A Maldição das Aranhas

Greetings from the other side. This is an awesome 70's B movie.

I first seen this movie when I was around 10 years old, and I thought it was freaky back then. You also get to watch William Shatner battle millions of spiders! Price of admission right there.

There was basically no budget, but they did very well with what they had. It is still very intertaining. Considering the lack of money your never bored for very long. It's becomes scene after scene of the spiders invading.

Chick making supper, and in come the spiders. Dude in a crop duster spraying poison on them, and in come the spiders!

I just finished watching it again, after around 40 years and it's not as freaky as when I was 10, but I still found it very watchable. Remember, it's a B movie, done with no money, and it's still better than almost everything coming out of Hollywood these days.

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.

I first saw this movie at least 10 years ago. I remember telling my 6th grade class, when we studied spiders, all about it. The universal reply of teachers and friends: "that movie is called Arachnophobia... there is nothing about a Kingdom of Spiders in the title." 10 Years later i can finally look past the emotional trauma caused by that denouncing of my claim that there was indeed another movie, and laugh at them-- HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! In any case... this movie unlike Arachnophobia is solely responsible for my fear of spiders. I remember finding a roll of duct tape after watching this film and sealing myself in my bedroom. Every crack filled, every window blocked then taped over-- i was absolutely sure the spiders were coming for me. The ending of the film resonates with me especially in a way that Arachnophobia never could. Leave it to a B movie to shy away from the neat little packaged Hollywood ending so popular today. BRAVA Kingdom of the Spiders! I give it an 8 out of 10 on the giving Tricia issues scale.

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.

When I was a kid, I remember vividly seeing all of the movie Kingdom of the Spiders, but to date, I only remember certain scenes. Also, I remember as a whole, it freaked me completely out.

Sure, I had and still have arachnophobia, so since most horror movies, especially the haunted house/ghost stories of late, don't scare me, I'll always turn to these (Eight Legged Freaks, for example) no matter how preposterous just to get a little (or a lot) frightened. The producers/writers/directors aren't stupid; they know what audience (ME) would be freaked out.

Yes, Kingdom of the Spiders is an absolute B-movie, but honestly, it wasn't all that bad. Of course we're given the typical corny explanation: insecticides have killed off all of the tarantulas normal meals, so they've mutated, tolerated each other (which apparently, they're quite anti-social) and now are moving on to larger prey. To me, a non-scientist/biologist/spider-doctor, that doesn't really make much sense: all prey is gone, so the population multiples a thousand fold? Get past that, and the fairly slow opening hour with Shatner doing his typical womanizing and you're in for a treat. I can see what scared me as a kid, when they finally revealed the little killers in masses.

Picture it: Camp Verde, AZ. Small (in this movie pintsize) western town. A prize cow dies somehow and owner is worried just about being "quarantined" by the town's vet doctor, Shatner. In comes a potential love interest all the way from Tempe (in reality, it would take probably 2-3 hours max to make the trip, but they make it seem like it's a trek (yeah, I had to toss a Shatner-term in) from NYC.) She's concerned about the 5x lethal venom from spiders.

Throw in some anti-pesticide speeches, and more animals die. I guess the tarantulas were too timid for humans, or they simply ran out of animals as they started with the livestock/pets first. Soon, the people are attacked and like all of the "When-Animals-Attack" films, a group of diverse survivors hold up in a cabin to wait out the onslaught.

Now, I've been to Camp Verde, not in 1977, per se. I actually arrived in AZ in 1981, but nevertheless, I've visited it, and it didn't look anything like the movie's version. In fact, I recall, in the early 80s that they had actual working phones, not 1920 phone props. Nevertheless, this obvious Jaws/The Birds-rip-off does have its effectiveness. And a seriously disturbing, open-ended finale. I loved the final shot.

Not for everyone, Kingdom of the Spiders is still recommended for those wanting a B-Movie scare out of those eight legged freaks. In reality, it's a helluva lot better than most spider-ambush movies made since.

(Side Note: I love the Stolen-Star Wars poster's tagline above a tortured man with a torch: "A Wild Science Fiction Nightmare." Let's dissect all that. It doesn't take place in space, nor is there any real war (the humans were no match for the tarantulas.) No one had a torch, though someone seriously tries to get away by shooting a gun. It's never really wild – if you see the town, the wildest thing that could happen some actually driving from Colorado for their annual fair. Science Fiction? OK, that one is where someone should draw the line and actually sue for false advertising, though George Lucas probably was prepped for the look of the poster. And finally, nightmare. OK, that one I would agree. You get even one of the 50,000 tarantulas used on me…Freddy would have enough ammo for my next three nightmares.)