Cast and Crew: John “Bud” Cardos (Director); Woody Strode

What It’s About: When our insecticides push tarantulas too far, they begin to form colonies and make war on us…first killing our livestock, then taking a cue from Jaws and attacking the big county fair.  Can veterinarian Rack Hansen (William Shatner) and dressed-to-the-nines-while-doing-field-work entomologist Diane Ashley (Tiffany Bolling) figure  out what’s going on-and find a way to stop it-before the whole southwest becomes The Kingdom of Spiders?

Why Watch it Today?: According to nothing official sounding, but random websites all over the web (so you know it must be real) March 14th is National Save a Spider Day.  As The Kingdom of the Spiders so clearly teaches us, if we do not mend our waves and treat the spiders as the friends they are to us, they will form aggressive colonies and wage war.  So you better save those spiders!

The Kingdom of the Spiders is one of the most unintentionally hilarious films in the “nature strikes back” cycle of the 1970s, one part The Birds, one part ecological paranoia made celluloid, one part Jaws rip-off with a huge dollop of Shatnernian cheese on top.  Impressionable viewers may want to know that the film’s climatic “chaos and mass death at the county fair” sequence scared the pants off of your humble reviewer when he was a tyke.

Where to Get It:  Amazon (DVD only)