Customer Reviews

Kingdom of the Spiders

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

William Shatner as "Rack" & Tiffany Bolling as his love interest in this utterly laughable, fun, and cheesy B-horror film from the past. Shatner's over the top performance as Rack is worth the price of this DVD alone! (Just under a sawbuck!)

The effects are quite UNSPECIAL as well as the acting from the supporting cast. The Shat, however, more than makes up for ANY marginal acting of the supporting cast.

After Shatner, the best performance in this fun stinker of a movie is "Bessie" the cow while being attacked by spiders in the very first scene. Bessie highly surpasses her owners acting performance and clearly OUTSHINES everyone but Rack in this film.

A great cheese-filled ending to the picture too!

If you like b-grade horror, you will certainly enjoy this "peice of SHAT" film!

Happy Watching!

Small, hairy creatures terrorize William Shatner, and I'm not talking about his toupees. Kingdom of the Spiders (1977), directed by stuntman/actor/director/producer John 'Bud' Cardos who later directed the miserably dismal Outlaw of Gor (1989).

The film stars William 'Mr. Tambourine Man' Shatner as Dr. Robert 'Rack' Hansen, along with once aspiring singer and fairly attractive Tiffany Bolling as entomologist Diane Ashley, and Woody Strode as Walter Colby, a small time rancher with big time problems of the hairy, creepy eight legged kind.

The movie starts of with Colby's prize calf becoming sick of 'mysterious' causes, but seeing as how the title of this feature is Kingdom of the Spiders, it's no big task for the viewer to assume the spiders got at it, but the characters aren't let in on it until a little later in the movie. Also, we are given a number of scurrying, point of view shots on the ground near the calf prior to its' becoming ill, indicating that many small, quick creatures had their way with the bovine. Dr. Robert 'Rack' Hansen, the local veterinarian, is called, and he takes some samples from the dying calf, and sends them off to the 'big city' for further analysis. Thus enters Diane Ashely, entomologist to further investigate the matter, and also to provide a rather awkward love interest subplot for Shatner's character. She informs Rack that the calf died of spider venom, to which he has a hard time believing, until Mr. Colby speaks of a giant spider mound on his property, one crawling with tarantulas up the wazoo. Diane is amazed to see such a concentration of spiders in one place, and proposes some rather lame theories to help justify the main crux of the film, namely why thousands, even millions of spiders that are about to descend on the small, Arizona town. Oh yeah, she also finds out that the spiders have venom like five times more toxic than normal.

Well, some measures, rather futile ones at that, are initiated to try and kill the wee, hairy varmints, but to no avail. I love how the character of mayor, between a rock and a hard place with concern about an upcoming fair that generates a great deal of revenue for the small town, acts in borderline criminal fashion in dealing with the spiders. The similarity between this character and that of Mayor Larry Vaughn (Murray Hamilton) from the vastly superior Jaws (1975) is unmistakable, but while Mayor Vaughn suffered internally for his folly, the mayor in this film just meets a rather nasty end. I know it's not fair to compare these two films, as Jaws, in my opinion, is one of the best films ever made which spawned so many copycats trying to cash in on the success of a particular genre, namely man vs. nature.

Shatner hams it up a bit as you might expect, but that added to film for me, rather than detracting. There was an odd and creepy subplot involving the widowed wife of Shatner's character's brother as a potential love interest, but that was put to rest fairly quickly, to which I was thankful. The spiders are the main attraction here, and the film certainly doesn't skimp, providing, at times, hundreds of the hairy little creatures, certainly more than enough to give this viewer a serious case of the willies. I couldn't even begin to imagine having to work around so many live spiders...I give credit to the actors for this point, and it's obvious for the scenes involving a character having to suffer spiders on their person the revulsion was real. These are the kind of reactions hard to get with CGI work. My biggest problem was with the music as it didn't always fit and became fairly annoying at times. It's interesting when music works in a movie, I don't always notice its' presence, but when it doesn't, it really stands out, like it did here for me. I don't want to give too much away, but I will say the ending was typical of these types of movies throughout the 70's.

Good Times Home Video offers a reasonably good looking print in full screen format, but don't be expecting any special features as there are none, not even a trailer. For the price, I wasn't expecting a whole lot, but given the better than average quality of the picture, I was pleasantly surprised. If you're in the mood for some good, creepy crawly fun, you could certainly do a lot worse.

Cookieman108

Version reviewed: GoodTimes DVD, "Special Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Edition", 2002, 95 minutes

My personal enjoyment rating: 10 out of 10

My recommendation rating: 9 out of 10. Explanation of recommendation rating: "A must see for everyone who is a fan of the genre. Anyone seriously or casually interested in film should enjoy it or at least find something interesting about it."

=====================================

In my view, this is one of the best entries in the "Nature Gone Wild" subgenre of horror. While it's firmly entrenched in its mid-1970's style--which means that fans looking only for lots of gore, action, big-budget special effects and lots of gratuitous nudity should look elsewhere (although none of these elements are quite absent)--director John "Bud" Cardos (who also directed the underrated _Mutant_ in 1984) manages to make the film surprisingly visceral and downbeat, especially in contrast to an almost "made-for-television" sheen. The real triumph of the film is that, fueled by the performances (including a great one from star William Shatner), it begins like an intriguing and slightly comic drama, and gradually turns into a nihilistic shocker, with all the atmosphere of (and a couple literal nods to) Alfred Hitchcock's _The Birds_ (1963) and George Romero's _Night Of The Living Dead_ (1969), and it has a serious environmental and philosophical subplot/subtext to boot (as does _Mutant_).

On the negative side, this GoodTimes DVD, despite the "Special Edition" moniker, only contains a decent transfer (it's clear with good sound, but a bit wobbly a couple times), in full screen (which may or may not be the original aspect ratio), and no special features. Still, despite this drawback, it's great to have this film on DVD, and you shouldn't pass it up.

In yet another one of those don't-mess-with-Mother-Nature science-fiction flicks, William Shatner plays a small-town veterinarian who, along with a university researcher (Bolling), tries to figure out why thousands of tarantulas have suddenly descended upon Verde Valley, Arizona. Shatner gives a surprisingly restrained and effective performance, which makes you wonder what he could have done if he hadn't wasted most of his career making all those Star Trek movies. The apocalyptic, supposed-to-blow-your-mind ending is utterly preposterous, but that's part of what makes this film such a priceless piece of '70s drive-in trash.

Two and a half stars out of five.

William Shatner is Robert "Rack" Hanson in this crawly magnum opus from John "Bud" Cardos. Rack is the veterinarian of a small town in Arizona. He's called out to a farm where a 200 lb. calf has taken ill. The calf dies and Rack is on the case! He sends a blood sample to the lab for tests, and finds out that the animal died from spider venom. This information is delivered to him by beautiful entimologist Diane Ashley (Tiffany Bolling). Together, they also learn that the venom is 5x more potent than normal tarantula venom. Rack is called back to the farmer's place after a "spider-hill" is found, containing a colony of hundreds of tarantulas. Later, the farmer's dog dies from another tarantula attack. The farmer burns the spider-hill with kerosene. Then, the farmer himself is attacked while driving down the freeway. He is found in a ravine, cocooned in webs. Meanwhile, some 20 more spider-mounds are discovered. Rack and Diane race to find a way to stop the onslaught, while the mayor decides to spray poison on the arachnid horde. The spraying is cut short when the pilot is killed in mid-air by our fuzzy friends! Eventually, Rack and Diane are barracaded in a lodge while the entire town is inundated by the tarantula army of death. KINGDOM OF THE SPIDERS is a tale of what happens when we over-use pesticides. Much like "Frogs" or "Squirm", KOTS is an ecological revenge / horror film. Shatner is surprisingly restrained for most of the movie. Though he's more like a cowboy than a veterinarian, he does come off as genuine. Of course, my favorite actors were of the eight-legged variety! I liked this one a lot...

This movie is jam-packed with spiders. If you have arachnophobia, you might want to watch something else! If you've read my review for Goodtimes Home Video's edition of Night Of The Living Dead, I bought these two movies in a two pack, and figured it was a great deal. I figured right, as both movies were cool. When I was watching this movie, I had a bad case of the creepy-crawlies and got really itchy. In addition to the killer spiders, there's some cool action scenes (like a plane crash), interesting human drama (between Rack, Diane, and Terry), a message about the environment and a freaky ending. Check it out!

"I've never seen anything like it!" -That must be the most said line in the film! To be honest I've never seen anything like it either, well maybe a little like it. Right before Director John "Bud" Carlos teamed with Tobe Hooper for "The Dark" (1979) he blessed the cheezy b horror film genre with this little number from 1977. The story, penned by the writer who gave us "Village of the Giants" (1965) & "Evil Knievel" (1971) as well as the co-writer of a western starring Kenny Rogers!, concerns a small desert farm town being overrun by extremely hungry and ill-tempered tarantulas. William Shatner leads the cast as Rack Hansen, the town vet with a cowboy hat. Woody Strode (Draba from Spartacus) plays local farmer Walter Colby who begins losing his livestock to the horrible poisonous spiders! This one has many alluring elements: Cheese, people being attacked by tarantulas and totally flipping out, country music, thousands of real tarantulas, webs, Shatner not only talking like a cowboy, but also reacting to vicious man-eating spiders like only he could! Actually, he's not as over the top as Captain Kirk, but like Kirk, Rack manages to put moves on a female amidst all the terror! Definitely recommended for fans of Shatner and of "the town is being taken over by..." movies.
The 2002 Goodtimes DVD is impressive for this film. I rented this on VHS at a video store that doesn't exist anymore and no one else has it. Imagine my surprise when I saw it on DVD! The film is presented in a Standard screen version only with chapter selection, not to mention great keep case art - Shatner kneeling over a woman covered in spiders! The DVD is inexpensive as Goodtimes DVDs are and if you like it or even think you will, I can recommend it for purchase. The image transfer isn't perfect (there's the odd jump that's in the orginal film most likely), but face it, its not getting any better than this. We're lucky to have it on digital at all! Check out that last shot when Shatner prys the boards off the window and looks out onto the town! Also recommended: Devil's Rain (1975) - Shatner vs. cloaked devil worshipper Ernest Borgnine! Also a DVD cheapie. Film debut of John Travolta as Danny, the eyeless & mute devil worshipper! Tom Skerrit and Eddie Albert decide to join the fight against evil as well! How can you miss this one Other "they're taking over..." films:
Frogs (1972) - Oh no! the frogs don't like us!, Squirm (1976) - Oh wow! It's worms!, Swarm (1978) - Oh no! I've been stung by killer bees!, Them (1954) - Oh no! those are very large ants Grizzly (1976) - Oh dear lord!, that is one giant bear!
Attack of the killer tomatoes! (1978) - Oh my! fresh veggies!

This probabably deserves a half-star, but within the context of all time stinkers -- I'll give it 4 stars. Shatner is over the top. But you knew that. The opening scene where he ropes a cow, and then his sister-in-law (his brother is dead and something may or may not be budding between the two), sets the stage for howlers to come. Shatner is in full middle-aged TJ Hooker mode, looking vigorous as he can, running, roping, and burning spiders. The real winner in this film is not the spiders -- but the script, which is really (and unintentionally)funny. Shatner tells his (other)lady to sit in the car -- repeatedly, to get the hammer and nails, and of course to eat, also repeatedly. And all after she has made pains to point our her feminist credentials upon her arrival in spiderville. But that was before she met a real man in Captain Kirk (in what must of been his first toupee). In many ways this movie rips off The Birds, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Night of the Living Dead, and no doubt others, but in doing so stakes out stinky turf that is truly its own.

This is campy at it's best.....but sooo worth the watching! I spotted this gem of a DVD in the Halloween section of my local Wal-Mart and just had to have it! I remember watching this one in the late 80s....and it is sooo good for a "cult" flick. The spiders are pretty creepy....and the acting is wwwwwaaaayyyy over the top! I am sure glad to see this one on DVD!

Kingdom of the Spiders starts off a little shakily, but it gradually evolves into a creep-fest of great, eight-legged proportions. I don't know how many tarantulas there are in the world, but I'm pretty sure at least 95% of them were cast in this movie. As with any Shatner film, you get the bonus of having two movies in one. At one level, this film is all about gigantic spiders run amuck, but it also serves as an excuse for Shatner to work his magic on the ladies. Interestingly enough, Marcy Lafferty, Shatner's wife at the time, has a role in the film playing the sister-in-law of he-man veterinarian "Rack" Hansen (Shatner). It's a strange role; a widow for two years, she seems quite taken with "Rack" and the two even engage in a little lasso fun on the farm until she mistakenly calls him by his dead brother's name, but later on, he rather blatantly flaunts another woman, entomologist Diane Ashley (Tiffany Bolling) in her face. But I digress.

This film is really all about the spiders. The first victim is a poor rancher's prize calf, the one sure to win first prize at the upcoming fair. Unsure of the cause of death, "Rack" sends samples to the university in Flagstaff; soon Diane Ashley shows up to tell him the death was due to spider venom. Folks don't want to believe such a far-fetched thing at first, but these tarantulas are all business and not a bit shy about it. A huge spider hill is found on the rancher's property, which our heroes attempt to burn (forgetting to burn both sides of it, though); this apparently makes the spiders a little mad, and the full-scale invasion of town is soon launched. Our heroes find themselves holed up in a cottage in the middle of nowhere; surrounded by spiders all over the place, the chances of their survival appear to be worse than slim to none, all of which leads up to a somewhat unusual but more than acceptable ending.

If you don't like spiders, you don't want to watch this movie. I mean, there are tarantulas everywhere; I was more than ready for this film to end three-fourths of the way through it. I don't mind spiders that much, as long as I am only watching them appear somewhere else, but this movie puts so many spiders on the screen you start wondering if some of them will fall through your monitor or TV screen. For this type of critter invasion film, Kingdom of the Spiders works incredibly well. While there are a few weak spots in the plot, the filmmakers succeed remarkably well by going all out in terms of making the viewing experience as spiderific as possible.