I first watched this one when I was a youngster (I assume it was on cable TV, but I suppose it could have been at a drive-in), and I remembered it as being a fairly decent and scary piece of 70s drive-in cheese.
It isn't. It's a really, really bad movie, as I discovered when I picked up a VHS copy cheap at a yard sale.
The spiders, of course, are genuinely creepy, because they used real non-embiggened spiders. But they're *only* creepy. They are not really frightening. For example, they move very, very slowly. A monster you can escape from by walking briskly away isn't an effective monster. This also makes the panic scene later in the film (where people run back and forth screaming as the spiders crawl around slowly) more laughable than frightening. Of course, the spiders move much faster offscreen than on, so maybe that explains it.
And let's not even go into the scene with Altovise Davis and the revolver.
The ending, which I remembered as being genuinely shocking and disturbing, is in fact ludicrous and makes no sense at all. And the score is overblown and out-of-place, and features one of the worst country songs I have ever heard (and I don't like country music anyway).
On the plus side, it does have William Shatner at his studly-cheesiest. And, to be fair, the couple who start out looking like the typical Annoying, Moronic Tourists turn out to be fairly intelligent and useful.
But that's not enough to save it. If you're a bad movie connoisseur, this is definitely worth checking out. If you're not, it isn't.
It isn't. It's a really, really bad movie, as I discovered when I picked up a VHS copy cheap at a yard sale.
The spiders, of course, are genuinely creepy, because they used real non-embiggened spiders. But they're *only* creepy. They are not really frightening. For example, they move very, very slowly. A monster you can escape from by walking briskly away isn't an effective monster. This also makes the panic scene later in the film (where people run back and forth screaming as the spiders crawl around slowly) more laughable than frightening. Of course, the spiders move much faster offscreen than on, so maybe that explains it.
And let's not even go into the scene with Altovise Davis and the revolver.
The ending, which I remembered as being genuinely shocking and disturbing, is in fact ludicrous and makes no sense at all. And the score is overblown and out-of-place, and features one of the worst country songs I have ever heard (and I don't like country music anyway).
On the plus side, it does have William Shatner at his studly-cheesiest. And, to be fair, the couple who start out looking like the typical Annoying, Moronic Tourists turn out to be fairly intelligent and useful.
But that's not enough to save it. If you're a bad movie connoisseur, this is definitely worth checking out. If you're not, it isn't.