Kingdom of the Spiders

Kingdom of the Spiders (1977)

A Living, Crawling, Hell on Earth!

Investigating the mysterious deaths of a number of farm animals, vet Rack Hansen discovers that his town lies in the path of hordes of migrating tarantulas. Before he can take action, the streets are overrun by killer spiders, trapping a small group of townsfolk in a remote hotel.

Date of release
1977-08-24
TMDB
5.6 / 10 (146)
Runtime
1h 37m
Genres
Horror, Science Fiction
Director
John "Bud" Cardos

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Budget: $1M

Kingdom of the Spiders is a 1977 American science fiction horror film directed by John "Bud" Cardos and produced by Igo Kantor and Jeffrey M. Sneller. The screenplay is credited to Richard Robinson and Alan Caillou, from an original story by Sneller and Stephen Lodge. Part of the eco-horror subgenre, Kingdom of the Spiders centers on a rural town in Camp Verde, Arizona which lies in the migration path of a horde of tarantulas turned aggressive due to pesticides having depleted their normal food sources. The film was released by Dimension Pictures. It stars William Shatner, Tiffany Bolling, Woody Strode, Lieux Dressler, and Altovise Davis.

Production

Kantor told Fangoria magazine in 1998 that the film did indeed use 5,000 of the large, hairy spiders, though a number of rubber model spiders were also used during production. The live tarantulas were procured by offering Mexican spider wranglers US$10 for each live tarantula they could find; this meant that $50,000 of the film's $500,000 budget went towards the purchase of spiders.

The large number of tarantulas kept on hand led to some unusual production difficulties. Not only did each spider have to be kept warm, but because of the creatures' cannibalistic tendencies, all 5,000 spiders had to be kept in separate containers. Additionally, tarantulas are usually shy around people, so fans and air tubes often had to be used to get the spiders to move toward their "victims".

The venom of most tarantulas is not dangerous to humans, causing no more harm than a bee sting (unless the person is allergic to the venom). This is why the film mentions that the species which appears in the film has venom five times more potent than normal. The worst injury most of the actors suffered was troublesome itching, caused by the spiders shedding their bristles.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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