semielco 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.

zee 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.

wbswetnam This is a Roger Corman low-budget B movie from the late 1950s. Before you roll your eyes, though, this one is worth a look. The acting is solid, and the storyline isn't bad. Well, it's very slow to get started, but it gets there. Basically, a group of gangsters gets the idea of robbing some gold bars while in South Dakota, and they set off an explosion in a nearby mine as a diversion. The trouble is, they also awaken a giant hairy spider which is annoyed that the humans have disrupted its humble abode, apparently. The gangsters take off cross country with a ski instructor (who is simply their guide and is unaware of their connection to the robbery) with the spider in pursuit. A snowstorm forces them into a cabin, where they get picked off one by one by the spider. Actress Sheila Noonan, who plays the sultry girlfriend of the head gangster, is particularly fetching.

wes-connors In snowy South Dakota, handsome ski instructor Michael Forest (as Gil Jackson) gets involved with sensuous Sheila Carol (as Gypsy Boulet) and a gang of thieves led by her jealous lover Frank Wolff (as Alexander "Alex" Ward). The other crooks are wily Wally Campo (as Byron Smith) and Frank's cousin Richard Sinatra (as Marty Jones). The latter has the convincing line, "Nobody takes my watch!" The former takes cocktail waitress Linné Ahlstrand (as Natalie) out for a quickie, but she gets spun by the "Beat from Haunted Cave" instead. The monster is played by future soap opera star Chris Robinson, who also appears in the bar. The location and a couple of set-ups are okay, but that's about it for this dull, unwarranted horror.*** Beast from Haunted Cave (10/30/59) Monte Hellman ~ Michael Forest, Sheila Noonan, Frank Wolff, Wally Campo