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.

When budgets are low you have to hope that story, script and/or good camera-work will carry a project. They certainly do here in a slow-moving, scene-setting and altogether superior b-movie.Lovely scenery, a nice crossover story and gently appropriate music combine well to create a film with genuine qualities.

Two hired goons, a crime boss and his half-drunken, fed up 'secretary' plan a gold heist up in some ski/mining resort. This involves creating a diversion by blowing up a nearby mine, then raiding gold reserves, then tricking a guide into taking them cross country by ski to his cabin to await uplift by plane. The heist goes to plan, with a couple of minor setbacks: they manage to kill someone in the mine explosion and also unleash some sort of monster who then follows them across the land to finish the job.First time I tried to watch this I started immediately falling asleep due to the constant banal dialogue and dark print. Second time round I was a bit sharper and enjoyed it a lot more. Although there is a lot of needless dialogue (including a pointless scene with one of the goons chatting up a character with no bearing on the plot) things do pick up a bit when the monster makes an appearance, as it is pretty freaky. Director Monte Hellman keeps glimpses of the creature to a minimum at first, but it does become clear that it likes to wrap up its victims in webs to feed on. It also has really long legs and a creepy call and really needs a haircut.Our folks are all bickering, the bad chick wants to turn good and run off with the guide, and one of the goons is quite taken by the Indian housekeeper. It was refreshing to see these folks for the most part weren't exactly scared of the monster, instead always running out to try and kill the thing before it killed them. For a fifties horror film (a roger corman affiliated one at that) this carried a bit more atmosphere and had a scarier monster than, say, the creeping terror.

The film clearly was done on little money, but there are a number of matters that elevate it above other cheap monster films of the era.Charles Griffith does a much better job with dialog than he did in It Conquered the World or Little Shop of Horrors. There's some actual meaning in the banter. Furthermore, it is delivered in an interesting style that also might derive from the low budget, so that chunks of the dialog are oddly timed, and naturalistic for that. I was only half-watching early on, and suddenly the delivery of the lines made me really attend to the thing. I liked Sinatra in this--never heard of him before watching this movie. As others have said, it's slow in the middle, fairly exciting at the end.