Kiss of the Tarantula

1976 "So silent. So deadly. So final."
4.4| 1h25m| PG| en| More Info
Released: 01 May 1976 Released
Producted By: Cinema-Vu
Country: United States of America
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website:
Info

A disturbed teenage girl unleashes her pet tarantula against her "enemies."

Genre

Horror, Mystery

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Director

Chris Munger

Production Companies

Cinema-Vu

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Kiss of the Tarantula Audience Reviews

Intcatinfo A Masterpiece!
Lucia Ayala It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.
Kinley This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows
Rexanne It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny
Julian R. White When you look at the poster or the VHS cover, you think this is going to be some kind of horrible boring B movie that flunked before it even hit theaters. Well, in some ways it's absolutely ridiculous. Other ways, it's frightfully disturbing and suspenseful. The Tarantulas used are actually a quite expensive and sought after species, the Mexican Red knee. Completely harmless, we make the venom of these spiders look like they can kill virtually in an instant. That's silly to me, but to others it might prove quite chilling. The crazy part is the family life of the poor young woman. Incest, murder, bullying, I'm amazed the poor girl wasn't in an asylum. I'll say this much, this film will leave you with your mouth agape in disgust and amazement. I really liked it.
Skutter-2 A lacklustre seventies movie in the mold of Carrie or Willard, only time the demented loner strikes out with her pet tarantulas instead of telekinesis or rats. Kiss of the Tarantula follows this formula of the misunderstood loner with a power and doesn't really do enough differently or with enough flair to stand out or to really engage the audience. Made in minimalist seventies style the movie is left to hang on the performances of the cast and the strength of the script which aren't that strong. The story basically revolves around the heroine killing off with her pet spiders those who wrong her in some way, such as her malevolent spider hating mother, her sleazy uncle and the 'kids' (It's hard to tell how old these guys are. The script refers to them as being of school age but they are clearly are far older) who pick on her and kill some of her pets as a prank. It's a simple story structure that could work if some suspense is created as to who lives and who dies, whether of not our heroine gets away with it etc. This is where the script and acting fail. Whilst Suzanna Ling is somewhat convincing as the unhinged heroine she is not particularly sympathetic or interesting as a protagonist and little time is spent in the script developing the character or going into the details of why she is the way she is beyond her contemporaries thinking she is weird because she lives at the morgue with her mortician father (shades of Six Feet Under). Suzanna Ling, whilst she is convincing and creepy is not a strong enough an actress to bring anything extra to the role beyond that which is the script. The other characters, such as the sleazy uncle, are not very sympathetic or interesting either. You won't care who lives or dies or if the heroine gets away with it and there are really no surprises in the story. There are other plot issues. There isn't even a hint as to how she has the control she does over the spiders and it unclear as to whether the spiders actually kill anyone. The mother dies of a heart attack it is clear and it seems like some of the youngsters who die later on might have died by accidents prompted by the spider attacks although this less clear due to the shoddy way the scenes are shot. All the later victims effectively dying by chance like this seems contrived and extremely silly, although if they did die by spider venom the forensics department in this town is really bad for not picking up on it. There also a few plot threads introduced that don't go anywhere such as a potential boyfriend character who is introduced but disappears and the sleazy uncle's aspiration to run for some form of public office which doesn't lead anywhere. On the whole the script is quite underdeveloped.Not much else is provided on a more visceral horror movie level. The spiders are good movie nasties but they are not really used to much effect here. Others than a few short scenes here and there the titular creatures don't get a great deal of screen time and pretty disappear from the movie after the halfway point leaving the audience to watch a flaccid melodrama/thriller minus what is presumably the movies hook. The movies climax in which our heroine finally deals with her sleazy uncle does not involve the spiders at all, although the way in which she deals with him makes it the best and creepiest scene in the movie. Beyond this the movie is lacking in gore, suspense or anything juicy or exciting.
Coventry Susan, the young daughter of a hard-working mortician, has a strange passion for giant spiders, more particularly tarantulas, and engages her hairy friends to get rid of unpleasant persons in her life, like her own mother who plotted to kill her father anyway. By the time she's an attractive teenager, her passion turned into an obsession and it becomes all the more easier to find victims for the "kiss" of her tarantulas. This is a fairy enjoyable spider-feature, especially in case you like 70's drive-in horror. It's quite creepy, too! As long as you've got a bunch of spiders, you don't really need any other form of special effects as these icky critters provide the film with more than enough genuine frights. Unfortunately, there's very little coherence in the script and all the main events seem be juxtaposed without much connection between them. Also, as the story develops, the Susan-character shows more an more resemblance with Stephen King's "Carrie". She gets emotionally unstable, uncertain about herself, seemly all alone against the rest of the world and – of course – disposing of unique powers. Much like the 1978 movie "Jennifer" was a Carrie rip-off with snakes, "Kiss of the Tarantula" is a well-disguised Carrie rip-off with...duh...tarantulas! But then and completely unexpected, the story takes another few twists that don't involve tarantulas at all, and "Kiss of the Tarantula" once again becomes a one-of-a-kind 70's shocker. The ending is downright fantastic! This movie may not be flawless but it sure is creative.
oscar-17 My first impression of this drive-in schlock horror film was that it's quite simply, in two words: LOW BUDGET!!! You don't need to be a fan of modern day, more mainstream big-budget movies like Scream just to be underappreciated by bad films like this one, which unfortunately gets forgotten to this day. Here's what it's all about: A teenage girl named Susan gets real angry over guys tearing up the local mortuary where she has a collection of real, live tarantulas. She then gets even, and starts releasing her own kind of terror , TARANTULAS! It's highly amazing that people get killed by these strange creepy crawlers in this film, and for some unknown reasons. Only the last 15 minutes has nothing to do with the dark and shivering, yet maybe silly, nature of this film. B-movie lovers and movie seekers will enjoy this, but if you're in the normal world like many, steer clear. It's fun. it's silly, it's low budget, and it's so bad it's good! You might want to trash Scream for this one!