By Geno McGahee
OK, the first thing that should probably be mentioned is the song that they start and end the film and also feature on the radio. It is about the town and they are very happy about the town, but it’s not a good song. I wonder if the singer was a producer or a friend of the director. It’s odd to see a tune thrown into a film with so much regularity and I also wonder if it was a hit. I wonder if people fucked to it.
Rack Hansen (William Shatner) wears a cowboy hat, rides a horse and basically is the man in the town and he knows it. He is also all heart, taking care of his deceased brother’s family and really wanting to take care of his widow. Terry (Marcy Lafferty) wants to run her fingers through Hansen’s hair piece and make it with him with the only condition that she calls him by his brother’s name. Rack isn’t having it. He doesn’t want to pretend to be his dead brother while nailing a chick. He wants to say “you’re taking Rack’s dick.” I get it, I guess.
As Rack is walking around like king shit, Colby (Woody Strode) discovers that his cow is dead and calls over Rack to check it out. When he shows up, he finds white shit oozing from the cow’s mouth. Rack gave Colby that look that screamed “you mouth-fucked this cow, didn’t you?” It turns out that killer spiders killed the cow but it doesn’t explain the white goop pouring from its mouth.
Due to the strange findings in the blood test of the dead cow, Diane (Tiffany Bolling) comes to town to investigate and Rack is immediately trying to get into her pants. She is hesitant to get with him, but he is persistent. They are forced to hang out because of the spider problem, but they don’t realize just how much of a problem it is.
On the Colby farm, a huge hill full of spiders are causing all sorts of shit and killing a lot of the livestock and even Colby’s dog. (Spoiler) They then take out Colby himself while he went for a drive. These are some prick spiders.
Diane explains that the killing of the spiders’ natural food source is mostly responsible for them looking for alternative things to eat and that includes animals and people. With the town infested with these huge killer spiders, the annual festival that they hold is still being held. The show must go on. That’s the way it should be. If you are willing to risk being killed by killer spiders but still want fried dough, have at it.
With bodies and animals piling up, the Mayor decides to use pesticide to kill off the spiders and hires Baron (Whitey Hughes) to do the job. Unfortunately for Baron, spiders are inside of his plane and they attack and we get the best death scene of the film. He screamed a high pitched scream over and over again and then crashed.
The spiders go into full attack mode and start killing everyone and invading the town. This sort of turns into NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD with spiders and now Rack, Tiffany and a few more people are holding up in a cabin as the spiders try to get in. Rack gets attacked by a ton of spiders in the basement and we get that tremendous Shatner over-acting during this scene. It was glorious.
KINGDOM OF THE SPIDERS is classic 1970’s stuff. It has a great ending, tremendous over-acting and is just a fun film to watch. It starts very slow and moves along slowly. You have to hang in there a little to get to the good stuff, but it is worth your patience. I really liked this film and highly recommend it!
