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John Allman

If you’ve ever wandered the aisles at the video store or surfed the DVR pay-per-view options and seen a bunch of movies that you’ve never heard of, chances are John has watched them. Why? He loves movies. All kinds of movies. Good, bad, so-bad-they’re good, even the truly unwatchable ones. He mostly loves horror and science-fiction and drive-in exploitation movies that most upstanding model citizens wouldn’t dare watch. Then he writes up his thoughts so you can decide - watch, don’t watch or avoid at all costs. Sometimes he even gets to talk to the cool folks who make some of your favorite films.

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John Allman

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Coffin Classics: Kingdom of the Spiders

Posted Jul 25, 2010 by John Allman

Updated Jul 25, 2010 at 01:59 PM

Kingdom of the Spiders
Genre: Horror
Directed by: John Bud Cardos
Run time: 97 minutes
Rating: PG
Format: DVD

The Lowdown: “Kingdom of the Spiders” scared the crap out of me when I was 7 years old. And the ending remained imbedded in my mind, probably somewhat inflated by a child’s recollection, but still chilling none the less.

But to me, that final, somewhat fleeting, completely unexpected, image of the entire lodge, not to mention the entire town, encased in a giant spider cocoon, was enough to give me nightmares for weeks.

How funny then to revisit this lost classic from 1977 so many years later and discover that while much of the movie is a laughable riot of bed acting and seriously cheap effects, “Spiders” still holds its own, even if that memorable ending now seems considerably less than terrifying, not to mention completely fake-looking, a poorly disguised matte painting of the town covered in a silky coating of spindly webbing.

There are two big reasons why “Spiders” should be on every film lover’s list of so-bad-they’re-great cult classics.

One is the movie’s reliance on using real tarantulas, which are just plain creepy in their own right, even when hordes of them aren’t assailing a small town and turning all the residents into cocooned midnight snacks. A favorite scene remains the poor telephone company operator wrapped in gauzy web.

The other is Shatner, William Shatner, an actor so oblivious to his own failings that he manages to turn every scene into a tour de force of over-serious enunciation and emoting, even as he comes as a misogynistic pig.

Shatner is unbelievably awesome as a small-town veterinarian who somehow manages to never say anything remotely intelligent when faced with evaluating livestock or discussing the biological makeup of tarantulas.

Seriously. I could barely recall anything about his performance prior to re-watching “Spiders,” and I was blown away. Rarely would a filmmaker allow his leading man to come off as so smug, so inept, without the film classifying as a comedy or a spoof.

But there he was, Shatner, as impishly, inexplicably confident then as he is today on Priceline commercials, not even pretending to have a clue about what he should be doing as the supposed expert on animal behavior.

In “Spiders,” Shatner is so concerned with coming off as cool and trying to bed the pretty blonde state entomologist who shows up to check out the strange blood samples from a cow killed in one of the early spider attacks, that he doesn’t even feign concern.

He’s also so blatantly dismissive of the woman’s expertise because she’s a woman that you can’t help but crack up at how bad she makes him look.

He…just…wants…her, and he will have her, because he wants her, and he’s James Tiberius…er, wait, and no woman, not blonde or green or from this galaxy or another, can resist his rakish charms.

“Kingdom of the Spiders” is the type of low-budget 1970s masterpiece where the two leads take time for a candlelit dinner even as all hell is breaking loose and they really should be working around the clock to figure out why thousands of tarantulas are pouring out a series of mounds in the desert.

It’s loaded with cheesy good moments like that where you just shake your head and smile.

Kudos to Shout! Factory for bringing this flick back into the mainstream with a deserved Special Edition DVD release that includes a new interview with Shatner and audio commentary from director John Bud Cardos, spider wrangler Jim Brockett and more!

The Stuff You Care About:
Hot chicks – The 1970s hot Tiffany Bolling.
Nudity – Yes.
Gore – Spider cocoons. Oooh, scary.
Drug use – No.
Bad Guys/Killers – Mother Nature.
Buy/Rent – Buy it.
Release Date – Jan. 19, 2010