Metacritic reviews

Also known as The Liver Eaters (although no livers are eaten only a rabbit that may have been a cat) and Cannibal Orgy (though there are no orgies), the long-delayed Spider Baby is definitely one to file under weird and wonderful.

A black comedy about a rural family that’s devolved into cannibalism, Spider Baby probably struck the few people who saw it as disturbing, but post-Texas Chainsaw Massacre it’s more Gidget than gore, interesting mostly for its cast (Lon Chaney is surprisingly affecting) and black-and-white, early-’60s ambiance.

This strange time capsule of late 1960s dementia more or less lives up to its oddball reputation—too unnerving to fall into the category of horror comedies but too cutesy to be labeled as a straight-up shocker a la The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. In other words, it’s unclassifiable, which has amplified its cult appeal.

Director Jack Hill went on to make plenty of classic exploitation movies, such as the more marketable Foxy Brown and Switchblade Sisters, but Spider Baby is him at his trashy, most eccentric best. [15 Jun 2013, p.23]

Simultaneously creepy and hilarious, this is the perfect slice of Grand Guignol for a humid summer's night.

One of those lurid, macabre, amusingly exaggerated B-horror movies beloved by the psychotronic/Joe Bob Briggs crowds.

An inept cheapo by any standard, only marginally more sophisticated than an Edward Wood Jr. production—yet it carries a certain demented charm, and there’s reason to suspect that Tobe Hooper checked it out before making The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

Spider Baby has built up a reputation as an offbeat gore thriller, depicting two children who have inherited evil blood and are slasher-basher- gasher murderers. [25 Oct 1992, p.35]

Everything that ensues is laughably predictable and silly, but primitive as it is, Spider Baby is a professional effort in which Hill makes an attempt at style, aided by Al Taylor's shadowy black-and-white cinematography and Chaney's willingness to play straight. [01 Apr 1994, p.F8]

A genuine oddity, the film is exceedingly well shot by cinematographer Alfred Taylor and has a creepy PSYCHO-like feel about it as well as some nightmarish surrealism.