Numerootno A story that's too fascinating to pass by...

Erica Derrick By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Kaydan Christian A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Paynbob It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

Julian R. White When you look at the poster or the VHS cover, you think this is going to be some kind of horrible boring B movie that flunked before it even hit theaters. Well, in some ways it's absolutely ridiculous. Other ways, it's frightfully disturbing and suspenseful. The Tarantulas used are actually a quite expensive and sought after species, the Mexican Red knee. Completely harmless, we make the venom of these spiders look like they can kill virtually in an instant. That's silly to me, but to others it might prove quite chilling. The crazy part is the family life of the poor young woman. Incest, murder, bullying, I'm amazed the poor girl wasn't in an asylum. I'll say this much, this film will leave you with your mouth agape in disgust and amazement. I really liked it.

calvinnme From the first scene, little Susan seems troubled and is fascinated with spiders. She considers them her pets. And why not? Mom has all of the warmth and maternal love of one of dad's corpses on a slab. Dad is a mortician and full of love for his daughter. The actress playing mom is pretty stiff in her role (no pun intended) and actually seems much too old for the part she is playing. She is having an affair with her husband's brother, a cop. Susan overhears mom talking on the phone, figures out who she is talking to, and overhears their plans to kill her beloved dad.So Susan waits until mom is asleep and puts her pet tarantula on her. Mom awakens, doesn't jump out of bed, just lays there in terror, and then has a heart attack and dies. Mission accomplished. Dad is safe. Susan grows up. Her age is never specified, but it seems that she is in high school because she is walking to school with a backpack. Although, like mom, she seems about ten years too old for the part. By this time Susan has many tarantulas as pets in the basement and she is still the apple of her dad's eye.Pretty soon Susan is solving all of her problems with bullies and the kids who broke into the mortuary and killed one of her pets spiders by planting spiders on them when and where they least expect it. In every case they don't run away, they just sit there screaming with the spiders crawling on them and die of a coronary. Never have I seen so many healthy young people die of heart attacks.Now that Susan has matured, Dad's lecherous brother begins to have the hots for her, bothering her and getting just a little too affectionate. Blech! The girl is your niece! To make matters worse he's the local DA, and he and the cops are stumped at all of the deaths occurring around town. To make matters even worse he wants to run for state Attorney General. But for some strange reason he sends his brother out to campaign while he shadows Susan with his tongue dragging the floor. Usually voters want to hear from the candidate, not his brother.This all comes to a head with the DA committing a terrible crime himself, and Susan wreaking a completely ironic justice upon the guy that for once did not involve her spiders.The dialogue is wooden and the acting uninspired. And then there is the case of the high schoolers that look like they are in their 30s and the convenient way all of the victims die at the sight of a spider. However, this is a case of something you just don't see anymore - an independent low budget film with actors so anonymous you wonder why they bothered to give them names in the movie different from their actual names. For several of the players I think this was their only credited role.For me, it is an artifact of the last days of drive ins, and for that reason I enjoyed it. It is so authentic, so not mass produced, so something that no movie studio would have any part of today that it is just a guilty pleasure of mine. Your mileage may vary.

PeterMitchell-506-564364 A teenage outcast, unleashes her revenge, utilizing her eight legged friends, in this slow moving and forgettable horror, which will leave you waiting some for what little gore there is to happen. I mean how much harm can tarantula's do. To that small minority of people who love spiders and revenge, we should have that small minority of people watch this. Given that said, it's not a badly made flick, where even a "Hot Connections" star shows up as one of Susan's peers, who gets his serve at a drive in. He was falsely coming onto her, then entrapping her as to find out how his friends were killed. Bad mistake as our Susan who slightly resembles Carrie, again unleashes her pets. Another guy gets it in an air duct. Our Susan's got other problems. Her father matter of fact owns a funeral parlor where the wife and the bastard of an uncle are getting it on. Again, enter Susan. The opening always stays with me of Susan smiling the sweetest of smiles (too sweet) to camera. This is used in the last shot too, where Susan herself says "I love happy endings". Okay horror fare, but nothing to write home about.

Skutter-2 A lacklustre seventies movie in the mold of Carrie or Willard, only time the demented loner strikes out with her pet tarantulas instead of telekinesis or rats. Kiss of the Tarantula follows this formula of the misunderstood loner with a power and doesn't really do enough differently or with enough flair to stand out or to really engage the audience. Made in minimalist seventies style the movie is left to hang on the performances of the cast and the strength of the script which aren't that strong. The story basically revolves around the heroine killing off with her pet spiders those who wrong her in some way, such as her malevolent spider hating mother, her sleazy uncle and the 'kids' (It's hard to tell how old these guys are. The script refers to them as being of school age but they are clearly are far older) who pick on her and kill some of her pets as a prank. It's a simple story structure that could work if some suspense is created as to who lives and who dies, whether of not our heroine gets away with it etc. This is where the script and acting fail. Whilst Suzanna Ling is somewhat convincing as the unhinged heroine she is not particularly sympathetic or interesting as a protagonist and little time is spent in the script developing the character or going into the details of why she is the way she is beyond her contemporaries thinking she is weird because she lives at the morgue with her mortician father (shades of Six Feet Under). Suzanna Ling, whilst she is convincing and creepy is not a strong enough an actress to bring anything extra to the role beyond that which is the script. The other characters, such as the sleazy uncle, are not very sympathetic or interesting either. You won't care who lives or dies or if the heroine gets away with it and there are really no surprises in the story. There are other plot issues. There isn't even a hint as to how she has the control she does over the spiders and it unclear as to whether the spiders actually kill anyone. The mother dies of a heart attack it is clear and it seems like some of the youngsters who die later on might have died by accidents prompted by the spider attacks although this less clear due to the shoddy way the scenes are shot. All the later victims effectively dying by chance like this seems contrived and extremely silly, although if they did die by spider venom the forensics department in this town is really bad for not picking up on it. There also a few plot threads introduced that don't go anywhere such as a potential boyfriend character who is introduced but disappears and the sleazy uncle's aspiration to run for some form of public office which doesn't lead anywhere. On the whole the script is quite underdeveloped.Not much else is provided on a more visceral horror movie level. The spiders are good movie nasties but they are not really used to much effect here. Others than a few short scenes here and there the titular creatures don't get a great deal of screen time and pretty disappear from the movie after the halfway point leaving the audience to watch a flaccid melodrama/thriller minus what is presumably the movies hook. The movies climax in which our heroine finally deals with her sleazy uncle does not involve the spiders at all, although the way in which she deals with him makes it the best and creepiest scene in the movie. Beyond this the movie is lacking in gore, suspense or anything juicy or exciting.