Beast from Haunted Cave (1959) ** (out of 4) Slow-moving but mildly entertaining horror film from director Monte Hellman has a group of thieves stealing some gold and deciding to hide out in the snowy mountains. Their plan seems to be working at first but soon they come across a giant spider deep within the cave.This here was an early Roger Corman production and like a lot of the films from this era you soon realize that they were working with very little money, which means that there's going to be a lot of talking and very little action. One of the Corman's most known sayings was how when you're monster looks bad it's best to keep it hidden. That pretty much happens in BEAST FROM HAUNTED CAVE as the spider is rarely seen outside of a part here or a part there. The bad costume finally shows up at the very end but at that point it's too late to turn the film off.I thought the cast were decent for what they were asked to do, which was basically hit their marks and say their lines. The cast were at least interesting enough to keep you glued to the movie and to stick with it longer than you probably would have otherwise. The spider creature design is obviously very cheap but there's some mild charm that you can take from it.Hellman would go onto make much better cult movies but this one here was mildly entertaining as long as you don't take it too serious.

Thieves in a ski resort set off an explosion in an abandoned mine-shaft and use the distraction to allow them to easily steal some gold from a vault in town. They make an escape to the hills, taking two people hostage with them. Unfortunately, their earlier explosion unwittingly unleashed a giant spider-like monster, a creature that subsequently goes on a killing spree.Beast from Haunted Cave is a creature feature which doesn't play out nearly as generically as most of its peers. For one thing it is a hybrid of the crime and horror genres, which is not something you see as often as you might think. The much later From Dusk Till Dawn (1996) still stands out even now on account of this unusual combination, well Beast from Haunted Cave is a decidedly much earlier example of this genre mash-up. Maybe because of this, it has more emphasis on characterisation than most other creature features too. It even features Frank Wolff as the lead bad guy; Wolff, of course, would go on to star in several good B-movies as well as appear in Sergio Leone's masterpiece Once Upon a Time in the West (1968).This film also benefits quite a bit from being set in the snowy regions. I have an automatic soft-spot for films set in the snow but in all honesty it is relatively unusual for these types of flicks to be set there and it does help make the movie more distinctive. But perhaps the most considerable aspect of this one is its horror elements. We have victims of the creature entrapped high up in a web like thing, in a half-dead like state; this would be an idea that would be repeated twenty years later in Ridley Scott's Alien (1979) in disturbing scenes added later to the director's cut. Furthermore, the final showdown in the haunted cave of the title are genuinely scary, especially so for a movie of this vintage. The monster is a quite unsettling creation all things considered. The film itself is still no classic in fairness but it is distinctive in that it does do certain things very well and so can be considered a 50's horror flick of some interest.

After making a getaway from the authorities with a ransom of gold, a group of thieves' plan to use an accident at a ski resort unwittingly releases a giant spider-like creature that puts a halt on their escape plans as it hunts them down one-by-one.This was a decent but enjoyable effort that really works a lot better than it should, despite some noticeable flaws. The main part is the haphazardly-edited finale, which is so chaotic and confusing that there's no way to tell what's going on in any of the scenes and the method of killing the creature gets lost in the fray due to this, it's all done so fast. At times the creature looks way too cheesy and doesn't really seem a part of the scene at all with the way it's imposed onto the image, and the only time you see it in full is at the end which is quite confusing. That leaves a large portion of time on useless features where the cast is forced to go through their different story lines which just aren't that interesting or enjoyable with the heist or the group's distrust of each other really making for some lame times. That said, the suspense of the attacks works well with a few creepy moments, the film is never really all that slow so it's got a nice pace to it and the overall design of the monster creates quite an impression. Those are enough to make up for some of the flaws.Today's Rating/PG: Violence.

Roger Corman is the king of film recycling! He reused the same props, costumes, sets, and sometimes the same footage, over and over again, until it became so obvious that it was embarrassing even by his standards. That's how he managed to produced over 400 films. Certainly not classics, by any standard, but sometimes worth your time. He didn't win any awards for his films, but he did take home a boatload of lifetime achievement awards.He recycled Alexander Laszlo's creepy music in this film into at least three more. That's not a criticism as the music was really good.Now, don't for any stars here. Not even Frank Sinatra's cousin could bankroll his name into anything more than a couple of uncredited roles in Frank's films.And the monster, it looked really recycled!