Review of Kingdom of the Spiders (1977) by Christian C — 22 Jun 2010

Kingdom Of The Spiders is a Horror/Creature Feature/Monster Movie that stars William Shatner(yes thats right William Shatner). To tell the truth, I am afraid of Spiders, and Tarantulas, and this movie freaked me out(mainly because I saw it at 3 in the morning, so my Insomnia grew with fear of spiders,damn).

So this movie is about Robert "Rack" Hansen, who is a Veterinarian, and is called by Farmer Walter Coby(Woody Strode) because his prize Calf died for no reason, but Hansen & an outside entomologist named Diane Ashely(Tiffany Bolling) realize that the Calf died of massive Spider Venom, then they realize that theres a spider farm in the backyard of Coby's farm(how ironic, two farms in one area!), they begin to suspect that they are there because of heavy use of pesticides which is killing their food supply, so in order to survive they kill larger preys. Before they return home a bull comes out of nowhere, and Hansen realized that it was attacked by many Tarantulas, as Ashely realizes that if the Tarantulas werent afraid to kill the bull, they wouldnt be afraid to kill humans.

Kingdom of the Spiders was one of the growing Horror/SciFi that touched the subject of enviornmentalism in the U.S.. It also reflected the message of man's worst enemy is nature itself, as Alfred Hitchcock did with "The Birds".

This is also the many reasons that the Animal rights Organization to Film exists today, for many reasons, people were actually stomping real-live spiders, in fact, one of the many scenes show that the sheriff of the town, gets in his car and clearly runs over many tarantulas in front of the camera, and because of this, Aracnaphobia had to be made with a rubber spier or CGI.

The Performances in the movie were great, William Shatner didnt have his usual Star Trek voice, but actually tried to act like a cowboy/Veterinarian, Diane Ashely aslo did a great performance, and Woody Strode is as cool as he can be in this movie, but the real performances in this movie was every extra because they had to deal with a bunch of spiders walking all over their supposed dead corpse. The Direction was also great, John "Bud' Cardos knew exactly what he was getting himself into.

Overall this is a pretty freaky film if youre afraid of spiders, its also enjoyabley fun.

I give this movie 4/5 stars.