THE SPIDER

Jack Flynn is driving down a highway at night looking at a bracelet he bought his teenage daughter, Carol, for her birthday, when his pickup truck hits a massive silk thread stretched across the road. The next morning, Carol is concerned that her ne'er-do-well dad did not come home the night before. She convinces her boyfriend, Mike Simpson, to assist in a search. They find his crashed truck and the bracelet. Thinking he may have taken shelter in a nearby cave, they investigate. In the darkness of the cave, they step off a ledge and fall onto the web of an enormous tarantula, which emerges to attack them. They escape and make it back to town.

Sheriff Cagle does not believe Carol and Mike about the giant spider, but their science teacher, Art Kingman, persuades him to return to the cave with large amounts of DDT. They find Jack's body, drained of fluids, and spray DDT throughout the cave to flush out and then kill the spider. The apparently lifeless body of the spider is taken back to town to the high school gym, where Kingman wants to study it, concerned that whatever conditions created it may produce a whole race of giant spiders. A group of teenagers uses the gym to practice rock and roll numbers they are going to play for a school dance. The music awakens the spider, and it breaks out through the wall of the gym. The janitor, Hugo, stopping to phone for help, is killed. The spider terrorizes the town, killing more people before heading to Kingman's house and attacking his wife, Helen, and their son. Kingman, in his car, gets the spider's attention and lures it outside of town before returning to check that Helen and his son are safe.

The spider is spotted returning to its cave. Cagle and Kingman use dynamite to seal the spider in, but then discover Carol and Mike had gone into the cave to retrieve the bracelet Jack had bought her as a final memento of him. A crew is put to work digging into the cave through its ceiling. Kingman gets two large electrodes from the local power company and runs cables to connect to power lines. Trying to escape the spider's reach, Carol and Mike proceed onto a narrow ledge, which collapses behind them, leaving them trapped. The spider descends on a strand of web to get at them. The townspeople arrive and throw one of the electrodes to Mike. Kingman and Mike use the electrodes to electrocute the spider, which falls, impaling itself on stalagmites. Dynamite is again used to seal off the cave, and Cagle remarks with satisfaction that even should the spider return to life, it will be trapped and starve to death. However, Kingman fears that curious scientists may again dig up the spider in hopes of studying it.

The townspeople electrocute the giant spider in the cave, causing it to fall onto stalagmites and die, then seal the cave with dynamite to trap it.

The film's conclusion reinforces the dangers of tampering with nature and the ever-present threat of something monstrous lurking beneath the surface of everyday life. By using both science and community effort, the townspeople overcome the threat, but the lingering fear remains that curiosity or carelessness could once again unleash such horrors. The closing remarks hint at the cyclical nature of these dangers, typical of 1950s monster cinema.