{"id":6761,"date":"2024-10-25T10:46:56","date_gmt":"2024-10-25T14:46:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=6761"},"modified":"2024-10-25T10:46:56","modified_gmt":"2024-10-25T14:46:56","slug":"kiss-of-the-tarantula","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/10\/25\/kiss-of-the-tarantula\/","title":{"rendered":"Kiss of the Tarantula"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Kiss of the Tarantula<\/strong> (1976)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinema-Vu\/Horror\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 85 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG (violence, terror, teen drinking)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Chris Munger\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Warren Hamilton Jr.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Phillan Bishop\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Henning Schellerup\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: May 1976 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Suzanna Ling, Eric Mason, Herman Wallner, Patricia Landon, Beverly Eddins, Jay Scott Neal, Rebecca Eddins, Rita French, W. James Eddins, Jared Davis, Stratton Leopold, Mark Smith, Mary Tyree, Ron Prather, William Guhl, Linda Spatz, Art Lane, George Gingell, Susan Eddins, John H. Burrows, R.C.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: N\/A<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: **<\/p>\n

\u00a0The only memory I have of the schlock horror piece Kiss of the Tarantula<\/strong> is catching the first fifteen minutes or so on one of the local UHF channels one Saturday afternoon in the early 80s. I never knew the name of it; all I remembered about it was it had a little girl that dug spiders. Years later, I found it on a DVD combo pack with two other low-budget horror movies from the 70s- Don\u2019t Open the Door and Don\u2019t Look in the Basement. I watched it and promptly forgot about it until a week ago when I got my hands on a Blu-Ray copy. I decided to give it another go so I could review it just for kicks. It\u2019s far, FAR from a horror classic, but its high weirdness factor makes up for what it lacks in quality.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Directed by Chris Munger whose only other feature film credit is the 1974 blaxploitation piece Black Starlet, Kiss of the Tarantula <\/strong>is basically a Willard knock-off with spiders instead of rats. Suzanna Ling plays Susan, a disturbed teenager in a small rural town whose only friends are her pet tarantulas. The daughter of the town mortician (Wallner), she\u2019s been a social outcast her whole life. As a girl, she lived in fear of her abusive mom (Beverly Eddins) who was deathly afraid of spiders. One night, Susan overhears her plotting to kill her father with her lover Walter (Mason, Scream Blacula Scream), the local police chief and her dad\u2019s brother. To protect her only loving parent, she uses one of her tarantulas to scare her mother to death.<\/p>\n

\u00a0As a teen, she\u2019s the target of ridicule and bullying by her classmates. One night, they take it too far when Bo (Neal, Grave of the Vampire) and his two flunkies break in to steal a coffin for their Halloween party. Susan catches them in the act. They force her into the basement where they kill one of her tarantulas. Deciding it\u2019s the last straw, she sets out for revenge aided by her eight-legged friends.<\/p>\n

\u00a0As if the bullying wasn\u2019t enough, Uncle Walter has taken an unnatural interest in his niece. He\u2019s always putting his hands on her and making inappropriate comments. It makes one wonder what\u2019s wrong with the dad? Is he really so dense that he doesn\u2019t see what\u2019s going on between his brother and daughter. Then again, he didn\u2019t know his late wife was having an affair with him and still doesn\u2019t. In any event, Uncle Walter is another problem that Susan will eventually deal with in her own unique way.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The oddest thing about Kiss of the Tarantula<\/strong> is that we never see the spiders bite their victims. A kill scene typically shows them casually crawling all over their victims until he\/she finally notices and freaks out. One victim dies by having his throat cut by a broken car window. Another apparently gets suffocated in an air duct after the critters corner him. One girl ends up having a psychotic break in the hospital. Walter figures out that Susan is behind it all and decides to use it as leverage to have his way with her. That, I assure you, will not end well for him.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Most of the cast of Kiss of the Tarantula<\/strong> haven\u2019t been in anything else. It\u2019s Ling\u2019s sole credit on IMDb. She\u2019s really not all that bad as the deranged teen with a thousand-yard blank stare that would creep out even the most violent psychopath in the lunatic ward. It makes perfect sense casting Wallner as a mortician given his stiff acting style. He\u2019s so wooden in his only movie that the crew probably had to keep him far away from open flames at all times. Mason appears to be going for some kind of world record for the number of times he can say \u201cSusan\u201d. Other than that, he\u2019s not all that memorable. In only a few scenes, Beverly Eddins gives Faye Dunaway a run for her money in the deranged overacting department. Ultimately, it\u2019s no contest, Eddins is no Mommie Dearest. As for the group of teen bullies, I can only say that they must be especially stupid to still be in high school at 25. That\u2019s how old they all look.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I guess I shouldn\u2019t be too hard on Kiss of the Tarantula<\/strong>. After all, it was custom-made to play at drive-ins to teens too busy making out with their dates to pay attention to what\u2019s happening on-screen. Munger keeps it simple which is either it greatest asset or biggest fault. There is no plot or character development. It\u2019s simply a silly movie about a girl who kills people with spiders. It\u2019s neither scary nor suspenseful. The death scenes aren\u2019t all that impressive save for a sadistic twist in the final one. It looks cheap. Nay, it is cheap and also amateurish. Unfortunately, it never sinks low enough to be a memorable bad movie experience. It\u2019s unintentionally funny at times but that\u2019s about it. Kiss of the Tarantula<\/strong> is as minor league as a B-movie can get. Wait, did I say B-movie? That\u2019s too freaking high! Let\u2019s try G or H. Yes, that\u2019s more like it!\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kiss of the Tarantula (1976)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinema-Vu\/Horror\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 85 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG (violence, terror, teen drinking)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Chris Munger\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Warren Hamilton Jr.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Phillan Bishop\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Henning Schellerup\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: May 1976 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Suzanna Ling, Eric Mason, Herman Wallner, Patricia Landon, Beverly Eddins, Jay Scott Neal, Rebecca Eddins, Rita French, W. James Eddins, Jared […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7138,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6761","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-b-movies","category-horror"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/Kiss-of-the-Tarantula-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6761","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6761"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6761\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7140,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6761\/revisions\/7140"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}