Jill Banner

Released under various titles, including Attack Of The Liver Eaters and Cannibal Orgy, Or The Maddest Story Ever Told, the four-year-old black and white feature quickly faded from view in the tie-dyed electric-Koolaid-acid Sixties. We know of Spider Baby today largely through the efforts of Los Angeles cult film resurrectionist Johnny Legend. The film tells the story of the Merrye family, a clan of bizarre cannibals who suffer from a deteriorating mental condition. They eat bugs, cats, and visitors under the watchful eyes of their caretaker, Lon Chaney, Jr. It was an extremely warped version of the 1960s television horror families The Addams Family and The Munsters. Jill was only 17 when Spider Baby was filmed.

While Spider Baby remained in legal limbo in the mid-1960s, Banner was featured in Deadlier Than The Male (1966), a British mystery about two female assassins, starring Nigel Green and European bombshells Elke Sommer and Sylva Koscina. She played Wendy, one of the wholesome teenagers in C’mon, Let’s Live A Little (1967) with singers Jackie DeShannon (What the World Needs Now is Love and Put a Little Love in Your Heart) and Bobby Vee (Take Good Care of My Baby), one of the last films of the fading "beach party" genre. In the psychedelically paranoid spy spoof The President’s Analyst (1967), Banner was a flower child named "Snow White", who temporarily rescues James Coburn (Our Man Flint, In Like Flint) from a combined conspiracy of the American CIA, the Russian KGB, and The Phone Company (referred to cryptically as "TPC"). Read Less