distribution. But by then exhibitors wanted horror movies in color so the B&W Spider Baby was banished to drive-in double features, doomed to wither in obscurity like a once-great silent film actor passing away from liver failure in a water-stained SRO.

But Spider Baby never dies. Somehow each generation discovers this good-natured creep show afresh, with the more freakish and mentally unstable among them adopting it as a personal inspiration. And, despite the cannibalism, gruesome killings, the cat-eating and the hideous monsters locked up in the basement, it is ultimately a family film, perfect for Christmas viewing. Bruno (Lon Chaney) is the chauffer and the last servant left on the crumbling, overgrown Merrye estate. He made a promise to the patriarch, Titus Merrye, to take care of the children, all of whom suffer from the family's genetic disorder: Merrye Syndrome. It's a yucky disease that causes their minds to rot as they age, becoming younger and more infantile the older they get until, in middle-age, they regress to a pre-human, cannibal state.

As cousin Peter Howe says, "Incredible...but true!"

Bruno's charges include Ralph, the oldest son, who wears soiled Buster Brown suits and is a gibbering lunatic; oldest daughter, Virginia, who loves nothing more than playing "Spider" with unsuspecting house guests by throwing a net over them then "stinging" them with rusty carving knives; and the youngest (and sanest) Elizabeth, who prances about tattling on Virginia's latest homicidal antics and wagging her finger at those who break the house rules. Uncle Ned and Aunt Martha live in the basement and, well, the less said about them the better. They like to eat people.

Shot in TV-simple black-and-white, with flat lighting and clean edits, Spider Baby concerns itself with a visit to the estate by cousin Peter, his girlfriend Ann, and their lawyer and his secretary. Moved by the plight of the Merrye children (and by the thought of inheriting the enormous house and its surrounding property), Peter and Ann want to become the guardians of Ralph, Virginia and Elizabeth. Needless to say, this is a terrible idea.

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