I’m going to connect some dots for you, and I’m starting with the Old Dark House films of the early 1930s. These early films focused on the spookiness of the house, but logically the only people who would choose to live there would have to be not right in the head. This evolved into the degenerate family in the decaying house, and one of the earliest examples is a Comedy from 1945 starring Fred MacMurray called Murder, He Says. You can then look to Television where The Addams Family made the idea into family entertainment.
Spider Baby reimagines The Addams Family as an exploitation film. The acting is shaky, the production value is low while the desire to shock and titillate is high. Lon Chaney Jr. gives the most earnest, soulful performance, but Sid Haig stands out with a style that best exemplifies the movie. It’s so self-aware that it seems to come naturally. The bizarre behavior manages to amuse, mostly because everyone is so transparent about this film’s cult ambitions.
From here, this type of film produced a number of copycats until The Texas Chainsaw Massacre stripped away all the comfort, while still keeping the focus on the family. It’s a formula that continues to evolve, perhaps most recently with Ready or Not (2019)
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