Movie of the Day – Kingdom of the Spiders

There are two things that scare me.  One is my own mortality, the deep philosophical discussion about life itself and the fleeting nature in which mortality is just as flimsy as a piece of paper.  One minute I can be here, breathing and talking, then the next I am gone, no longer existing on this dimensional plane.

The second thing that scares me is spiders.  Those fucking things can go to hell.  When a movie like the one today, has spiders that are capable of taking down airplanes, then I say just nuke the planet and be done with it.  There is no defeating a kingdom of spiders.  We are in their world now.

In Kingdom of the Spiders a swarm of huge tarantulas, enraged by the misuse of pesticides, try to take over their part of the world. Dr. Robert Hansen (William Shatner), a local Arizona veterinarian joins forces with entomologist Diane Ashley (Tiffany Bolling) to keep the spider population under control. Woody Strode and Altovise Davis also appear as the owners of a neighboring ranch. Unstylishly directed by John Cardos and produced with a sense of humor by “Arachnid Productions,” — and despite bad dialogue, wooden acting and poor special effects — Kingdom of the Spiders has become a cult classic and favorite of several generations of giant insect horror film buffs. ~ Linda Rasmussen, Rovi

EVERYONE STOP USING PESTICIDES!  If there was ever a reason for me to be motivated to become some sort of eco-volunteer, then the thought of enraged, ENRAGED, spiders is reason enough.  Kingdom of the Spiders is a great movie for those that wanting those 50s and 60s big bug monster movies.  You know the movies that features insects that are the size of cars because of man’s use of atomic weapons, damn society and our wars.

Did you know that William Shatner is in this movie?  Yeah, Captain Kirk moved on from fighting in space to protecting some small town of giant killer spiders.  I think that is a far nobler cause than say laying some green alien chicks on the sexy women planet.  I don’t think there was a planet like that from all the Star Trek I watched as a kid and teen and sadly, as an adult.  Anyways, this movie is fucking terrifying as the movie uses real tarantulas.  Apparently there were over 5000 tarantula used on the set of the movie, sometimes crawling over the actors.  Yeah, no amount of money could possibly get me to do that.

The best part about this movie is that it works on playing up the fear of arachnophobia and being a nice homage to those giant insect movies in the 50′s and 60′s.  The kills in this movie are fantastic as you are seeing tarantulas just pouring into a house, biting the victim and sometimes leaving them encased in webbing.  They take down cows, a lot of humans and they managed to bring down a plane by biting the pilot in midair.  How they fucking got there, I don’t want to know.  Kingdom of the Spiders is both a cheesy and frightening horror movie for those of us who don’t like spiders.  I certainly get a bit skin jittery just thinking about the spiders coming on you en masse and biting you to death.  If you haven’t seen it, check it out this Halloween season.