Lee Strosnider Movies

Invading aliens seek to control the minds of viewers at a sci-fi film festival in this monster spoof. The aliens hope to numb the minds of the unsuspecting viewers and change them into zombies. Clips from many of the science fiction favorites of the 1950s and 1960s are included in the plot in which four teens band together to stop the fiendish aliens. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

This film documents one week of group-therapy sessions undergone by a group of 20 teenagers in Idyllwild, California in the late 1960s. It clearly shows the breakdown in barriers as the participants wear down their flimsy posturings and get down to the core issues in their lives. These are fairly well-adjusted youths, and nothing too gory or awful turns up, simply the need and desire to give and receive love. This documentary could serve as a benchmark from which to compare the troubles experienced by similar groups of teens in later decades. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Exploitation titan Jack Hill, who went on to make such cult favorites as Switchblade Sisters, The Swinging Cheerleaders, and Foxy Brown, made his solo directorial debut with this fascinating, offbeat shocker. The three surviving children of Titus W. Merrye, who represent the end of his family's line, live in a dilapidated mansion where patient servant Bruno (Lon Chaney, Jr.) watches over the increasingly eccentric Virginia (Jill Banner), Ralph (Sid Haig), and Elizabeth (Beverly Washburn). All three Merrye siblings suffer from the same rare disease that felled their father and the other members of his family -- "Merrye Syndrome," a neurological ailment that begins to manifest itself at the age of ten, causing the brain to slowly decay and sending its victims into an alternately violent and infantile state. Bald, inarticulate Ralph is supposed to be a vegetarian, but "can eat anything he can catch," while Virginia, who seems to be in a perpetual dream state, imagines herself as a human spider and catches people in her "web" (a large net) and then kills them. While it might seem best to let nature to take its course and allow the family's sad legacy to die out, the Merrye siblings have two distant cousins, Emily Howe (Carol Ohmart) and Peter Howe (Quinn K. Redeker), who are interested in laying claim to the family mansion and any money remaining in the Merrye Estate. But not long after they pay a visit to Bruno, they start to have serious regrets about their decision to see the family. Shot in 1964, Spider Baby sat on the shelf until 1968, when it was briefly released as the second half of a horror double-bill on the drive-in circuit. But after it appeared on home video in the early '80s and was the subject of an enthusiastic essay in the book RE/Search: Incredibly Strange Films, the film began to develop a potent cult following and is now regarded as a minor classic of '60s horror. The film has also appeared under the misleading titles Cannibal Orgy and The Liver Eaters, as well as Spider Baby, or the Maddest Story Ever Told. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide