Tarantula: Le cargo de la mort

The JAWS craze went beyond hungry fish as the TV-Movie TARANTULAS: THE DEADLY CARGO winds up with a town torn between business and people's safety, with cranky Bert Remsen in the Murray Hamilton mayoral position, running an orange mill where the furry-legged-critters wind up...

That's after what seems like two separate short films, especially the intro where grungy maverick pilot/smugglers Howard Hessmann and Tom Atkins sneak coffee beans away from the local crooked government, and they wind up as Janet Leigh-from-PSYCHO characters in that they only seem permanent...

After crash-landing in the orange crop town, inadvertently bringing the titular CARGO along with them, this otherwise title-oriented creature-feature builds mystery/thriller tension as random deaths are initially enigmatic, disconnected with the tarantulas and, before computers, fearless crews known as spider wranglers provided the genuine article, making for more bonafide viewer-cringe moments...

Although. Visually, they're a very beautiful black and yellow color, and are actually known as Banana Spiders, shown a lot in the finale when buried lead Deborah Winters, older sister of LITTLE HOUSE child actor Matthew Labyorteaux and owner of a local airfield, is eventually teamed with Charles Frank as her boyfriend/partner, Pat Hingle the town doctor and Claude Akins the stalwart fire chief, who, although capable enough as a banded group, were more intriguing on their own before everything got figured out, far too soon.

I have to admit, I was surprised by this movie. I bought it as part of a 2 DVD set with "Ants" for $5. Needless to say, I was expecting a "so bad it's good" movie along the lines of "Rockula". Instead, I found an interesting, if unspectacular... thriller? Horror movie? I really don't know what this is. It's not terribly scary, and the only really tense moments come at opposite ends of the film. Nevertheless, this is a good movie. It has a solid script, fairly god acting, (usually) and great music from Mundell Lowe. That's not to say it doesn't have it's flaws. The "cute kid" of the movie is less than competent, and I'm being nice. It also feels like the director doesn't use his full potential during the entire movie. During the climax, we see that he is a genuinely good director, capable of injecting tension into a scene, but just seems to be coasting through most of the movie. Hopefully, his other movies draw on that potential.

Two would-be coffee exporters / human traffickers (Tom Atkins and Howard Hesseman) run into trouble when they discover some unexpected, eight-legged stowaways on their cargo plane. It seems that the hairy arachnids of the title have decided to forfeit their native Ecuador for the good old USA. Going from bad to worse, the ill-fated flight crashes just outside of the small town of Meadowmere, California.

When the tiny, fanged passengers fan out on their mission of destruction, it's up to the crusty town doctor (Pat Hingle) and cranky fire chief (Claude Akins) to combat this horde of creeping doom.

There's also a big orange crop that simply must be harvested, or it's greedy owner will have an aneurysm. His blindness to the unfolding tragedy around him is reminiscent of that exhibited by the soulless mayor in JAWS.

As made-for-TV movies go, TARANTULAS: THE DEADLY CARGO isn't bad, though the cheeeze-factor is quite high. Some of the death scenes are surefire chuckle-inducers! Of course, several unbelievable / absurd events take place for no discernible reason, including the explosive "motorcycle jump" sequence. Still, it's all a lot of fun to watch, as long as you have a hankering for enjoyable nonsense...

Some animals just lend themselves to horror movies, and as movies such as Tarantula, Kingdom of the Spiders and Arachnophobia have proved; big spiders are one of them. Tarantulas: The Deadly Cargo was made for television, so it's probably unfair to expect great things from it; and while the film does have its moments, I really wouldn't add it to the list of films that prove spiders are prime candidates for having horror films made about them. The plot is pretty simplistic, which isn't really surprising considering the television origins and basically focuses on a bunch of tarantulas from South America being released in a town in California. We focus on a small airplane carrying coffee beans that have spent a lot of time in storage. Unbeknown to the crew, these particular beans have become infested with huge spiders that kill some of the crew and cause the plane to crash in the aforementioned Californian town. It's not long before the spiders have got off the plane and begin killing local residents; causing the authorities to take action.

Most horror films about spiders have the antagonists with something about them - perhaps they're genetically modified, a new type of spider, absolutely huge or maybe there's just thousands of them - this film doesn't bother with all that, all we get is just a bunch of pretty average looking spiders, and it's really not all that menacing - I constantly wondered why the lead characters didn't just put on a big pair of boots and go round stomping on them all. The film was obviously a pretty cheap production as there is no special effects and the sets are very minimal. Unfortunately it would seem that they couldn't afford to hire someone to write an imaginative screenplay either, as despite some standout moments - there aren't a lot of them, and the main sequence in a warehouse, while well done, is really too silly to take seriously if you take a minute to think about it. The conclusion to the film includes an interesting method of getting rid of the spiders - I have no idea whether or not it would work in real life, but one thing is for sure - a big pair of boots would have worked better and wouldn't have involved so much messing about. If only I were there to lend a hand

Possibly one of the best and most suspenseful made-for-TV creature-feature flicks accomplished during the 70's decade, "The Deadly Cargo" nearly equals the menacing atmosphere of classic and more famous spider films like "Kingdom of the Spiders" and "Arachnophobia". Of course, you shouldn't expect a bloodbath, partly because it's a TV-production and partly because… well, tarantulas aren't exactly capable of tearing people to pieces. But hey, at least the suspense is constant and the plot moves forward at a satisfying pace. Two sleazy coffee smugglers, one of them being Tom Atkins of "Night of the Creeps" and "Maniac Cop", fly a cargo full of Ecuadorian coffee beans and political fugitives towards California and through a thunderstorm. The cargo is infested with "Banana Spiders"; the deadliest kind of tarantulas in the world. With the plane severely damaged by the storm and the pilot wounded, it crashes down in the fields surrounding the orange-producing & exporting town of Finleyville. The spiders escape, all hell breaks loose and pretty soon the entire town lives in a state of hysteria. The script is solidly penned down, partly courtesy of Guerdon Trueblood (director of 70's favorite "The Candy Snatchers") and Stuart Hagmann's direction is surefooted. At least during the first half, the plot contains a few surprising shock-elements and unlikely victims (that'll teach them to poke animals with sticks!) The second half is very muddled and particularly the unexciting climax is a letdown. Overall a decent film that deserves a slightly better rating around here.