"Khhhhhhhhaaaaaaaaaan!"
I've been an arachnophile since I was a wee wop in the mid-seventies,and have owned hundreds of tarantulas over the years,from all over the world,from Brachypelma Smithi,the famous Mexican Orange Knee,to Haplopelma Lividum,the Cobalt Blue,and every species in between.Needless to say when my eyes first caught sight of the trailer for John "Bud" Cardos' "Kingdom of the Spiders",I threw obligatory tantrums until my old man finally dragged me to the theater to allow me a solid hour and a half of mygalamorphal glory.Of course,pouring thousands of harmless terrestrial tarantulas all over Bill Shatner equates to B-movie gold,and this hairy classic has always been one of my favorites,albeit a guilty one,for reasons I'll elaborate upon later.First,the tale as it unfolds...
"You're telling me that calf...was...brought down by...spider....venom?"
Rack Hanson(Shatner)is your friendly neighborhood veterinary doctor horsing around with his dead brother's wife when he gets a voice message on his vcr-sized beeper that there's trouble afoot at the Coby ranch.Coby(Woody Strode),the friendly neighborhood African American rancher,has a sick calf that was brought down by a menacing spider's eye view steady cam as it slid through the grass,culminating in a terrifying freeze frame of the poor heifer's eye.Brrrr.Rack is puzzled by the calf's sickness,so he calls upon professional help for analysis of the cow's blood,before putting the suffering milk-giver down,much to the dismay of Coby,who blames the calf's death and possible ranch quarantine on...you guessed it,racism!Only in this case,intolerance has eight legs,two chelicerae tipped with venemous fangs,and spinnerets capable of webbing an entire town up in terror.The entomologyst(Tiffany Bolling) shows up on the scene,only to be sexually harrassed by Shatner in his cowboy hat,unaware she's the specialist sent to him to investigate the sudden aggressive tendencies being displayed by the local tarantula population.Meanwhile peaceful Verde Valley(immortalized by Dorsey Burnette in the theme song)is under attack,first livestock and local pets fall victim to the creepy crawlies,then they set their eyes upon human prey,as the Shat all but ignores Bolling's diagnosis,further trying to get into her panties instead.
"Shooting my own fingers off might quell the spiders' bloodlust momentarily!"
As the dust bowl town finally comes to the realization that they may want to destroy the huge spider hills(!) that have been popping up all over town,despite the hayseed mayor's insistance on going ahead with a town festival(Jaws anyone?),the Shat and his entourage,which by now includes a port-o-potty inventor and his wife,Rack's brother's little girl,and a bed and breakfast owner,make a run for safety as Verde Valley is besieged by thousands of tarantulas who fancy webbing the fleeing,screaming townspeople into large silken cocoons.In the frantic concluding battle between man and spider,the Shat gets doused in tarantulas while searching for the fuse box in the dark,crawling up the cellar steps with spiders on his back,arms,and face,and even a few unlucky little bastards holed up in his 70's toupee,before spinning dramatically and falling directly in front of the lens to show off the fx team's latex spider bites on his cheek.Although Captain Kirk survives his arachnid attack(where it only took four or five bites to bring down a bull earlier...you can't fuck with Bill Shatner.),the party awakens in the morning to the downer realization that peaceful Verde Valley has been replaced by an uber-cheezy matte painting of the town totally engulfed in spider webs...
"Shooting my own fingers off might quell the spiders' bloodlust momentarily!"
This pre-PETA pic had to have given thousands of tarantulas an early death,by stepping on,flinging to the ground,rolling over with car tires,blasting with fire extinguishers,etc. probably single-handedly leading to the unavailability of Mexican Orange Knees in pet shops for some twenty years before the species finally made a comeback and was taken off the endangered list.All in all,a quality piece of seventies exploitation that I throw in every now and again,if only to hear Coby scream "Ho dee do!" as he drives off a cliff with a rubber spider in his face.
Three out of four B.W.s
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