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.

Alice, Sweet Alice (1976)

ALICE, SWEET ALICE (1976) ***

They really tried hard with ALICE, SWEET ALICE, the horror film that’s best known for being Brooke Shields’ film debut.

It appeared in November 1976 at the Chicago International Film Festival, where it competed against such films as ALLEGRO NON TROPPO, GREY GARDENS, SMALL CHANGE, THE DEVIL’S PLAYGROUND, and Best Feature winner KINGS OF THE ROAD.

It received theatrical release (and mostly negative reviews) in 1977, 1978, and 1981. Viewers might have seen it as either ALICE, SWEET ALICE or COMMUNION (the original title) or HOLY TERROR depending on when they watched it.

The promotional forces especially played on the Brooke Shields angle in ‘78 and ‘81.

One of the ‘78 ALICE, SWEET ALICE ads proclaimed at its top, “PRETTY BABY Brooke Shields, America’s New Star,” a reference to Shields being in Louis Malle’s contemporaneous PRETTY BABY.

Three years later, the film returned as HOLY TERROR with a hard sell promotional campaign again built around exploiting Shields’ notoriety from her Calvin Klein advertisements and her film projects like THE BLUE LAGOON. Shields put up a fight, though, because she had more clout and ENDLESS SUMMER coming down the pike; “Brooke was concerned that film goers could only be disappointed if led into the theater with the promise that the film was of recent vintage or that she had a central part in it,” said her attorney. See, the original HOLY TERROR ads used a photo of Shields circa ‘81 rather than one of her from the film that was made during a different administration. Those naughty ad men, they did a bad, bad thing.

Roger Ebert made the advertising campaign for HOLY TERROR his “Dog of the Week.” “The ads promise that it stars Brooke Shields,” Ebert said. “That’s where the trouble begins, because HOLY TERROR was first released five years ago under the title of COMMUNION and then it was released three years ago as ALICE, SWEET ALICE. Now, when this movie was originally shot, Brooke Shields was a little girl, only 10 years old, and as Calvin Klein can tell you, she’s not 10 years old anymore. Shields has a supporting role in the movie as an apparently demented little girl and it’s an effective thriller alright, but how many title changes is it going to go through in an attempt to cash in on Brooke Shields’ recent popularity?” Gene Siskel replied, “Maybe they ought to try GONE WITH THE WIND.”

Truth in advertising: Shields, listed 10th in the cast in the end credits, appears in the picture for about the first 10 minutes. For those of us who think she’s one of the worst mainstream actresses ever committed to celluloid, that’s a major blessing in disguise. She’s not a demented little girl, though, but the first murder victim. Attending her first communion, her character Karen gets killed real good before she can receive it, strangled to death and then incinerated by a masked figure in a costume that should make one think back to the superior thriller DON’T LOOK NOW. Only this raincoat is yellow rather than red like DON’T LOOK NOW.

Deceptive promotional campaigns are not anything new. They’ve happened before and they will happen again. It happens all the time, and not only (but especially) during election years.

For example, John Travolta made his debut (briefly) in the ridiculous 1975 thriller THE DEVIL’S RAIN, which features Ernest Borghine, Eddie Albert, Ida Lupino, Tom Skerritt, William Shatner, and Keenan Wynn in the cast, as well as the special participation of Anton LaVey, high priest of the Church of Satan. Anyway, in the original 1975 ads, not a mention of Travolta. Instead, we have mug shots of “Satan on Earth” (Borghine), “Devil Destroyer” (Albert), “Demon Sacrifice” (Lupino), “Tortured Soul” (Shatner), and “Faceless Follower” (Wynn) right above the claim “Absolutely the most incredible ending of any motion picture ever!”

Preying on Travolta’s success in SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER and GREASE, THE DEVIL’S RAIN made a comeback. Siskel named it a “Dog of the Week” the same week in 1978 his colleague Ebert picked that awful monster movie SLITHIS. “My dog this week is a four-year old film named THE DEVIL’S RAIN that’s suddenly come back to a lot of theaters advertised as starring John Travolta,” Siskel said. “Well, that’s a complete lie. THE DEVIL’S RAIN stars Ernest Borghine as a Devil’s helper trying to hang on to some lost souls. Travolta is on screen for less than a minute, this was his first film. He had only one line of dialogue in it. Most of the time, he has red and green wax melting all over his face. Looks like he fell asleep on a pizza. … Beware of films you’ve never heard of promising big stars. One reason you’ve never heard of them, they’re lousy.”

These promotional campaigns definitely backfired in the case of ALICE, SWEET ALICE, because it’s a good little thriller often compared with the works of Alfred Hitchcock and called a prototype of the slasher film. That should have been more than enough to sell the film.

ALICE, SWEET ALICE involves a series of murders in 1961 in Paterson, New Jersey, around a church and an apartment building. Our title character, a 12-year-old girl played by a 18- or 19-year-old Paula Sheppard, becomes the first suspect and she’s sent to a psychiatric institution for evaluation. She was always mean to her little sister and besides, she’s just plain “weird.” Their parents are divorced and they live with their mother Catherine (Linda Miller) and attend St. Michael’s Parish Girls’ School. We also have the girls’ father Dom (Niles McMaster) and their aunt (Jane Lowry), Father Tom (Rudolph Willrich), his housekeeper Mrs. Tredoni (Mildred Clinton), the creepy obese landlord (Alphonso DeNoble), and assorted policemen and minor characters. Dom leaves behind his new wife to more or less become a detective on behalf of his oldest daughter, and that leads to his demise in a scene that echoes Donald Sutherland’s death at the end of DON’T LOOK NOW.

ALICE, SWEET ALICE reminds one of not only DON’T LOOK NOW, but also any number of giallos or Italian thrillers because of the anti-Catholic themes, dark humor, and familial dysfunction. Lucio Fulci’s DON’T TORTURE A DUCKLING and Dario Argento’s PROFONDO ROSSO quickly come to mind. Of course, all these films have their roots in Hitchcock.

Director, producer, and co-writer Alfred Sole, who shared the screenplay with Rosemary Ritvo, reveals the real killer around the two-thirds mark and that’s a departure from the modus operandi of the thriller.

ALICE, SWEET ALICE stands up long after the promotional campaign has become a faded memory. Anyway, I’ll still call it Brooke Shields’ best movie.

The Car (1977)

THE CAR (1977) *

The Devil and cars were huge in the movies of the 1970s.

Building on the momentum of ROSEMARY’S BABY in 1968, we saw THE BROTHERHOOD OF SATAN, THE EXORCIST (the biggest hit of them all that spawned many imitators and successors), THE DEVIL’S RAIN, THE DEVIL WITHIN HER, BEYOND THE DOOR, BEYOND THE DOOR II, THE OMEN and DAMIEN: OMEN II, and THE AMITYVILLE HORROR.

As far as cars, we had TWO-LANE BLACKTOP, DUEL, THE SUGARLAND EXPRESS, GONE IN 60 SECONDS, DEATH RACE 2000, THE GUMBALL RALLY, EAT MY DUST, GRAND THEFT AUTO, and SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT.

THE CAR, directed by Elliot Silverstein and distributed by Universal, combines The Devil and cars to make one stupefying, awful, patently ridiculous horror movie.

Yes, that’s right, a homicidal maniac automobile seemingly possessed … or just having a really, really, really bad day. Maybe the latter was just me watching THE CAR.

This movie just doesn’t know when to quit and it starts early with the murders of two bicycling teenagers in the majestic desert of Utah. We’re talking first few minutes and the film wastes absolutely no time in establishing its basic pattern. Maybe I should have turned off the subtitles, because they provided the evocative forewarning “Ominous instrumental music.” I knew the bludgeoning music was coming, though, because I’ve seen a movie or two before, especially a horror movie. Ominous instrumental music indeed, especially when it sounds like 50 horror film musical scores piled up into one super bad score. Forget the killer car next time, I want the movie about the killer musical score. Tagline: “They could not believe their ears, until it was too late. … THE MUSICAL SCORE FROM HELL will make your eardrums bleed. Coming soon to a theater near you.”

Every 10-15 minutes, at least, we are beaten with a ridiculous death scene or, barring that, a scene of peril just for variety. That ominous instrumental music, all them close-ups of the customized 1971 Lincoln Continental Mark III (built by George Barris, who previously brought us the Batmobile for the 1966 BATMAN), and Silverstein’s overall poor handling of action. At times, the vehicles look like they’re being artificially sped up.

Unfortunately, in between those violent scenes, we are served a steady diet of banalities and unpleasantries, only adding insult to injury.

For example, just about every scene with veteran character actor R.G. Armstrong (1917-2012) applies the unpleasant extra thick. He beats on his wife and insults just about everybody in sight. Never mind his slurs against Native American character Chas (played by Henry O’Brien in his final feature film). He’s a nasty old man. Honestly, why is his character Amos not killed? You’re right, it must have something to do with the explosives needed for the grand finale … and, before that, Sheriff Everett (John Marley) needs to be killed rather than Amos so Wade (James Brolin, who seems to be hired when Sam Elliott is unavailable), our main human protagonist, can take charge. It all makes sense.

Our title character is maddening to the nth degree and we have already touched on why, but let’s pursue it more.

Sure, it can kill a main character by driving through her house in the ultimate display of supernatural power. This character, Lauren (Kathleen Lloyd), the lover of the protagonist, turns her back to the window as she speaks to Wade on the phone. This means, however, that we can see the car coming straight for her through her window. This scene is supposed to be a highlight, a real heart breaker or at least a real tense moment since we see the murderous car well before her, but, like virtually every other scene in THE CAR, it’s laughably bad in a bad way.

Just like the scene that establishes the car’s need for revenge against Lauren. Safe on the hollowed grounds of a cemetery, Lauren really lets our title character have it, resorting to chickenshit and a son of a bitch. That’s obviously going too far, even before she tosses a tree branch at it. She asked for her auto demise. I should mention that she’s a school teacher whose marching band students were chased into that cemetery by you know who. We have seen that scene archetype before, namely in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1963 classic THE BIRDS. THE CAR just drags this entire sequence out.

Then again, dragging it out describes the entire movie.

Our title character is especially maddening because it wastes two perfect opportunities to flatten Wade like a pancake. What’s that all about? We get the feeling that were it any other character and not the protagonist, it would be “Sayonara, sucker!” The first opportunity even gives us a cut from Wade in danger in the desert to being safe in a hospital bed. I hate cheap tricks like that.

Was there anything I liked about THE CAR? Fleeting moments, like glimpses of the Utah scenery as seen through filming locations St. George, Snow Canyon, Zion National Park, Glen Canyon, Hurricane, the Mount Carmel Tunnel, and Kanab. I would have preferred a 96-minute nature documentary on this area over THE CAR.

I knew I was in trouble when THE CAR starts out with a quote from Church of Satan leader Anton LaVey (1930-97) and The Satanic Bible.

LaVey also previously had a hand in the making of THE DEVIL’S RAIN, another godawful horror movie.

Sometimes, it seems like even the Devil just can’t buy a break.