The Natural and the Unatural Killer Spiders

If you are someone like me, who has a morbid fear of spiders, than any kind of killer spider movie no matter how low budget or funny it is will make you squirm. Yes, it’s funny… I have arachnophobia yet I still subject myself to watching movies with killer spiders in it. The question that many will ask is, “why?” The answer is simple: because they are the only movies that really terrify me nowadays. Although there is a certain type of killer spider movie that really hits home and it’s a sort of film that there isn’t a lot of. When we think about killer spiders we think about mutated monsters or genetically engineered spiders but it’s the ‘natural’ spiders that freak me out; the ones that are not mutated but do just as much damage.

Specifically I am talking about Arachnophobia. You see, unlike most killer spider movies these spiders are not genetically altered or mutated or super insect. The film was made to be a serious movie, from what I heard, and it became a cult classic as well as an unintentional comedy. I find it funny that a comedy makes me cringe and squirm while a movie like Hostel makes me smile. The spiders in the film are South American; therefore they are probably more poisonous and slightly bigger than your average house spider. It mates with a field spider and creates a slew of toxic spiders. Here, the spiders are not oversized due to mutation so you would think that humans would have the upper hand, right? Also, they are not super arachnids that have the ability to coat an entire town in their webs so another advantage for humans, right? Wrong! These tiny little monsters have the element of extreme toxic venom and the element of surprise. They are sneaky and there are a lot of them so that’s why they’re frightening. Numbers out-beat size.

But what about Kingdom of the Spiders? Yes, here the spiders are ‘natural’ and not mutated by chemicals or space bacteria but they are super arachnids. This term means that they somehow managed to spin the entire town in their steel-like webbing in under a few hours. The spiders in Arachnophobia spin webs but it’s not nearly as grand as the ones in this film. However, Kingdom of the Spiders is one of those movies that made me squirm because aside from the web spinning they are small and rely on their numbers and secrecy to attack and it’s frightening. It’s more close to reality and it’s very possible for a colony of spiders to attack and kill people and I think that’s why it’s so frightening as opposed to mutated spiders. Spider attacks happen all the time, but how many of those times are the spiders mutated?

Films like Ice Spiders, Spiders, The Giant Spider Invasion, Tarantula, Arachnid and Eights were scary to me and they made me uncomfortable… but deep down inside I knew it would never happen. For arachnophobic folks like me, giant mutated spiders are still scary but the films that have them are executed as though they were b-movies or campy horror flicks. The films that have small spiders that are not mutated are executed as serious movies or in Arachnophobia’s case… tried to be a serious movie. However, with giant spiders you get great scenes that are either extremely gory or they have people getting eaten and spun into webs. Either way, it’s fairly entertaining but takes away from the squirm factor.

The bottom line is, and I reiterate it, that while mutated spiders are usually scarier because it’s bigger and it has eight legs, the small natural spiders hit closer to home because the situation is very plausible. When we see those tiny or regular sized spiders we can’t help but squirm and feel that tingle up our spine because we’ve all had that freak out experience. How many of us will encounter a giant mutant Wolf Spider? None. How many of us will encounter a swarm or even a single Brown Spider? Many of us.

Night of the Living... Spiders

For the first time in my life I saw Kingdom of the Spiders and I did so because a lot of people recommended the movie to me so I finally caved in. On the surface, and to most people, the movie is a classic example of a cheesy movie with really hammy acting. However for people like me, who are afraid of spiders, this movie was actually quite frightening and uneasy. Yeah, like Arachnophobia this movie really got to me and I think I pinpointed why, out of all the spider movies that I have seen, this movie is scarier from the rest. I think the same thing goes for Arachnophobia but that movie had humor to lighten up the mood, this movie did not.

As I watched this movie I noticed that like Arachnophobia the spiders in this movie are your generic tarantula, they are not mutated or genetically enhanced and they are not oversized so it makes it feel more real. By making the spiders’ generic, it makes the audience think that this could happen because the science and the logic is there. There are several types of spiders that hunt in colonies and when food is deprived, they go apeshit. However, it does seem a little far-fetched that they would wrap the entire town in spider webs. I guess it’s the idea that it could happen, getting covered in spiders and eventually getting killed by them, is what scares me.

The other thing that I noticed is that the film is a lot more morbid than most killer spider movies. The movies that have giant killer spiders are gorier and more violent and it’s a given that they are going to have giant webs to go with their giant bodies. In this film, the small spiders somehow found a way to wrap their entire web around other people. There is a montage where we see several townsfolk cocooned in spider webs with spiders crawling all over their bodies. It’s actually pretty frightening and a little more morbid than most. There is hardly in gore in this movie except for one scene when one of the police men gets into a car crash and he falls out dead and bloodied up… and then the spiders crawl all over him.

You’ll also notice that they kill people in the most random and seemingly safest places. Take for example: there is a scene when an airplane pilot is flying his plane in the sky and then out of the clear blue, spiders engulf his body and kill them. Because of that scene, it makes it seem like there is no escaping the spiders. They are everywhere. See, the spiders in this movie have the persona and the walking dead and that brings me to my main point about Kingdom of Spiders.

Yes, this movie bears a lot of resemblance to Romero’s Night of the Living Dead. Think about it, the spiders kill in groups and they surround their victims as they bite them and probably eat them… just like zombies. A small group of people barricade themselves in a restaurant as the spiders attack the town just like in Night of the Living Dead when the group in the house fends off the zombies. I read somewhere that somebody compared Kingdom of the Spiders to The Birds and although that might be true, I really think it owes a little more Night of the Living Dead than anything else. Both movies have slow and harmless-looking creatures attack people.

In my opinion, this may be a cheesy film but because of my fear of spiders it was more than just a cheesy film… it was a pretty frightening film. I had the same reaction to Arachnophobia because even with the humor aside, it’s still unnerving to see the spiders coat the entire house. Hell, both Kingdom of Spiders and Arachnophobia have custom songs to them so you can say that Arachnophobia owes a lot to Kingdom of Spiders. Everybody borrows from everybody.