Trivia / Spider Baby or, the Maddest Story Ever Told

• Actor Allusion: At one point old horror movies are brought up, including The Wolf Man (1941)...which leads to Bruno declaring ominously, "There's going to be a full moon tonight." Lon Chaney Jr. had, of course, played the title role in that film.
• All Musicals Are Adaptations: A rock-style musical adaptation played small community theaters from 2004 to 2012. The soundtrack album for it was released in 2010. Give it a listen!
• Post-Release Retitle: The film was originally titled Cannibal Orgy, or The Maddest Story Ever Told. When it was finally released in drive-ins in 1967-1968, it was under two different titles: "Spider Baby" (retaining the subtitle), and "The Liver Eaters". The Spider Baby retitle, being preferred by director Jack Hill, ended up being the one that stuck. The original title is still referenced in the opening theme:

This Cannibal Orgy is strange to behold
And the Maddest Story Ever Told!

• Troubled Production:
  • Surprisingly downplayed for a movie of Lon Chaney, Jr.'s late period; Lon, who had been drinking heavily and continuously for decades, was notorious for being a temperamental hazard on set when intoxicated, but he believed in the project and wanted filming to go smoothly, so he managed to keep sober during the shoot.
  • The main issue throughout filming was a lack of air conditioning at the cheap studio in Glendale, where the August weather made things unbearably hot and stuffy — especially for Sid Haig, who contracted a fever partway through and was running a 103°F temperature while he was supposed to be wrestling with Mary Mitchel. A doctor was kept on standby to give him reduction shots every few hours.
  • The original production company folded, resulting in a two-month delay until a new distributor could be lined up. The replacement, American General Pictures, did such a poor job at marketing (shopping the movie around with wildly different titles in different markets) that it ensured no nationwide word of mouth could build, damning the movie to obscurity for decades.