KINGDOM OF THE SPIDERS

   Film (1977). Arachnid Productions/Dimension. Dir John "Bud" Cardos, starring William SHATNER, Tiffany Bolling, Woody Strode. Screenplay Richard Robinson, Alan Caillou, from a story by Jeffrey M. Sneller,Stephen Lodge. 95 mins, cut to 90 mins. Colour.

   In its modest way, this is one of the better films in the revenge-of-Nature cycle (MONSTER MOVIES). Near a small town in Arizona, tarantulas whose ECOLOGY has undergonechanges because of crop-dusting sprays are migrating north in large numbers and apparently acting with communal intelligence (HIVE-MINDS). Starting small and building to local apocalypse, the film is crisply made,the masses of spiders (normal size) are believable, and the end, though clearly echoing Hitchcock's The BIRDS (1963), offers a genuine minatory thrill with its vision of a whole town cocooned in spider-silk, its occupants now preserved as food. Shatner plays the vet trying to puzzle out why the normally solitary spiders are acting in concert.

   PN