I watched this film on DVD because I enjoy seeing William Shatner's films. Other than his Star Trek films, Shatner's career in movies is bizarre--with some fine performances (such as in INCUBUS and THE TENTH LEVEL) and some over-the-top awful performances as well (such as in WHITE COMANCHE and my favorite of his bad films, IMPULSE). I like to watch and see just what sort of Shatner I'll see--for good or for bad. Well, despite the cheesy title and theme of KINGDOM OF THE SPIDERS, this isn't a bad performance for the Shat. This is NOT saying that it's a particularly good film--but his performance and character were not the reason the film didn't win an Oscar!! While Shatner's acting is just fine, it is odd, however, to see him wearing a cowboy hat and living in a town surrounded by desert scrub! He just doesn't seem like the sort of fella to be living in Arizona.

The most annoying things about the film are not the spiders but a character named Diane Ashley. She is like a walking cliché but a very, very inconsistent and stupid cliché. Like so many of the heroines of the 70s and 80s, this one is full of spunk...and I hate spunk (to quote Lou Grant). She is smart, tough, cool and incredibly nasty towards men---and living up to the stupid stereotype that any woman who is successful MUST be a complete and total....well, you know what I'm trying to say but can't say here on IMDb! This is a very annoying character and what makes her worse is that after spending so much time being just plain nasty towards Shatner, she all of the sudden falls completely under his spell! In other words, one minute she's like ice and the next she's practically massaging his tonsils with her tongue!! This must have set feminism back at least a decade and made me laugh since she was nothing but a string of clichés all pieced together to make up her character.

As for the film itself, the story is about a whole lotta nasty tarantulas that somehow become bloodthirsty killers--which is weird, since tarantulas are basically big but harmless. Shatner is a vet who investigates the deaths of some livestock due to the spiders and Tiffany Bolling plays Ashley--an entomologist with a split personality! Somehow the spiders have begun to swarm (tarantulas are NOT sociable in real life and are loners) and their natural venom is now five times stronger than normal--making them even more dangerous than bunnies (NIGHT OF THE LEPUS) or ants (EMPIRE OF THE ANTS) or frogs (FROGS!)!!

While this isn't a completely terrible film, because it is a bit silly and there are countless similar films (many more than are listed above),it's quite unnecessary for anyone other than devoted Shatner fans to watch the film. It's not quite campy enough to recommend it nor is it interesting enough to set it apart from the crowd. However, you might laugh at a few of the scenes, such as the crop duster incident as well as the scene where the lady shoots the spider off her hand! My favorite, though was the entire last 15 minutes of the film, where it all became a giant insane free-for-all--like the end of ANIMAL HOUSE. No one even thought to just get in their cars and leave town, but chose instead to run about screaming as the smart spiders killed them off one-by-one. Overall, a silly trifle that obviously didn't seriously harm Shatner's career...though you never have heard about Tiffany Bolling since this film, have you?!

By the way, an awful lot of tarantulas are stomped on and smooshed in the movie. That seems pretty sad and a waste. Where is the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Arachnids when you need them?!

Poor William Shatner, how he must have longed for the deck of the Enterprise instead of the hot desert on earth surrounded by a few thousand tarantulas. Shatner is a veterinarian who has discovered that one of Woody Strode's calves was killed and the lab results which entomologist Tiffany Bolling brings in shows it was an incredible amount of spider venom.

In van she's one of the scientist who has warned against the overuse of DDT which has killed the spider's natural food supply. Now the spiders have developed new feeding habits and they've gotten organized against humankind.

The human players look like they would rather be anywhere than in this Thanksgiving special of a movie. Especially Shatner whom he fired his agent after this would have been justified.

I will say this though, the ending was quite bizarre, almost but not quite made up for the rest of this film.

Unless you love arachnids, pass it up.

Don't even *start* with me, OK? Ten years old. Completely freaked out, hysterical. Unprepared for what we were subjected to. Sunday afternoon, HBO, over at Danny Nappi's house. With my younger brother Phil, good old Dan, a friend or two of his. All I knew was that Captain Kirk was in it. Something about spiders - We laughed. It was going to be soooo fake.

But it wasn't. The cold grip of fear began to clutch nigh about the time the guy climbed into his crop duster plane to rid the town of all them spiders. Back then we didn't know, you see? Or it was only after this that it started to sink in, that the movies weren't real. They couldn't be. Nothing could be that terrifying, and I'm talking Aliens, Things, Count Dracula. Whatever Frankenstein was lumbering around. Bring it. But no way with the god damn spiders.

They were everywhere, my 10 year old brain reasoned. In the basement. In the attic. In the back yard, up at the forest, probably even at school. Spiders, everywhere, waiting to inject us with their stingers & wrap us up in bedsheets. Hell I didn't sleep for two nights, couldn't eat for three days. Was afraid to put on my shoes, go to the store, ride a bike or do anything that might expose me to the threat of all them spiders. We made it home well enough but after that it got dark and I was not ready for night. Totally hyper aware of every crack, nook, cranny or dimpled corner around which some freaking spider could come, looking to sting me, mom, my brothers, maybe even my dad.

Is it OK to scare kids like that? I mean really scare them, scare them so much that they can't function? "Stephen stayed home on Monday because he was too terrified to leave the house after seeing "Kingdom of the Spiders" with William Shatner, and we're not kidding." That's what the note must have read, and of course I was convinced that everyone else was aware that I had been scared not just out of my wits but into a deep darkened place where kids just shouldn't go. You'd get sued for it these days.

And for years that was the Litmus Test: "Is it as terrifying as "Kingdom of the Spiders" was?" To my credit nothing ever was, even when ALIEN crept into those freudian cellar spaces where there was never any natural light and god knows what forms breed in the darkness, waiting to spring on unsuspecting halfwitted twelve year olds sent downstairs to get the laundry. Movies may have startled me or surprised me, but nothing can compare to the sheer horror that "Kingdom of the Spiders" subjected me to, and the film remains held in awe in the family to this day.

Sure, we laugh at it now. Make up drinking games to go with the action. After watching it again I said to myself "I just want to live someplace where there are beautiful women like that to take for granted, knowing they'll always be around." Maybe the biggest lesson to learn was that even Captain Kirk can get handed something waaaaay beyond his ability to cope with, making him fallible and human and, dare I say, just an actor playing a role. So we grew up that day, in a way, sitting on the carpeted floor, mouths agape at the sight of all them spiders teeming all over everything and even Captain Kirk gets covered with them. Almost even dying.

No, I've never been freaked out by a movie that way since and recall the episode with favor, a marvelous learning experience which became a rite of passage. Having made it through those two or three days after seeing "Kingdom of the Spiders" emboldened me enough to learn about them. Learn about film, how they are made, what actors do, and how it's all so fake in the end. Re-make it if you have to, but don't fool yourself. It only works for real the first time through

God Bless America.