Kingdom of the Spiders (1977) 6/10

[Dehydrator]

It's NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD for Tarantulas.

Spider horror is a subgenre I refuse to watch all alone. The presence of Spiders, even in a movie makes me wanna scream, I'm arachnophobic. This movie is a good example of above-averge spider horror but it fails when it's compared to ARACHNOPHOBIA.

Plot goes : The tarantula-population of some small town in the middle of nowhere rampages on the human-population. Reason why: them bastards killed all sort of tarantula food and so they deceide to get together and retaliate. William Shatner and Tiffany Bolling try to stop the dumbass humans to cause the spiders to cause even more havoc.

I'm not an expert but I think the idea behind this was fairly new at the time. We had nuclear-mutations of spiders in TARANTULA but nobody until this made a movie where the villans are just regular all-day life spiders. In this case Tarantulas. I admit that Tarantulas are the kind of spiders that frightens me the least, I mean at least they ain't gonna hide under my bed tonight. But still, I was cowering behind my girlfriend for a lot of time where I really couldn't look on the screen. If I was Henry Rollins ( he's got a big ass spider-tattoo) I would be afraid of myself.

The acting is pretty much okay, but I never liked William Shatner in anything, ever. Lucky for him, the humans are mainly just there to die, the Spiders are pretty impressive. Their best scene has to be when they gather round a little girl on her bed and she justs sits there, unable to move.

Eventhough I'm a pussy when it comes to spiders, this movie has some truely silly points: Check out the scene where the spiders attack the town, ewoks style! I was laughing and cringing all at the same time. And really, tell me if I'm wrong did that guy really get to bind the cow with a lasso AROUND HER LEGS??? IN A RODEO??? Sounds pretty unlikely to me. Also the ending is worth a chuckle. The movie takes a lot of time that the spiders in question are TARANTULAS and then...

SPOILER

THEY WEB THE WHOLE TOWN! I had a blast imagening the directors trying to teach the poor tarantulas how to cast ANY web. I understand that it would be lame if they just took the town a few feet under the ground ( I think this is Tarantula's natural hiding place ) but man, did I laugh.

SPOILER END

Also, everything looks quite dated here in 2001 and for spider-horror beginners, I think they'll be better off with ARACHNOPHOBIA. One of the movie's highlights is how the spiders take the survivors under siege in the house, very much like the Zombies in Night of the living dead.

A recommodation for Spider-horror fans but it really ain't THAT good. 6/10

[Fulci]

I watched it when USA had that horror movie program many years back.

[TomJ]

Hey D, wanna CREEPY spider scene? How about the scene in the original Fly when the human fly got caught in that huge spider web and the spider kept coming closer and closer and was about to chomp him. I don't MIND spiders from a distance, but GOD! If I see one about CRAWLING on me, YEAH! I'll freak! I hate it when that happens! I mean, THEY BITE! And a vampire looking swelling, itchy bump is there.

[Dehydrator]

To my shame, I've never seen the original fly but seems like I have to check it out. Which one is that? The one with Vincent Price?

[FeydRautha]

Yes, it is. And yeah, that approaching spider scene in the original "The Fly" gave me nightmares when I was a kid. "Help me!....Heeeeeelp meeeee!!!"

My memories of Kingdom of the Spider are vague, enough to want to go find a copy on video. I remember the webby ending, but being extremely arachnophobic myself I watched most of it through laced fingers across my face.

PS: Some breeds of tarantula do spin webs. Down here in Oz we've got the infamous Funnelweb spider, a member of the tarantula family, deadly poisonous and spins a funnel-shaped web (hence the name). We've also got the Brown Huntsman, not poisonous at all but still a distant cousin of the tarantula and does indeed weave a web. I don't care, I hate them all...

[This message has been edited by FeydRautha (edited 11-09-2001).]

[Dehydrator]

Hmm, shame on me here again. I'm only familiar to the Tarantulas some of my freaky friends keep as pets. They move about 3 times a day and act like they're stoned for most of their time. But anyway, the movie introduces also so called "Spider Hills". To my understanding this is somewhat like ants do at their colonies. I got a photo from a real-life spider hill and there's no web. Whatever, I just thought it was sort of funny...

[Ed King]

So, I guess you guys won't be watching Jack Sholder's Arachnid when it comes out next year ?

[Dehydrator]

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by Ed King:
So, I guess you guys won't be watching Jack Sholder's Arachnid when it comes out next year ? </font>

Whatever that is, if it has Spiders on the rampage I'll be watching. It's odd but I nearly like every spiderhorror movie because I can relate to it. I know that without spiders, earth would be shit and that they are very useful. But they are also very clever. I hate it when things I'm afraid of are clever...