Kingdom of the Spiders (1977)

Simply Perfect

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Poor William Shatner, how he must have longed for the deck of the Enterprise instead of the hot desert on earth surrounded by a few thousand tarantulas. Shatner is a veterinarian who has discovered that one of Woody Strode's calves was killed and the lab results which entomologist Tiffany Bolling brings in shows it was an incredible amount of spider venom.In van she's one of the scientist who has warned against the overuse of DDT which has killed the spider's natural food supply. Now the spiders have developed new feeding habits and they've gotten organized against humankind.The human players look like they would rather be anywhere than in this Thanksgiving special of a movie. Especially Shatner whom he fired his agent after this would have been justified.I will say this though, the ending was quite bizarre, almost but not quite made up for the rest of this film.Unless you love arachnids, pass it up.

Investigating the mysterious deaths of a number of farm animals, vet Rack Hansen (William Shatner) discovers that his town lies in the path of hoards of migrating tarantulas. Before he can take action, the streets are overrun by killer spiders, trapping a small group of towns folk in a remote hotel.I am more than a little shocked this is not a Roger Corman film, as it seems to have been greatly inspired by his movies. This is just fun, hardly believable and not particularly scary. (Oddly, "Arachnophobia", which is a comedy, is probably scarier than this one.) What had me wondering was the scene with spiders getting run over. Did spiders really get squished? And if yes, does that means animal violence in the movies is not inclusive of spiders? I found this strange.

That itsy bitsy Spiders(Tarantulas) are on the crawl and they are upset ! TV films are generally dismissed as trite and shallow, but somehow "Kingdom of the Spiders" rises to a slightly higher level. Rick Hanson(William Shatner) local Veterinarian is perplexed by the deaths of several farm animals. Little does he know that the Spiders are revolting against the excesses of pesticides and turnabout is fair play. While the suspense and action don't always peak at the same time, the film does hold your interest as to how the director intends to showcase the next attack of the tarantulas. I didn't see a disclaimer that "no animals were harmed during filming", as if pickup trucks rolling over exploding tarantulas kinda gave it away. But the film develops nicely, even with a few contrived scenes.BTW, tarantulas are basically docile creatures, so they really had to ramp up the attacks to make them look effective. So give it a view, I gave the film 9 out of 10 rating, because for a goofy film, it does deliver.

No pun intended btw with the summary line. And I'm sure not everyone will like the ending. But I think it's almost the only way to end this. William Shatner is really great in this and you can feel him, playing the ridiculousness of the script. There are even scenes, were he "fights" with Spiders, were you could be excused thinking this was directed by Mr. Ed Wood.But of course this does has something to say and since the spiders were real (well at least most, maybe they a few plastic one thrown into the mix), this also feels real. Which must have been good and bad for the actors. Good because they didn't need a great motivation to act scared and bad ... because some actually must have been genuinely scared!Having said that, the movie does not have a big budget (I even read this might have been initially made for TV, although I'm not sure if that's true) and the dialog is off quite a few times. If that doesn't matter much to you, you will get a really quite good, eerie and scary horror movie.