William Shatner Double Feature.....................

Scott · April 11, 2005, 10:51:25 PM

Warning Minor Spoiler Alert.

THE DEVILS RAIN (1975) - Interesting little film starring Ernest Borgnine and William Shatner. Satanist go after a book that is more of a group contract with the devil from the 1600's. The leader Ernest Borgnine and his followers go after the family who still holds the book 300+ years later. Believe it or not the real life Satanist Anton LaVey is the technical adviser and high priest on the set of this film. A young John Travolta also stars as one of the wax faced followers. You would never know that it is Travolta without reading the credits. Ida Lupino also stars as Shatners eyeless mother. She also starred in FOOD OF THE GODS (1976) and directed films earlier in her life like THE HITCH-HIKER (1953). The best parts of the film are the hollow eyed followers and the melted cheddar cheese dripping all over the Satanist as they melted away for about the last 10 minutes of this film.

KINGDOM OF THE SPIDERS (1977) - I heard this was a bad movie, but I kinda liked this creepy film. Unbelievible fun yes, but entertainly creepy with all those tarantulas crawling around even if they are harmless. If you are an arachnaphobe don't watch this film. There are many spiders in this film and none of them are CGI. The film was shot in Camp Verde, Arizona not far from Sedona. It's a nice area to shoot a film.

Enjoyed both films.

Post Edited (04-11-05 22:56)

Menard · April 11, 2005, 11:40:51 PM

You are truly a masochist. (:

Kory · April 12, 2005, 12:03:43 AM

Scott is my hero. I will seek these out with all the energy I can muster!

Vermin Boy · April 12, 2005, 12:26:35 AM

The Devil's Rain, apart from being a veritable ham buffet, is the source of two of my favorite taglines of all time:

"Positively the most incredible ending of any motion picture ever!"

and

"Heaven help us when THE DEVIL'S RAIN!"

Priceless.

trekgeezer · April 12, 2005, 07:04:31 AM

My brother lent me some DVD's and Kingdom of the Spiders is among them. I will be watching it soon. I know I've seen it before, but it has been many years.

AndyC · April 12, 2005, 07:47:35 AM

The Devil's Rain caught my attention for the cast alone. How could you not want to see Shatner, Borgnine, Travolta and Skerritt together in a movie about satanists? Still, when I bought it on Ebay a few years back, I found it kind of dull.

Kingdom of the Spiders is a hoot. I rewatch that one every couple of years.

trekgeezer · April 12, 2005, 06:50:11 PM

Okay, I watched it this afternoon after work. It was pretty good actually.

I was impressed by some of the effects. I wonder where they got all the tarantulas? They are by the way, not poisonous. I've actually seen one in my yard before. They are very solitary and usually live in a hole in the ground. The fact that all the spiders were real was impressive (no CG or stop motion).

The crop duster crashing into the gas station with Shatner and crew standing there was pretty impressive too. I thought they were going to do the plane goes behind the hill and then we see an explosion trick. As for the pilot, can we say scream like a girl?

The mattes at the end were the worst part of the movie.

Trivia: Rack's widowed sister-in-law was played by Marcy Lafferty, who was Shatner's wife at the time They were married from 1973 to 1994, and she appeared in small parts in several of Shatner's films including Star Trek:TMP and Airplane II. She also guest starred on his short lived TV series Barbary Coast and appeared a few times on TJ Hooker.

Scott a must for Shatner purist is his 1974 film, Impulse. He plays a sort of con-man gigolo who smoozes older women out of their money. I've seen it and it makes his performance in Kingdom of the Spiders look like Oscar material. You'll really like the early 70's wardrobe.

AndyC · April 12, 2005, 08:17:11 PM

I once saw a behind-the-scenes photo from Kingdom of the Spiders that showed how they kept the spiders from running around between takes. They put plastic cups over them. A lot of plastic cups. Kind of an ingenious solution for managing a bunch of little crawly things. Every time they shot, somebody would run around and collect the cups. After each take they'd arrange the spiders and cover them again.

Post Edited (04-12-05 20:22)

Scott · April 12, 2005, 11:36:05 PM

Andy C the cup thing is very funny. I can see it now..............Take #2.............. Take #3................. Ok, just burn the spider hill !

TrekGeezer I'll try to find IMPULSE if I get the chance and I have another Shatner Double Feature coming in the future. Next month it's going to be INCUBUS and INTRUDER from Netflix. Not only are Tarantulas not posionous, but they don't make webs as far as I know. Those webs covering those people was funny. Then you had the artist drawing of the whole town of Camp Verde covered with spider webs !

Menard and Kory both films were worth the viewing.

Anyone notice that in THE DEVILS RAIN one of the scenes was very very much like the scene from CONAN THE BARBARIAN near the steps of Phalsa Dooms Temple when one of the followers yells "infidel".

The ooozing bodies in THE DEVILS RAIN were great stuff VerminBoy.

Post Edited (04-13-05 00:09)

trekgeezer · April 13, 2005, 07:01:19 AM

Incubus is a pretty strange movie. All the dialogue is in Esperanto and the subtitles are really badly placed.

This movie was 'lost' for 35 years. It was only shown in a few art houses in 1966. Scott if you haven't you should do a little research on it, there is actually supposed to be a curse involved with the film which involved the deaths of several of the participants.

I'm going to have to get The Intruder one of these days, I hear it's one of Shatner's finest acting jobs.

Post Edited (04-13-05 10:23)

odinn7 · April 13, 2005, 07:26:54 AM

Not to change the topic but the partial geek in me needed to clarify something that was mentioned about tarantulas.
I have a Chilean Rose Hair tarantula(docile) and a Cobalt Blue tarantula(very aggressive) and have a fair knowledge of tarantulas in general. I have been keeping spiders for over 10 years (oh, my wife is so thrilled, can you imagine?) and have done quite a bit of research. All spiders, tarantulas included, are poisonous. By saying that they are poisonous I am not saying that they can actually kill a human. For the most part, a tarantula bite is similar to a real nasty bee sting unless you happen to be allergic to that specific spider, in which case death is a possibility. There is a common misconception that "pet" tarantulas are "de-venomed" which is completely impossible, spiders need the venom in order to eat. On the other side, there is also the misconception that tarantulas are extremely poisonous and will kill you with a bite (probably because they're so ugly to most people). Anyway, deadly or not, I certainly wouldn't like a pair of half inch fangs puncturing my skin any time, not to mention that certain species (Cobalt Blue for example) will hammer at you over and over and continue biting/injecting if they're p**sed off enough until something makes them stop.
Also, most tarantulas will lay webs. Whereas many spiders use webs to catch prey, a tarantula will lay web down usually where they live...almost like a carpet. My Rose Hair has often made thick webs from her lair to the side of the tank. It's probably got something to do with them feeling safer while being surrounded by the web or perhaps it's a warning to other creatures to stay away. Tarantulas are predators so the web is not used for catching or wrapping prey but they do use it.

OK, I'm done and I appologize for throwing this topic off track...I couldn't help myself.

Carry on.

AndyC · April 13, 2005, 09:18:48 AM

That's really interesting. Didn't know you were into spiders.

In KOTS, I think they pretty much explained the deadliness of the spiders as a result of them attacking in large numbers, or freaking somebody out and causing an accident. Single ones seemed pretty harmless.

Mind you, they did accomplish some pretty impressive things, like taking down a running woman. Then, for some reason, it was all right for Rack to kneel down next to her, brush the spiders off and have a touching moment.

Even funnier was watching Shatner run through the spiders, dodging left and right to avoid all of the tiny, slow-moving, widely spaced creatures that he could easily squish.

odinn7 · April 13, 2005, 11:57:29 AM

Yeah, you say they're slow moving...you don't realize how fast they can move if they want to until you've got your hand in their tank for some reason and they move at you...whew. Some of them even "jump" at you. They're cool to look at but you don't want to make a habit of playing with them.

Sorry again.

I do remember this movie and it was quite funny and way over acted (well, it is Billy Shatner after all) but I did enjoy it. You have to figure that if they wanted to be scientifically correct with the spiders, there wouldn't have been much for anyone to be scared of in the movie other than touching one of them and being grossed out.
"The town's being invaded by spiders!"
"EEwww, gross!"

Scott · April 13, 2005, 12:58:13 PM

That was very informative odinn7. Thanks. Though they may not be deadly you are right about having those fangs in ya and I didn't know that about the tarantula web.

Post Edited (04-13-05 13:50)

Flangepart · April 13, 2005, 01:35:44 PM

New on Ebay. KINGDOM OF THE SPIDERS spider wrangling cups!
With Shatner's autograph for authentisity!