Tarantulas: The Deadly Cargo

[Andrew]

Remember how the mayor in "Jaws" was worried about the shark scaring off the tourists?  This is the same movie.  Just substitute "tarantulas" for "shark" and "oranges" for "tourists," and...well I guess that doesn't make a whole lot of sense, does it?

Click here to go to the Review

[Jack]

I seem to vaguely remember seeing that movie.  Odd that it hasn't really stuck with me all that well 

[Umaril The Unfeathered]

Remember how the mayor in "Jaws" was worried about the shark scaring off the tourists?  This is the same movie.  Just substitute "tarantulas" for "shark" and "oranges" for "tourists," and...well I guess that doesn't make a whole lot of sense, does it?

Click here to go to the Review

I remember this one. It was a TV movie at one point. The kid who played Matt was Matthew Laborteux who played Albert on Little House On The Prairie all those years back.  I remember when he got bit and they showed him dead on the table later one, slightly discolored dur to the venom.

The spider they're spoofing here is the Banana Spider, a species form Brazil that lives inside bunches of ripe bananas. They are quite large, and their venom kills within 3 hours of the bite.

I absolutely hate spiders..they are marvels of locomotion when they get going on all 8 legs, but other than that, the smaller (and farther away they are) the better. 

[judge death]

Movies like this are cheap cheats as they cash in an a common phobia.

[Leah]

I loved one thing from this movie- the spiders. my least favorite part is the DC-3 crashing. DC-3's are my favorite planes.

[Keith]

"Bart Savagewood would land his crippled airplane on top of that truck full of oranges, and he wouldn't even bruise one of them. "

Bloom County FTW!!!

[Blacklight]

...and of course the spiders are attracted to people as if they're raptors taking down a T-Rex when your typical tarantula would rather not go anywhere NEAR a human being, let alone, attack one in a huge hungry pack. 

[IheartSpiders]

The arachnologist calls it a banana spider. It's not a banana spider, it's a tarantula. Heck, if it is a banana spider, then why isn't the movie titled "Banana Spiders: The Deadly Cargo" or "Phoneutria nigriventer: The Deadly Cargo?"

They wanted to have their cake and eat it.  Calling the little critters "banana spiders" was a clearly a bid to make people take the film seriously.  (The "Banana Spider" is another name for the genuinely deadly Brazilian Wandering Spider.)  It's like, "See?  We didn't just try to pass off "killer tarantulas" on the viewers.  We did research!  It's all scientifically accurate!" 

But then "tarantula" sounds so much cooler.  Also putting it in the title sort of justifies having the beasties played by, well, tarantulas, since they couldn't very well use actual Banana Spiders.

[Billy Flynn]

I have seen this silly movie several times and it still cracks me up. I just wanted you to know that not only is this an excellent review, you get crazy cool points for making a fantastic Bloom County reference.

Well played.

[Andrew]

"Bart Savagewood would land his crippled airplane on top of that truck full of oranges, and he wouldn't even bruise one of them. "

Bloom County FTW!!!

I have seen this silly movie several times and it still cracks me up. I just wanted you to know that not only is this an excellent review, you get crazy cool points for making a fantastic Bloom County reference.

Well played.

Thank you!  I wondered if I should say "he wouldn't even squash one of 'em" or something closer what he said to Opus.  By the way, Opus' response to that story by Burt Savagewoofer is classic.

The spider they're spoofing here is the Banana Spider, a species form Brazil that lives inside bunches of ripe bananas. They are quite large, and their venom kills within 3 hours of the bite.

From what I read when doing research for the article, it sounds like they are not something you want to be bitten by, but being bitten is not a death sentence.  They sound to be as nasty as the quite infamous Sydney Funnelweb.  Both of them also are dangerous because they tend to move around quite a bit, rather than just staying in a web or burrow (male Funnelweb spiders wander looking for mates).

Take heart that banana spiders do have big leg spans (up to 5 inches), but small bodies.  They look like a variety of wolfspider to my North American self.  So, they're not huge like a bird-eating spider or large tarantula.  

I've also heard different varieties of orb-weaving spiders, like garden spiders (Argiopes) and golden silk orb-weavers called banana spiders are feared for being poisonous.  They aren't, and should just be marveled at for what they are.  We had a huge garden spider that built her web at the front of our house in Georgia.  Her body was as big as my thumb, and her legs made a 5 inch span.

[Trevor]

Confucius say, "Where big hairy, arachnid go, shoe soon follow."

Or, in my case, a rather heavy cricket bat. 

[Phantomgrift]

Heh, I remember watching this film.
My wife and I own tarantulas and it makes watching movies like this difficult.
Mostly because the sad thing is the spiders used in the movie are actually Mexican Red-Leg or Red-Knee tarantulas and their one of the few species found in North America that are quite frankly harmless.

Sure, if you get bit, it will hurt some, but the tarantulas themselves are fairly calm, docile and one you can handle if your calm and let the spider crawl into your hand.

Now, if they'd featured something like a Usumbara? Those tarantulas are high strung, attack-prone little a***oles that sit in their tank and look nice.

Kinda like "Arachnophobia". With the exception of the Goliath Bird Eater used at the end of the film, the rest of the spiders are all Australian Harvesters. Huge, but completely harmless to anything that's not a bug.