Kingdom of the Spiders (1977) Dimension Pictures/Horror RT: 97 minutes Rated PG (violence, language) Director: John “Bud” Cardos Screenplay: Alan Caillou and Richard Robinson Music: Dorsey Burnette Cinematography: John Arthur Morrill Release date: November 23, 1977 (US) Cast: William Shatner, Tiffany Bolling, Woody Strode, Lieux Dressler, David McLean, Natasha Ryan, Altovise Davis, Joe Ross, Marcy Lafferty, Adele Malis, Roy Engel, Hoke Howell, Bill Foster, Whitey Hughes. Box Office: $17M (US)
Rating: ***
Kingdom of the Spiders is one of those movies that have to be taken on their own terms. Directed by John “Bud” Cardos (The Dark), it’s another “nature on the rampage” movie, a subgenre of horror movies popular in the 70s- e.g. Day of the Animals, Grizzly, Empire of the Ants, Nightwing, etc. It freely borrows elements of Jaws and The Birds to tell its story of a rural town under attack by deadly tarantulas.
Before you get too worried, know that William Shatner is here to lead the fight against the army of eight-legged foes. Yep, Captain Kirk himself; the same guy who would go on to save the President’s life just three years later in 1980’s The Kidnapping of the President. By his side is none other than 70s B-movie sex goddess Tiffany Bolling (Bonnie’s Kids, The Centerfold Girls). How can an army of spiders possibly compete against a pair like that?
It all starts with a sick calf. Shatner plays Rack Hansen (LOVE that name!), a veterinarian in the small farming town of Verde Valley, AZ. It’s he who examines the calf and cannot determine a cause for his sudden illness and subsequent death. He sends a blood sample to a university lab for analysis. They send arachnologist Diane Ashley (Bolling) who informs Rack that the calf died of a massive dose of spider venom. He doesn’t believe it until the calf’s owner, farmer Walter Colby (Strode, Once Upon a Time in the West), shows him and Diane a huge spider hill on his property. There must be hundreds of them in there. Colby makes the mistake of trying to burn the hill; it only sends most of them out a secret escape tunnel into the fields, homes and town streets. Naturally, chaos ensues.
So what’s going on with the spiders? They don’t usually work in groups. It’s Diane’s theory that the use of pesticides has depleted their natural food supply so in order to survive, they work their way up the food chain, going after larger animals and humans. Also, their venom is five times more toxic than usual. YIKES!
The spider siege couldn’t have happened at a worse time. The town is just weeks away from the annual county fair. The mayor is more worried about the tourist trade than the safety of the townspeople. Did he learn his mayoral skills from Larry Vaughn (the mayor played by Murray Hamilton in Jaws 1 & 2)? It all comes down to the survival of a few characters. Besides Rack and Diane, there’s Colby and his wife Birch (Davis, Can’t Stop the Music), Rack’s widowed sister-in-law Terry (Lafferty, The Day Time Ended) who has a thing for him, her cute as a button young daughter Linda (Ryan, The Amityville Horror), lodge owner Emma (Dressler, Truck Stop Women), town sheriff Gene Smith (McLean, Deathsport) and a tourist couple, Vern (Ross, C.H.O.M.P.S.) and Betty (Malis, Lucky Stiff). Some or all of them barricade themselves in the lodge as they become outnumbered by the spiders.
That’s Kingdom of the Spiders in a nutshell or in this case, a cocoon made of spider webs. For what it is, it’s pretty good. I remember watching it on network TV circa 1980. At the time, I only cared about seeing spiders attack and kill people while creating chaos. There’s plenty of it in this flick. Verde Valley is literally crawling with them. They go after farm animals and citizens. They cause a crop duster to crash. Of course, no “nature on the rampage” would be complete without at least one scene of screaming townspeople running around covered in spiders. To this day, I still love scenes like this.
What’s cool about Kingdom of the Spiders is that it predates the whole CGI movement which means that the makers used real tarantulas (along with a few rubber ones), not an easy task when you’re dealing with creatures with cannibalistic tendencies. Each of the 5000 spiders used had to be kept in separate containers. The spider wrangler on this picture certainly had his work cut out for him.
It would be unfair to knock the acting in Kingdom of the Spiders, especially with the power duo of Shatner-Bolling in the lead. Shatner is the ideal movie hero. His character is handsome, sure of himself and not too bright. At one point, he’s compared to Gary Cooper. Shatner, as always, overacts in scenes although never to extent of Star Trek II (“KHAN!!!!!!!”). Bolling is easy on the eyes which is a good thing because she’s not entirely convincing as a scientist. The two actors have decent chemistry, I suppose. In the 70s, little Natasha Ryan was the go-to kid when filmmakers needed to put a cute little girl in peril. She’s kind of annoying in Kingdom of the Spiders, but you can’t help but like her especially if know how her real life played out after she quit acting in ’83. It’s always good to see Woody Strode; he has an air of coolness about him.
I’m not going to sit here and try to convince you Kingdom of the Spiders is high art cinema. It’s definitely NOT! It’s trash, cinematic junk food. It’s the kind of movie you catch on afternoon TV or late at night. I can see it playing at drive-ins on warm summer nights. It’s a fun movie that asks nothing of the brain. It’s as silly as any other “When Animals Attack” type film, but it’s also very entertaining. Additionally, some great arachnid acting is on display here; you don’t want to miss that, do you? Throw in the cool cast and you have a really fun movie.
