Huievest Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

InformationRap This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Keeley Coleman The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

Jonah Abbott There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

Leofwine_draca This above-average "nature's rampage" horror flick beats Spielberg's ARACHNOPHOBIA in terms of hands-down scares - because here, the majority of the spiders are REAL ones instead of unconvincing fakes and special effects. Yep, somebody "borrowed" about 5000 tarantulas to make this movie and the effect is one of the most realistic man vs. beast movies out there. KINGDOM OF THE SPIDERS is all you could hope for in a B-movie starring everyone's favourite thesp, William Shatner, and a cast of B-movie hopefuls.The plot concerns spiders which have to turn to larger food suppliers after farmers using DDT destroy most of their natural insect food. It has NOTHING to do with alien spiders, as the UK box cover bizarrely suggests. Although the film's structure adheres to the old strict template (minor deaths and mysteries followed up by a full-scale invasion), cult director John "Bud" Cardos (who also gave us THE DARK and MUTANT) takes time out for us to get to know - and care for - the principal characters involved in the antics. William Shatner takes the leading hero's role of a cowboy veterinarian (!) and his acting is pretty subdued here - at least, until the finale in which he is attacked by spiders and goes into a fit of over-acting or a scene where he skips down a road covered with the creepy-crawlies! Tiffany Bolling is the hard-headed female scientist who comes to investigate the mysterious deaths of cows (shown at the beginning in good, eerie scenes) and whose heart is soon melted by Shatner's charms. The only other actor of note is Woody Strode, who here puts in a touching show as a farmer who fears that his farm is going to get quarantined. The rest is your typical B-movie bunch, and fans will be glad to hear that there's a high death toll with literally dozens of folk falling victim to the invading arachnids.Although, as with most "nature's rampage" horror flicks from the past twenty years, there's a certain suspension of disbelief required to enjoy the on screen action, KINGDOM OF THE SPIDERS offers us some truly great shocks and scares to rouse us from the inaction of the first half. There's a great shot of a spider-covered bull jumping suddenly at the camera, which is guaranteed to put anybody on the edge of the seat, and a frightening moment in which a pilot is attacked by spiders and crashes his plane into a building which explodes. However, the best part of the film is the last twenty minutes, the full-scale invasion which owes more than a nod to NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD as the survivors board themselves up inside a roadside café and sit it out.There are many scenes of people being surrounded by/covered in spiders which work because these are real, moving spiders, not lousy special effects. The film briefly moves to the town where there's some large-scale chaos with cocooned bodies all over and people crashing their cars into water-towers which then collapses and kills yet more folk. Shatner himself has a suspenseful scene in the basement where he goes to fix a fuse and finds himself covered in the creepy crawlies and struggles for survival. This is classic stuff and a cut above the usual less-than-impressive invasion sequences in similar movies. The film ends with an ambiguous (sadly unconvincing) matte shot showing the entire town has been cocooned in a spider's web, and manages to be sufficiently eerie. KINGDOM OF THE SPIDERS is a treat of a B-movie for genre fans and one of the more effective man-against-nature flicks out there.

BA_Harrison I admit that spiders scare the bejeezus out of me and that I'd probably feel a whole lot happier if every last one of them were removed from existence; however, as so many ecological horrors of the '70s have clearly illustrated, meddling with the balance of nature isn't wise, and doing so can only make matters a whole lot worse. For example, in Kingdom of the Spiders, the use of chemicals such as DDT have resulted in an army of resilient, deadly and very hungry tarantulas, five times as venomous as normal and a whole lot more aggressive. They also seem to have become more intelligent, which isn't good news for the good folk of Camp Verde, Arizona, who the spiders have decided to add to their larder.With a few thousand real tarantulas at his disposal, and a game cast more than willing to have the horrible creatures crawling all over their bodies for the sake of their art, director John 'Bud' Cardos delivers a B-movie horror guaranteed to have anyone with even the slightest case of arachnophobia squirming uncontrollably in their seats. Even if the idea of a dozen big-ass hairy spiders in the face doesn't faze you, there are plenty of other reasons to dig this fun drive-in flick: William 'Captain Kirk' Shatner as the hero, gorgeous Tiffany Bolling as his entomologist love interest, and cult actor Woody Strode as the token black guy guaranteed a horrible death; a hilarious scene in which the pilot of a biplane screams like a girl while tarantulas crawl on his head; a crazed steer brought to its knees by the spiders; and the entire town running amok as the creepy crawlies attack.All that and a truly memorable final image make this a hugely enjoyable piece of drive-in entertainment.

microfame This film DID satisfy my current nostalgic craving for all things 70's, a decade when I, as a 2 to 12 year old, devoured TV-movies like this and "Ants" with abandon. Two things I feel compelled to mention...1) I love Shatner as Captain Kirk. Huge fan of Trek. But here, he comes off kind of oily and lecherous when he pours on the charm......odd. 2) I'm not a PETA activist, but I was really struck by how many spiders were stomped, run over, burned, boiled and mangled in this film. I'm sure, in the 70's, this would not have stood out to anyone, but in this age of special effects, where they'll show you in the extra features how they make a fake tarantula, and what brand tarter sauce they put in it for an effective "squishing" scene, it really jumped out at me. I felt kind of bad, to be honest....MANY spiders were hurt in the making of this film!Otherwise, a very good 70's "creature" film, best watched alongside "Day of the Animals" or "Frogs", for a fine double-feature.

kosmasp No pun intended btw with the summary line. And I'm sure not everyone will like the ending. But I think it's almost the only way to end this. William Shatner is really great in this and you can feel him, playing the ridiculousness of the script. There are even scenes, were he "fights" with Spiders, were you could be excused thinking this was directed by Mr. Ed Wood.But of course this does has something to say and since the spiders were real (well at least most, maybe they a few plastic one thrown into the mix), this also feels real. Which must have been good and bad for the actors. Good because they didn't need a great motivation to act scared and bad ... because some actually must have been genuinely scared!Having said that, the movie does not have a big budget (I even read this might have been initially made for TV, although I'm not sure if that's true) and the dialog is off quite a few times. If that doesn't matter much to you, you will get a really quite good, eerie and scary horror movie.