‘A living, crawling, Hell on earth!’
Kingdom of the Spiders is a 1977 horror film about tarantulas killing the citizens of a town in Arizona. The town’s veterinarian has do everything in his power to help the townspeople survive the onslaught.
The movie was directed by John “Bud” Cardos (Mutant; The Dark) and produced by Igo Kantor, Jeffrey M. Sneller and James Bond Johnson. The screenplay was written by Richard Robinson and Alan Caillou, from an original story by Jeffrey M. Sneller and Stephen Lodge.
The movie stars William Shatner (Incubus; The Devil’s Rain; Visiting Hours), Tiffany Bolling (Open House; The Centerfold Girls), Woody Strode (Scream aka The Outing), Altovise Davis, Lieux Dressler (Grave of the Vampire), Natasha Ryan, Marcy Lafferty, David McLean, Joe Ross, Adele Malis-Morey and Roy Engel.
The $1 million movie took $17 million at the US box office, making it one of the biggest independent horror hits of the 1970s.
Plot [contains spoilers]:
Doctor Robert “Rack” Hansen, a veterinarian in rural Verde Valley, Arizona, receives an urgent call from a local farmer, Walter Colby. Colby is upset because his prize calf has become sick for no apparent reason, and the animal is brought into Hansen’s laboratory. Hansen cannot explain what made the animal so ill so quickly but takes samples of the now-deceased calf’s blood to a university lab in Flagstaff.
Diane Ashley, an arachnologist, arrives to tell Hansen that the calf was killed by spider venom. Hansen greets the news with scepticism. Undaunted, Ashley tells him that she wishes to examine the carcass and the area where it became sick. Hansen escorts Ashley to Colby’s farm. Colby’s wife, Birch, discovers their dog is dead, also from a massive injection of spider venom. Colby shows Hansen and Ashley a massive “spider hill” he recently found on a back section of his farmland, which is filled with tarantulas. Ashley theorizes that the tarantulas are converging due to the heavy use of pesticides, which are eradicating their natural food supply. To survive, the spiders, normally cannibalistic, combine to attack and eat larger animals.
Hansen and Ashley return to the Colby farm to burn the spider hill. A bull, attacked by tarantulas, runs out of a barn. Colby douses the spider hill with gasoline and lights it on fire, but many of the spiders escape using a tunnel. Colby is attacked by tarantulas while driving his truck the next day, sending the truck over the side of a hill. Hansen happens upon the accident scene and he and sheriff Gene Smith find Colby’s body encased in spider thread. Her colleagues notify Ashley that a sample of venom from one of the spiders is five times more toxic than normal. The sheriff locates several more spider hills on Colby’s property.
The mayor of Camp Verde orders the sheriff to spray the hills and the surrounding countryside with pesticide. Ashley protests that pesticide would be at best a short-term solution since other spiders will continue to use the same migration path to find more food, and that the town should bring in birds and rats (tarantulas’ natural enemies) to balance the ecosystem. The mayor dismisses the idea, fearing that having a large number of spiders and rats would scare away patrons of the county fair. A crop duster is enlisted to spray the pesticide. Once airborne, the pilot is attacked by tarantulas, causing him to fly wildly, spraying the residential areas of the town with toxic pesticides, and finally crash.
The spiders begin assaulting residents, killing Birch and Hansen’s sister-in-law, Terri. Hansen arrives at their home and rescues Terri’s daughter, Linda. Hansen, Ashley and Linda take refuge in the Washburn Lodge and consult with the sheriff, who tells them the spiders are everywhere and Camp Verde is cut off. Officer Smith drives into town, while Hansen and the other survivors at the lodge plan to load up an RV and escape. However, the spiders have them trapped in the lodge, and they barricade themselves inside. Smith arrives at Camp Verde and finds the town under siege by the spiders. He is killed when another car crashes into a support post under the town’s water tower, causing it to fall on his vehicle.
At the lodge, the spiders destroy a fuse, shutting off power. Hansen ventures into the basement to change the fuse. He succeeds but is besieged by spiders who break through a basement window, and after getting back upstairs faints from the venom. The next day, the survivors rig up a radio receiver and listen for news of the attacks. To their surprise, the radio broadcast does not mention the attack; the outside world is oblivious to what happened. Hansen pries off the boards from one of the lodge’s windows, and discovers the building, along with the entire town of Camp Verde, is encased in spider silk cocoons…
“The effect of 5,000 spiders swarming over everything (and everybody) is chilling and will have you watching where you step for days afterwards.” John Stanley, Creature Features book
“There are no two ways about it, Kingdom of the Spiders is a great low-budget horror film, probably the best of the 1970s ‘animal’ pack (after Willard), and it bristles with delight, suspense, humor, and in the end, flat-out shock.” John Kenneth Muir, Horror Films of the 1970s book
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“It’s got a beautiful Southwest setting, an appealing hero and heroine, believable and sympathetic supporting characters, a simple but not simplistic plot, a touch of humor, and a steady balance between quiet scenes and action scenes that gradually tilts towards action. It’s also got a nice score accented by slinky piano notes as the tarantulas creep into view.” David Elroy Goldweber, Claws & Saucers book
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“Director John “Bud” Cardos betrays no particular feel for this kind of picture and there are no real moments of inventiveness or inspiration. A big problem is that the tarantulas, as ugly as they may seem to some viewers, don’t really exude much menace – they are just big, fat, slow and dumb, hardly anything to work up a sweat over. It is up to the actors to try to dredge up as much excitement and sense of peril as they can.” William Schoell, Creature Features: Nature Turned Nasty in the Movies book
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Production:
Kantor told Fangoria magazine in 1998 that the film used 5,000 large, hairy spiders, though several rubber model spiders were also used during production. The live tarantulas were procured by offering Mexican spider wranglers US$10 for each live tarantula they could find; this meant that $50,000 of the film’s $500,000 budget went towards the purchase of spiders.
The large number of tarantulas kept on hand led to some unusual production difficulties. Not only did each spider have to be kept warm, but because of the creatures’ cannibalistic tendencies, all 5,000 spiders had to be kept in separate containers. Additionally, tarantulas are usually shy around people, so fans and air tubes often had to be used to get the spiders to move toward their “victims”. Indeed, in a number of scenes where the tarantulas are “attacking” people, it is obvious to the viewer that the spiders are merely moving around, usually away from their intended victims.
Contrary to popular belief, the venom of most tarantulas is not dangerous to humans, causing no more harm than a bee sting (unless the person is allergic to the venom). The worst injury most of the actors suffered was troublesome itching caused by the spiders shedding their bristles.
Due to the film’s lower budget, most of the music used in the film (particularly the “startle cues”) was taken from the logs of stock music used on suspense TV series. For example, most of the music used in the film during the scenes with the spiders can also be heard in notable episodes of The Twilight Zone, including ‘To Serve Man’ and ‘The Invaders’.
The country music songs heard on the radio in the movie, as well as over the opening and closing credits were performed by country singer Dorsey Burnette.
Guest review by Adam and Justin on Frightfully Forgotten:
Trailer:
Interview with William Shatner:
Killer spider montage:
Free online on YouTube [720p]:
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