Il bacio della tarantola

When you look at the poster or the VHS cover, you think this is going to be some kind of horrible boring B movie that flunked before it even hit theaters. Well, in some ways it's absolutely ridiculous. Other ways, it's frightfully disturbing and suspenseful. The Tarantulas used are actually a quite expensive and sought after species, the Mexican Red knee. Completely harmless, we make the venom of these spiders look like they can kill virtually in an instant. That's silly to me, but to others it might prove quite chilling. The crazy part is the family life of the poor young woman. Incest, murder, bullying, I'm amazed the poor girl wasn't in an asylum. I'll say this much, this film will leave you with your mouth agape in disgust and amazement. I really liked it.

"Kiss of the Tarantula" is a mildly interesting horror film about a teenage girl named Susan(Suzanne Ling)and her fondness for spiders.When anyone crosses her or her mortician father,the spiders come out to set things right.Her leering uncle and town sheriff(Eric Mason)has eyes for her,and she has the perfect plan to dispose of him.She also takes vengeance on the high school kids who broke into her house and killed her prized spider.She unleashes a slew of her friendly eight-legged buddies in their VW Bug at a drive-in.It's a pretty gruesome,but also very silly scene.Although its' low budget shows,the film still has some nice touches and a great ending which shouldn't be missed.Director Chris Munger also made exploitation flick "Black Starlet" (1974)and producers Daniel Cady and John Hayes were also responsible for "Grave of the Vampire"(1972) and "Garden of the Dead"(1972).Give it a look,if you like tarantuals.6 out of 10.

When a cheating wife is discovered plotting her husband's death, her oddball daughter commits matricide with the aid of some hairy, eight legged companions. Creepy little thriller is a poor man's "Willard" in which the beguiling Susan (Suzanne Ling - never seen before or again) is remarkably naive to the cruel intentions of various sleazy characters with whom she comes into contact. High on the pervert-alert, is her nefarious uncle (Mason), the local police chief who's been chasing her tail since puberty, discovers her involvement in a series of unexplained deaths and seeks to protect his political ambitions abetting a cover-up to divert suspicion away from his family. Mason is the epitome of ugliness, and his predatory pursuit of the adolescent Ling, is as appealing from a cinematic perspective as it is morally repulsive.

Intense over acting and varying breeds of comically amateurish supporting performances coupled with laughable set-ups contrived for lukewarm climaxes, successfully mar what could have potentially been a minor sleeper, such is the satisfying symmetry in the storyline. Director Munger's casual treatment and unimaginative scene construction, display a lack of detail that is evident throughout the film, though he does manage to conjure some modicum of suspense at every critical peak – it's just a shame there's not a more palpable indication of the tarantula's impact on the victims (most seem to succumb to shock and hyper-anxiety, or is that just the quality of the acting?).

"Kiss of the Tarantula" takes a convenient pathway to imagined justice, while the central character's psycho-sexual motivation, which is intimated throughout the film, is never properly explored or connected to her deviant behaviour. As such, Ling's character is little more than a facade, and much of the film's promise is diluted by the superficial treatment. Perhaps lethally hampered by the budget, while there's lots of potential, overall, it's significantly lacking in the execution.

I would say that this was inspired by the success of Willard which came out the previous year but the action is provided by spiders instead of rats. How about the scenes at the drive-in movie theatre? A volkswagen contains four victims who are screaming at the top of their lungs and no one comes to investigate. Were they and the spider woman the only ones at the drive-in? The spider woman spends time fending off the lecherous advances of her uncle, played by Eric Mason, whose acting style reminded me of William Shatner.

From the first scene, little Susan seems troubled and is fascinated with spiders. She considers them her pets. And why not? Mom has all of the warmth and maternal love of one of dad's corpses on a slab. Dad is a mortician and full of love for his daughter. The actress playing mom is pretty stiff in her role (no pun intended) and actually seems much too old for the part she is playing. She is having an affair with her husband's brother, a cop. Susan overhears mom talking on the phone, figures out who she is talking to, and overhears their plans to kill her beloved dad.

So Susan waits until mom is asleep and puts her pet tarantula on her. Mom awakens, doesn't jump out of bed, just lays there in terror, and then has a heart attack and dies. Mission accomplished. Dad is safe. Susan grows up. Her age is never specified, but it seems that she is in high school because she is walking to school with a backpack. Although, like mom, she seems about ten years too old for the part. By this time Susan has many tarantulas as pets in the basement and she is still the apple of her dad's eye.

Pretty soon Susan is solving all of her problems with bullies and the kids who broke into the mortuary and killed one of her pets spiders by planting spiders on them when and where they least expect it. In every case they don't run away, they just sit there screaming with the spiders crawling on them and die of a coronary. Never have I seen so many healthy young people die of heart attacks.

Now that Susan has matured, Dad's lecherous brother begins to have the hots for her, bothering her and getting just a little too affectionate. Blech! The girl is your niece! To make matters worse he's the local DA, and he and the cops are stumped at all of the deaths occurring around town. To make matters even worse he wants to run for state Attorney General. But for some strange reason he sends his brother out to campaign while he shadows Susan with his tongue dragging the floor. Usually voters want to hear from the candidate, not his brother.

This all comes to a head with the DA committing a terrible crime himself, and Susan wreaking a completely ironic justice upon the guy that for once did not involve her spiders.

The dialogue is wooden and the acting uninspired. And then there is the case of the high schoolers that look like they are in their 30s and the convenient way all of the victims die at the sight of a spider. However, this is a case of something you just don't see anymore - an independent low budget film with actors so anonymous you wonder why they bothered to give them names in the movie different from their actual names. For several of the players I think this was their only credited role.

For me, it is an artifact of the last days of drive ins, and for that reason I enjoyed it. It is so authentic, so not mass produced, so something that no movie studio would have any part of today that it is just a guilty pleasure of mine. Your mileage may vary.