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![[Spiders]](spiders.jpg)
This “living, crawling, hell on earth” began to win fans over immediately after its original release in 1977. Budgeted at a modest $500,000, the film has since grossed more than $17 million domestically. Director John “Bud” Cardos took a break from major motion picture production before resurfacing as a grip for the 1994 release The Force (dir. by Mark Rosman of House on Sorority Row fame), and more recently lending his talents to the Pauly Shore magnum opus Bio-Dome as transportation captain. Truly, the most grim of endings.
Kingdom of the Spiders is, at its heart, a cautionary tale of the potentially catastrophic results of Man’s tampering with the fragile ecosystem. As the tale unfolds, farmer Walter Colby (played by the always affable Woody Strode) has lost a prized animal just days before the livestock competition at the State Fair! Enter Dr. Robert “Rack” Hanson to investigate the bovine tragedy. As Rack Hanson, William Shatner displays a warmth and vulnerability unseen since his bravura turn in the classic dual-Kirk tale “The Enemy Within” (Star Trek episode #5). Rack’s tests on the dead animal draw the attention of entomologist Diane Ashley (the vivacious Tiffany Bolling, best known as Lisa Jones in the 1973 feature Wicked, Wicked), who breezes into town in her Mercedes convertible and tailored power suit to give Rack a little “Big City” (or in this case “Arizona State University”) assistance in what has turned out to be an attack of unusually aggressive spiders.
After much caustic banter, flirtation, and innuendo, Rack and Diane finally share a few tender moments. In a scene most certainly championed by Shatner during production, Rack tells the bittersweet story behind his curious nomenclature. It seems Rack’s kid brother, John, would spend all week in the pool hall while rack was out sweating and earning a living. But sure enough, every payday John would hustle his brother in a pool game, and win all of Rack’s hard earned money. “Rack ‘em up!” John would say, and darn it if the name didn’t just stick. Sadly, John “died in ‘Nam” and Rack has been forced to take on the role of surrogate father and husband to John’s grieving family.
Rack and Diane soon piece together that the massive amounts of DDT and other pesticides used by local farmers have killed off all of the spiders natural insectoid food sources, forcing the arachnid population to turn to larger prey (utilizing a newly evolved venom that is 5 times the normal potency to boot!). What follows is a slew of attacks on animals and townspeople alike. Rack manages to convince Sheriff Gene Smith (David Mclean, immediately recognizable as the Deputy Harbor Master from the classic Streets of San Francisco episode “The Unicorn”) that merely firebombing the spider population won’t be enough, but Mayor Connors (as played by genre legend Roy Engel, who cut his acting teeth years earlier as a policeman in Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train) is convinced that he can hold Nature at bay until the town can get the State Fair off without a hitch.
However, Rack’s suspicions are soon borne out as the newly formed spider-hills are simply too abundant, and the spiders too prolific for eradication by conventional means. These tarantulas have evolved a “hive-mind” and are working together like ants in a colony, contrary to their usual nomadic lifestyle. As the town finds itself overrun by eight-legged marauders, echoing Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, Rack and company are forced to barricade themselves inside the local inn overnight. And in a Hitchcockian twist, an army of hungry spiders masses on the front lawn, and threatens to enter from the smallest of openings at any time.
Director Cardos builds tension and terror in this tiny town in a series of horrific scenes. Camp Verde’s citizens run pell-mell through the streets, their arms and legs akimbo, until they fall to the ground, paralyzed, and await cocooning for later consumption. Cars and trucks drive off the road and into every building as their occupants succumb to the fanged predators. What makes so many of these attacks such an intense and visceral experience is that so many spiders actually died during filming. Conspicuous by its absence is the familiar “No animals were harmed during production” label. Indeed, Shatner and the rest have no qualms about stomping and squashing their diminutive co-stars for the sake of drama.
The final standoff reaches its climax in a gritty scene in which Rack gallantly navigates a musty, spider-infested basement to reach the circuit breakers and restore power to the isolated inn. As he crawls back to the kitchen, dazed by the venom, bowed but not broken, he careens through the room, rushing headlong towards the camera; his swollen, scarred cheeks a testimony of his remarkable sacrifice. At once, his grizzled countenance conveys not only the personal terror of Rack’s brush with mortality, but also the shocking realization of Mankind’s comeuppance in the face of Mother Nature scorned. Few but Shatner could command such emotion, and portray such conflict in the span of a few seconds of screen-time.
The next morning, Rack and his motley crew of survivors awake amidst an eerie stillness. Looking outside they make the gruesome discovery that the inn, nay, the entire valley has been shrouded in the spiders’ grim silken prison. This “money shot” is, stylistically, a disappointment, as the shoddy matte painting is more fitting for dime store postcard. However, the image of the town draped in a giant web is what stays with most viewers, and is usually the only thing that their minds have not erased out of fear and terror. As the final credits roll, one cannot help but gaze into the mirror that this film holds up mockingly to our society and wonder: “At what cost: ‘Civilization’?”
![[foreign poster]](spindlarna.jpg)
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