Tarántula

No pun intended btw with the summary line. And I'm sure not everyone will like the ending. But I think it's almost the only way to end this. William Shatner is really great in this and you can feel him, playing the ridiculousness of the script. There are even scenes, were he "fights" with Spiders, were you could be excused thinking this was directed by Mr. Ed Wood.

But of course this does has something to say and since the spiders were real (well at least most, maybe they a few plastic one thrown into the mix), this also feels real. Which must have been good and bad for the actors. Good because they didn't need a great motivation to act scared and bad ... because some actually must have been genuinely scared!

Having said that, the movie does not have a big budget (I even read this might have been initially made for TV, although I'm not sure if that's true) and the dialog is off quite a few times. If that doesn't matter much to you, you will get a really quite good, eerie and scary horror movie.

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.

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!!!!

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.

Top notch nature-on-the-rampage thriller takes its time getting started, but emerges a real grabber. It's extremely well directed (by John "Bud" Cardos), with lots of great animal action. It's solidly acted by a sturdy cast led by the almighty William Shatner. It builds to one hell of an intense "Night of the Living Dead" style climax, intercut with catastrophic scenes in the local town that makes one wonder how the characters can possibly hope to prevail. The onslaught of ferocious tarantulas is awe-inspiring.

The Shat, at his charismatic best, plays "Rack" Hansen, amiable small town veterinarian who calls in big city entomologist Diane Ashley (70s B movie hottie Tiffany Bolling) when faced with the death of rancher Walter Colby's (Woody Strode) prize calf. She realizes that the cause of death was injection of spider venom. Soon scores of tarantulas swarm through the desert, attacking humans and other larger life forms basically because the over use of DDT has eliminated the arachnids' normal food supply.

Shatner, Bolling, and the always excellent Strode are well supported by Lieux Dressler, David McLean, Natasha Ryan, Altovise Davis, Marcy Lafferty (Shatners' then-wife, playing his sister- in-law), Roy Engel, and Hoke Howell. The movie is nicely photographed by John Arthur Morrill on picturesque Arizona desert locations. The images of numerous extras covered with tarantulas - and webbing as well - is pretty chilling. There's a touch of "Jaws" in the screenplay by Richard Robinson and Alan Caillou in that the local mayor (Engel) doesn't want anything to hurt the success of the county fair going on. And the implications of that final shot are spooky.

A very fine movie of its type.

Eight out of 10.