Earth Vs. The Spider (1958)

Starring Ed Kemmer, June Kenney, Gene Persson, Gene Roth, Hal Torey
Directed by Bert I. Gordon
(actor & director credits courtesy IMDB.com)

A young woman and her boyfriend go in search of her missing father, and find his remains in a cavern inhabited by a giant spider, which soon threatens their small town.

Although it's not quite the equal of the other giant spider film of the 1950s, Tarantula, this is a fun outing by Gordon and crew, with an appealing cast, and a convincing portrait of small-town America.    Not all of the special effects hold up well, but the spider scenes that probably come off best are the sequences filmed in Carlsbad Caverns, with its eerie craggy scenery making a proper home for the giant insect, where it can easily trap its human prey.  Kemmer, the likable protagonist of Edward Cunha's Giant From The Unknown, who also brings along his love interest Sally Fraser from that film, is again likable, and fills a perfect need in the story as the believable scientific expert who devises the spider's downfall.  Familiar '50s character actor Gene Roth is welcome as the local sheriff who laughs at the notion of a giant spider at first, but soon receives his comeuppance.  Albert Glasser provides the proper notes of menace in his music score, according to IMDB, including the decade's ubiquitous theremin instrument among his orchestra.  As for Gordon's direction, it keeps things moving along well enough, making this I think one of his better films.

Bloodlust! (1961)

Starring Wilton Graff, June Kenney, Walter Brooke, Robert Reed, Gene Persson
Directed by Ralph Brooke
(actor & director credits courtesy IMDB.com)

Young people on a boating vacation decide to explore a mysterious island, and become the captives of a madman who has turned to hunting human beings for his own amusement.

Although not credited as being based on Richard Connell's famous story, The Most Dangerous Game, the movie obviously is and can't compare to the classic 1932 film adaptation.  That doesn't mean it's not fun however, and while Graff is not as memorable as Leslie Banks was in the previous film, he does give a believable performance as the deadly serious hunter.  Robert Reed, the future patriarch of TV's The Brady Bunch, leads the quartet of young people who would seem to be playing teenagers but were actually all in their late 20s or early 30s when this was filmed.  The film was photographed by Richard Cunha, and it fits in well with the four sci-fi/horror shockers he made in the late 1950s, with some grisly scenes of Graff's victims and dark atmospheric music.  Per IMDB, Walter Brooke, who plays another resident of the island trying to escape, would go on to utter the immortal "Plastics" line in The Graduate.