Kingdom of the Spiders (1977)
Review by Dindrane
Film:
DVD:

Written by Alan Caillou, Stephen Lodge, Richard Robinson, and Jeffrey M. Sneller
Directed by John Cardos
Starring William Shatner, Tiffany Bolling, Woody Strode, Lieux Dressler, David McLean
Spider Wrangling by Jim Brockett

Rating: PG

Anamorphic: Nope

My Advice: Rent it for a lark.

Note: This film predates the ASPCA regulations on allowing animal actors to come to harm. Spiders are in fact harmed in the making of this motion picture.

Small-town veterinarian “Rack” Hanson is having a rough day. Cattle and dogs are disappearing and turning up dead, and a city slicker entomologist, Diane Ashley, has arrived saying that their lab tests show the animals were killed by massive doses of spider venom. Yet there are no spiders known to Hanson that could bring down a cow. What’s more, the mayor of the town is more concerned with lost revenue from the county fair coming up than he is interested in helping Hanson and Ashley solve this mystery. It isn’t long until the situation is completely out of hand, and Hanson finds himself barricaded at a local bed and breakfast, fighting off the encroachment of hoards of angry, hungry tarantulas.

The plot is about as logically flawed as are most films of this type. The explanation for why the tarantulas, lone hunters by nature, are suddenly banding together in huge hoards is an environmentalist’s dream—we’re destroying all the spiders’ natural prey with chemicals. Why the spiders evolved this specific way to answer their problems or at this particular time and place is not explored, nor is why only tarantulas seem affected or why their venom itself has changed to become stronger.

The acting is rather pedestrian, about what you would expect from a film of this sort. Shatner does his best with the faulty script, but the character they gave him to play is just generally unappealing and irritating in places. Bolling, as the visiting scientist, begins by hating the character of Hanson and then suddenly and rather inexplicably falling for his aggressive charms. So much for women’s lib.

Aside from the mediocre acting and the logically improbable plot, this film is actually a bit of fun and well worth a rental when you are in the mood. Watching the humans run and scream hither and yon chased by tiny predators is always amusing, and many people, if they were honest, are at least a bit chilled by masses of creepy-crawlies or swarms of bugs or bug-like beings. Besides, there are some rather nice sweeping shots of the massed spiders over heaps of bodies, and the basement lightbulb scene is worthy of leaving the room, it’s so icky.

In short, if you like monster movies, then you should at least rent this classic of the spider sub-genre. Arachnophobes beware--there are many, many disturbing scenes of spider aggression. See it as therapy. Quite probably, viewers who do not suffer from the certainty that spiders are in fact diabolically clever will be too caught up in the film’s logical inconsistencies and plot holes to be too terrified, but since we all know someone terrified of spiders, watching him or her watch this film with eyes wide will be entertainment enough.