Sunday, December 16, 2018

KISS OF THE TARANTULA (1976) ** ½


Susan (Suzanna Ling) is a little girl who dotes on her mortician father (Herman Wallner) and has an unnatural love of spiders.  When she overhears her spider-hating mother (Beverly Eddins) plotting to murder her father, she unleashes her killer tarantula on her.  Susan soon grows up and learns the best way to deal with people who mistreat her is to sick her killer pets on them.

Kiss of the Tarantula is a fitfully amusing, sporadically effective Willard knockoff.  It starts out in fine fashion as the scene of little Susan killing her mother is a lot of fun.  My favorite sequence though is when she gets revenge on the assholes who stomped on one of her spiders.  She follows them to a drive-in where she turns a bunch of tarantulas loose inside their car.  The best part is that the people die not from the spiders, but because they panic inside the car and wind up killing each other in various Final Destination-esque sorts of ways.

After that great sequence, it sort of goes downhill from there.  The subplot with Susan’s lecherous uncle (Eric Mason) covering up her crimes and blackmailing her is decidedly less successful than all the spider shenanigans.  His final comeuppance is certainly novel, although it feels like it came from an entirely different movie.  It’s also novel that Susan (spoiler) lives and gets off scot free (I guess they were hoping for a sequel), but the drawn-out (and spider-less) conclusion winds up feeling a tad anticlimactic.

One subplot that should’ve been beefed up:  Susan’s father’s career shift.  As the film goes on, he becomes more and more invested in a political career.  Not many people could go from mortician to politician and make it work.  

AKA:  Shudder.  

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