It may not be saying very much but of the killer spider films of the of the mid to late 1970s (The Giant Spider Invasion (1975), Curse of the Black Widow (1977), Tarantulas: The Deadly Cargo (1977)), John “Bud” Cardos’ Kingdom of the Spiders is by far and away the best. It’s certainly a much better film than the mocking from the woeful Rifftrax team might lead you to expect.
In the small town of Verde Valley, Arizona, local veterinarian Robert “Rack” Hansen (William Shatner) investigates the mysterious death of a calf owned by farmer Walter Colby (Woody Strode) and his wife Birch (Altovise Davis). Unable to find a cause of death he sends blood samples to a university in nearby Flagstaff and a few days later is joined by arachnologist Diane Ashley (Tiffany Bolling) who suggests that the animal was killed by a massive dose of spider venom. Although at first met with distrust and disbelieve, Ashley is eventually proved right with the discovery of a number of huge “spider hills” full of usually solitary tarantulas that have inexplicably started living in close proximity to each other. Ashley blames the use of pesticides for the spider’s atypical behaviour and for the unusually potent venom they are now producing. Bodies are soon turning up cocooned in spider’s webs and it isn’t long before the entire town is besieged by thousands of rampaging arachnids.
Part Jaws (1975), part Night of the Living Dead (1968), part The Birds (1963), Kingdom of the Spiders makes no pretence to being anything anything other than a good old-fashioned exploitation B movie, drive-in fodder made with care and commitment, and on that score it succeeds admirably. An already creepy and suspenseful film goes up a gear in the last thirty minutes as the arachnid horde sweeps over the town causing death and panic wherever it goes and wonderfully unsettling cocooned bodies start to turn up all over the place. Cardos even manages to trigger two phobic responses for the price of one in one brief shot as the tarantulas are seen attacking a rat.
You’ll see many references online to Kingdom of the Spiders being “so bad it’s good”, accompanied by the kind of sneering that the Rifftrax and Mystery Science Theatre 3000 crowd went in for but it deserves better than that. It’s a well-made and gripping “nature on the rampage” thriller that boasts a number of set-pieces that belie its meagre budget (the crash of a crop-dusting plane, brought down by tarantulas invading the cockpit, is spectacular, as is the collapse of the town’s water tower) and an unforgettable final shot. Some annoying comedy relief country bumpkins are smartly written out almost as soon as they appear and the film adopts and maintains a deadly earnestness which definitely works in its favour.
5000 real tarantulas were imported (it has been suggested that Mexicans were offered $10 for every spider they could supply, taking a sizeable chunk of the film’s budget) and allowed to run riot across sets, locations and the remarkably game cast alike. There is a certain amount of real spider death on display (a good many of them are trampled underfoot or squashed beneath car wheels) which may cause arachnophiles some discomfort but will be cause for rejoice among arachnophobes. In real life, the bite of a tarantula – though deeply unpleasant – won’t kill a human being and North American species are more likely to ward off nosy humans by firing urticating hairs at them, causing skin irritation, and running away than going on the offensive – but that wouldn’t make much of a film so considerable liberties are taken and the poor tarantula’s already well tarnished reputation takes yet another hit.
The cast’s reactions to their co-stars are often priceless. They often seem genuinely – and perhaps understandably – terrified throughout. Shatner was supposedly bitten several times during filming and although she’s supposed to be playing someone whose livelihood depends on studying the creatures, Bolling‘s hands can be seen shaking when she’s called upon to actually pick one up and she lets out what sounds like an involuntary and heartfelt yelp of fear when one falls from a ceiling hatch and lands on her. To her eternal credit she carries on giving a convincing performance despite her very obvious discomfort.
Shatner, a couple of years from reprising the role of Captain James T. Kirk in Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979) and in the career doldrums at the time, is great as the macho, no-nonsense hero (he gets a few scenes opposite Marcy Lafferty, his real-life wife, here playing his sister-in-law). In real life an expert horseman, Shatner even briefly gets to show off his riding skills in his opening scene, chasing and lassoing a cow on horseback at breakneck speed. As noted Bolling is a real trooper, cementing her reputation as an exploitation favourite and Altovise Davis – Sammy Davis Jr’s wife – gets a great scene where she shoots her own hand off in panic as the spiders attack. And you rarely go wrong when the great Woody Strode is on hand – at the time of making Kingdom of the Spiders he was not long back in the States after a stint in Europe where he’d appeared in a number of westerns, most prominently playing a gunslinger in the opening scene of Sergio Leone’s masterpiece C’era una volta il West/Once Upon a Time in the West (1968).
Behind the camera there are just as many interesting names – it was co-written by Alan Caillou, a veteran British-born crime novelist, big game hunter and actor with turns in the likes of Five Weeks in a Balloon (1962), Sole Survivor (1970), The Hound of the Baskervilles (1972) and Woody Allen’s Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask) (1972) already under his belt and with Goliath Awaits (1981), Beyond Evil (1980), The Sword and the Sorcerer (1982) and The Ice Pirates (1984) still to come. The film was co-edited by Steve Zallian – who later turned screenwriter (Schindler’s List (1993), for which he won an Oscar, Mission: Impossible (1996), Gangs of New York (2002), The Irishman (2019)) and director (A Civil Action (1998), All the King’s Men (2006)) and the score is by former rockabilly singer and member of The Rock and Roll Trio, Dorsey Burnette, who also supplies the films country and western flavoured theme song.
Cannon Films announced a Kingdom of the Spiders II in the late 1980s with Shatner set to star and direct but the company went bankrupt before they got around to making it. From what we know of the proposed film it wasn’t going to pick up from the indelible final image of the first film and was set to go off in a whole new direction, with a story suggested by Shatner himself. A second attempt to mount a sequel followed in 2003 – a testament to the affection in which the film was still held after many late night television screenings in the States – but it too came to nought.
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