Saturday, June 27, 2009

KINGDOM OF THE SPIDERS (1977)

Note to self: if I'm ever trapped in a house covered by dozens of millions of thousands of tarantulas and I hear a strange sound coming from an overhead air vent DO NOT stand directly beneath the vent and open it.

Local veterinarian William Shatner is dumbfounded when he discovers that his sleepy desert town is under attack by a tidal wave of icky spiders. The invasion starts out slow enough, but instead of doing anything productive, ol' Shat prefers to flirt with every attractive female in town and drink a little cold beer. The reality of the eight-legged onslaught comes soon enough, but instead of simply driving away, everybody resorts to running around screaming a lot.

As far as killer animals movies go, KINGDOM OF THE SPIDERS is a fun trip.  It almost comes off like a 1970's TV movie.  Steady pace, zero nudity, mild action towards the end, ridiculous looking fake spiders along with thousands of nasty-looking real spiders, crew member hand onscreen (right before the truck wreck), a musical sound at 43:12 that sounds like the opening to "Centerfold" by the J. Geils Band, a woman shooting a spider off of her hand, the phrase "...wham bam thank you ma'am.

KOTS has plenty of spider action, but none of it is particularity gross.  Which is nice for a pussy like me.  I like killer insect stories, but I fucking hate it when they start crawling all over food and stuff like that.  Yack!!!

Thursday, May 21, 2009

THE GATE (1987)

Mediocre late 80’s supernatural horror that would have benefited from some gratuitous violence/gore and nudity. I saw THE GATE when it first came out and for all these years I’ve thought that the kid opened up the gate to Hell by backmasking a heavy metal album. That would have been awesome! But I was wrong, because the pit first opens up when a tree falls down. How...lame.

Anyway, so this hole opens up in a family's suburban backyard and nobody really thinks that it's strange that this large hole just showed up and keeps reappearing every time you fill it in. Random shit happens: a kid cuts himself near the hole; a intellectual disability dickneck buries a dead dog in the hole and BAM! Faster than you can say “HBO should discover Robert McCammon.” a bunch of ugly little minions start running around tearing up shit. They looked pretty menacing at first, but outside of the clawing up a door and unorganized your closet, they’re pretty harmless.  But I don’t think scary was what THE GATE was going for...hum…now that I think of it I have no idea what this movie is trying to do!  Still, even with the low budget and lack of action, THE GATE is an alright movie and a enjoyable time waster. You could definitely do worse. I think the reason this film has such a cult following now is because a lot of people saw it when they were kids.

Director Tibor Takacs went on to direct the smash hits MEGA SNAKE and MANSQUITO.

Part 2 - Gate 2: The Trespassers (1990)