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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