Tag: John Cardos

Kingdom of the Spiders (1977)

KINGDOM OF THE SPIDERS (1977) ***
John ‘Bud’ Cardos’ Kingdom of the Spiders proved to be a pleasant surprise.

First, I remembered Cardos directed The Dark, one of the worst movies of 1979.

Second, I remembered the last time I saw Kingdom of the Spiders star William Shatner in a cowboy hat, yes, the absolutely ridiculous The Devil’s Rain, one of the worst movies of 1975.

Third, Kingdom of the Spiders starts out with the country number “Pleasant Verde Valley.”

Finally, Kingdom of the Spiders starts out slow, real slow, tipped off by No. 3.

Kingdom of the Spiders, though, kicks into high gear around the hour mark and it’s a whole lot of fun the final 35-40 minutes once the spiders attack Camp Verde, Arizona, and the tarantulas take complete control of the picture, hence being a pleasant surprise.

Kingdom of the Spiders borrows from such motion picture immortals as The Birds, Jaws, and Night of the Living Dead. That’s all part of the fun, when you enjoy something like Kingdom of the Spiders. Otherwise, it’s one more objection to a failure, like, for example, such bombs from the same era as The Giant Spider Invasion, Food of the Gods, and fellow 1977 release Empire of the Ants.

On the other hand, I have a weakness for Nature Attacks movies. There’s Frogs, starring killer amphibians, birds, insects, and reptiles, plus a crotchety old Ray Milland and a topless Sam Elliott. There’s Night of the Lepus, pairing a mutated killer rabbit infestation with a character actor infestation featuring Janet Leigh, Stuart Whitman, Rory Calhoun, and DeForest Kelley. There’s Squirm, where killer worms and a pair of redheads played by Don Scardino and the perky Patricia Pearcy wreak havoc on Fly Creek, Georgia, after one helluva storm. All of them are good fun and I’ve been known to call Frogs — great fun — better than The Godfather. Ditto for Godzilla vs. The Smog Monster.

Anyway, Kingdom of the Spiders works a thousand times more than The Giant Spider Invasion because it decides on real spiders — many spiders, how many exactly, how about 5,000, I mean that fact alone creates shivers down the spine — rather than a Volkswagen Beetle converted into a silly giant spider invasion. The Giant Spider Invasion doesn’t help itself when Alan Hale’s Sheriff exclaims, “You ever see the movie Jaws? It makes that shark look like a goldfish!” Giant mistake.

Also, the characters in Kingdom of the Spiders are far more likable than the ones in The Giant Spider Invasion. I mean, I eventually forgave Shatner for the cowboy hat — it’s better than the one he wore for The Devil’s Rain — and I even got over the fact that his character’s named “Rack Hansen.”

I remember an elementary school teacher calming the nerves of several pupils who were scared silly by a tarantula. She told us they’re harmless, they’re not poisonous anyway, they just look big and scary and very, very frightening indeed, and Kingdom of the Spiders brought me back 30 years to that moment in time. I’m just thankful our teacher did not show us Kingdom of the Spiders afterwards to counteract her moral lesson on tarantulas.

The Dark (1979)

THE DARK (1979) *

Be afraid, very afraid, not of the dark but of The Dark, a laughable thriller that only increases in being laughable until one of the most ridiculous conclusions in cinematic history.

See, I’m not afraid of sleeping in the dark, not afraid of being in a cemetery late at night, not afraid of being home alone in an old house, not afraid of admitting or being wrong, et cetera. In all honesty, though, I hated working alone late nights at the Neosho Daily News office and avoided it as much as possible, except Friday nights during football season. Once corporate killed the Sunday edition and made Tuesday our next paper, though, I started going home after the game, uploaded photos online, and wrote the gamer the next day.

Anyway, The Dark tells the story of a killer who strikes every night in the Los Angeles area and earns the cheap nickname ‘The Mangler.’ What’s a killer without a cheap nickname? This one is a nightmare for the police, because of his unusual strength, his seeming lack of any discernible pattern in his killing, his ability to leave no forensic evidence behind, and, predating Austin Powers, he shoots frickin’ laser beams from his frickin’ eyes. We eventually find out that he even grows stronger with every killing.

The killer and his laser beams look awesome on the poster for The Dark and I grade that promo artwork three-and-a-half stars. In the actual movie, though, the killer and his laser beams absolutely positively suck. These special effects alone impeded the advancement of all technology. When our killer unleashes his laser beams on several anonymous policemen in the grand finale, he clearly misses the mark but the policemen nonetheless take a mighty fall. In all seriousness, just thinking about these scenes now, I haven’t laughed this loudly since Richard Burton’s telekinesis in The Medusa Touch.

Just think all one had to do was light the killer on fire and BOOM! KABOOM! KABLOOEY! Just thinking about the killer’s demise now, I haven’t laughed so heavily since the paragraph before.

The Dark wastes a relatively distinguished cast — William Devane, Cathy Lee Crosby, Richard Jaeckel, and Keenan Wynn — and I find it ironic that fired director Tobe Hooper (replaced by John Cardos) later directed a flop horror film titled The Mangler.

Please remember, though, to be afraid, very afraid, of The Dark, especially since it’s possible that one’s head may explode from convulsive laughter.