Kingdom of the Spiders

I first watched this one when I was a youngster (I assume it was on cable TV, but I suppose it could have been at a drive-in), and I remembered it as being a fairly decent and scary piece of 70s drive-in cheese. It isn't. It's a really, really bad movie, as I discovered when I picked up a VHS copy cheap at a yard sale. The spiders, of course, are genuinely creepy, because they used real non-embiggened spiders. But they're *only* creepy. They are not really frightening. For example, they move very, very slowly. A monster you can escape from by walking briskly away isn't an effective monster. This also makes the panic scene later in the film (where people run back and forth screaming as the spiders crawl around slowly) more laughable than frightening. Of course, the spiders move much faster offscreen than on, so maybe that explains it. And let's not even go into the scene with Altovise Davis and the revolver. The ending, which I remembered as being genuinely shocking and disturbing, is in fact ludicrous and makes no sense at all. And the score is overblown and out-of-place, and features one of the worst country songs I have ever heard (and I don't like country music anyway). On the plus side, it does have William Shatner at his studly-cheesiest. And, to be fair, the couple who start out looking like the typical Annoying, Moronic Tourists turn out to be fairly intelligent and useful. But that's not enough to save it. If you're a bad movie connoisseur, this is definitely worth checking out. If you're not, it isn't.

I have no idea how old I was when I first saw this movie, maybe 9 or 10 and yes, I'm happy that we don't have any biting, poisonous spiders here in Germany. The plot is better than most of this genre, it's good structured and it lacks a stupid showdown with a giant monster breeding millions of smaller beings. Instead, it's an open end an an appeal against the abuse of pesticides. Big bonus. And the tarantulas are soooooo yucky. I even think this movie is the cause for my brothers aracnophobia. One thing that upsets me in almost every of this kind of movies is that the "hero" (in this case Captain Kirk) saves a child. I like "Smilla's sense of snow" because this annoying inuit boy is thrown off the roof. Kill more kids in movies!!! Same rights for everyone!!!!

Scariest mainly because I am an Arachnophobe. Still this is a classic horror film. It drags a bit at the beginning but once the spiders organise into an army...this thing really takes off baby. Shatner is pretty entertaining as usual. Things to watch for: -The spider siege on the town. -Shatner's line "She's smooth as a gnat's ass ain't she?" -Defending the Hotel. -The half eaten people. -The different ways the citizens die. -The Attack Shatner scene. -The classic ending.

possible tiny spoilers William Shatner and company run away screaming from insecticide induced mutated spiders. Now that we have the plot out of the way; there is a catchy song called "Peaceful Verde Valley", a kinda creepy main theme, a laugh inducing spider point of view attack of a cow, and buckets of small, slow moving killer spiders! Throw in another young innocent killed in Nam to get the girl to like Shatner and some of the dumbest death scenes I have ever seen and you have the "cult classic" Kingdom of the Spiders. Everyone needs at least a few movies like this in their collection, one that you either laugh at with friends or watch alone when you feel cheap. Not annoying enough to be on the bottom hundred, not weird enough to be a cult classic, not good enough to admit to ownership with pride. I do own it by the way, I am not ashamed.

Because I am pretty damn well scared of spiders, this film really sh*t me up. The acting and the dialogue are pretty risible, but theres some good effects (for the budget) and there are some genuinely disturbing moments especially when a man goes up in a plane and there are dozens of huge spiders in the cockpit with him, and they crawl all over him, and he can't do anything, and one of them goes on his FACE and he starts to scream and its the most genuinely frightening scream that I have ever heard, and when spiders take over the town and there is panic everywhere. The shock ending is great as well, and pretty revolutionary for the time. This film is a little like Night Of The Living Dead, in that the characters end up boarded up in a farm house, with the enemies swarming outside. And they look out of the window..... Well, I guess you'll just have to watch the movie.