Headlined by the legendary William Shatner, this 1977 horror flick is surprisingly good: – with a decent story line and impressive use of thousands of live tarantulas. In fact, around one-tenth of the entire film’s budget was spent on handling so many spiders, which is an incredible statistic.

My understanding is that tarantulas are fairly docile creatures – especially around humans – so it was quite an achievement for the film-makers to have the spiders appear to chase or attack people in this movie. The use of off-screen fans were utilised to great effect to have the arachnids move in the direction and manner desired, and it certainly paid dividends with some wonderful yet frightening sequences being brought to the big screen.

The story is set in the town of Camp Verde, Arizona where livestock are suddenly dropping dead, and tests later reveal that this is due to lethal amounts of spider venom. The local vet ‘Rack’ Hansen (played by William Shatner) along with an arachnologist soon discover a massive spider hill on a local farm, and the decision is made to set it on fire. Big mistake!

But before we explore the consequences of upsetting thousands of spiders, I should point out that it wouldn’t be a William Shatner movie without a little romance – and the great man is in fine form here!

Anyway, the locals would pay a heavy price for attempting to destroy the spiders’ nest, as a swarm of angry tarantulas descend upon the town; even ambushing some of the folks by crawling into trucks and planes as part of their ultimate revenge!

But the most unnerving moments were saved for the film’s final act, and you have to appreciate how difficult it would have been to pull off some of these scenes. Remember: No CGI involved – only real tarantulas with the odd rubber spider thrown in.

Now as creepy as some of these screenshots are, the following sequence is perhaps the most disturbing in the entire movie. Credit goes to the very young actress here!

‘Kingdom of the Spiders’ is a solid film that builds suspense nicely throughout and goes out of its way to explain the aggressive – and rather unscientific – behaviour of the tarantulas, before delivering a truly exceptional ending that I will not spoil here.

The charismatic but serviceable performance of William Shatner helps the movie along, with second-billing going to the ridiculous number of hairy arachnids that share the screen with him. In summary, this is a movie worth watching, and despite being a low-budget production, I would still rate it seven out of ten!

Screenshots courtesy of Dimension Pictures and MeTV.