User Reviews

Also known as Death Kisses and Shudder, this gender and species swapped cover version of Willard is all about Susan Bradley, a little girl who can control spiders, which she does to kill her mother - well, she was gonna kill daddy - before taking out anyone else who displeases her. Susan really loves her spiders - to the point that one scene almost suggests that she loves them biblically. Oh 1975, what a magical time you were to be alive.

The big issue is Walter, Susan's creepy uncle and a dirty cop. He has evidence that his niece has killed at least two people, but he covers it up and even kills to protect her, all so he can get the chance to aardvark with this little arachnophile. Guess what? She's not having it. Oh yeah - Walter was also sleeping with her mom and helping her plan to murder his own brother. Whew!

You kind of have to love a movie where a little girl kills an entire VW worth of teenagers at the drive-in. This movie checks almost all the boxes for our site: murderous children and animals gone wild. If only there was an acid sequence, a Satanic ritual and George Eastman dressed as a big hairy tarantula.

Writer and producer Daniel Cady would go on from this to write and produce several adult films, such as Soft Places, Reflections and Tomboy under the name William Dancer. He also produced the regional shocker Dream No Evil.

Director Chris Munger would also direct Black Starlet and The Year of the Communes, a documentary narrated by Rod Steiger.

This film is a bit like others during the 70's featuring an outcast who befriends something icky. Like Willard the rat film or Stanley the one with snakes. Unfortunately, this one features tarantulas, which are big, hairy and scary; however, they are not very lethal. If their venom was a sauce from taco bell it would be mild. So, not the best premise in the world, but then again films use tarantulas all the time because they are hairy and scary, but if you know anything about them, you also know that they would not really be something that kills anyone. In the end, though, the spiders seemed to be left out of the last portion of the film.

The story has a girl who likes spiders and her mom despises them and seems to despise her child too. She is also having an affair with her husband's brother and they plan on killing the husband. Too bad, the daughter overhears this and kills the mother by putting a spider on her! A spider that simply walks on a sheet over the woman. I would be freaked out a little, but I have the capability of swatting it off. Then the girl is a teen who is rather attractive, but she is apparently ostracized as this is some sort of bizarre alternate world. Some teens break in to her dad's mortuary and plan on stealing a coffin and instead kill one of her spiders that sets her on the path of revenge and lucky for her, no one is capable of simply squishing the spiders as they die in various unbelievable ways. Then her uncle, who is into his niece, kills someone in the hopes of making a life with his niece so the niece has a wonder plan to dispatch him as long as no one has good hearing at the funeral.

The film is just so unrealistic and just plan stupid for the most part. Once again, why no one in this film knows how to squish a spider are simply brush them off is beyond me. The characters are all unlikable and all deserve comeuppance with the exception of the dad who is just clueless.

So, not the best of the icky animal lover films. Never saw Willard in all its glory since I was a kid, but I am going to say that has to be the best of the bunch followed by Stanley because venomous snakes are at least a bit more believable than tarantulas. This one, just is a girl who uses spiders to kill and then the film seemed to forget the spiders. Perhaps they had to turn them all in as the rental fees were getting too high?

Poor Susan (excellently played by the lovely and beguiling blonde beauty Suzanna Ling). The comely, but weird misunderstood misfit teenage girl lives with her undertaker father in a mortuary. She has an unnatural affinity for spiders. Susan catches her shrewish mother cheating on her father with her dad's own brother. Susan kills her mom by putting a tarantula in her bed. She also sics her lethal arachnid friends on other folks who rub her the wrong way; said victims of her dangerous wrath include a bunch of local hooligans who break into the mortuary to steal a coffin and Susan's disgustingly incestuous and lecherous uncle (a superbly sleazy Eric Mason). Directed in an effectively blunt and basic manner by Chris Munger, "Kiss of the Tarantula" makes the grade as a creepy and effective low-budget 70's grindhouse scarefest thanks to Phillan Bishop's eerie synthesizer score, credible acting from a solid no-name cast, an arrestingly brooding rustic atmosphere, a grimly serious tone, Henning Schellerup's gritty photography, a wickedly startling surprise twist ending, and several genuinely unsettling spider attack murder set pieces (the sequence where a handful of libidinous kids doing just what you think in a parked car at a drive-in get assaulted by the spiders is the definite flesh-crawling icky highlight). A shamefully neglected and hence underrated teen terror tale that's well worth seeing.

A teenage outcast, unleashes her revenge, utilizing her eight legged friends, in this slow moving and forgettable horror, which will leave you waiting some for what little gore there is to happen. I mean how much harm can tarantula's do. To that small minority of people who love spiders and revenge, we should have that small minority of people watch this. Given that said, it's not a badly made flick, where even a "Hot Connections" star shows up as one of Susan's peers, who gets his serve at a drive in. He was falsely coming onto her, then entrapping her as to find out how his friends were killed. Bad mistake as our Susan who slightly resembles Carrie, again unleashes her pets. Another guy gets it in an air duct. Our Susan's got other problems. Her father matter of fact owns a funeral parlor where the wife and the bastard of an uncle are getting it on. Again, enter Susan. The opening always stays with me of Susan smiling the sweetest of smiles (too sweet) to camera. This is used in the last shot too, where Susan herself says "I love happy endings". Okay horror fare, but nothing to write home about.

***SPOILERS*** The only release of the now long defunct Cinema-VC Studios with it's star Suzanna Ling's-As spider loving Susan Bradley-first and last movie appearance the film "Kiss of the Tarantula" has to do with Susan getting revenge against those who killed , by stepping on it, her pet tarantula Albert by using a hoard of tarantula spiders that she bred in her basement to do in those that give her and her beloved pet spiders such a hard time. Using the spiders who are in fact really harmless-tarantulas are non-poisonous- but terrifying to look at to do in those that cause her all this trouble.

It was Susan's mom Martha, Beverly Eddins, who was her first victim who didn't care much for her pet spiders and was cheating on her undertaker husband John, Herman Wellner, with his brother the town chief of police uncle Walter Bradley, Eric Mason, behind his brother John's back. It's later that Susan took care of those who killed her pet tarantula Albert by dropping a dozen of Albert's or fellow spiders into a car that they were making out in at the local drive-in scaring them all to death or out of their minds and into a coma. It was Bo Havens, Ron Prather, who saw what Susan did who she later dispatched with her tarantulas scaring him to death to keep him from talking to the police.

***SPOILERS*** The final nail in the coffin came to her sex crazed and murderous uncle Walter who's plan all along was to get Susan into the sack with him only to end up getting the shaft by her. That's when he was left immobile, by being pushed down a flight of stairs, by Susan and sealed into an air tight coffin, with one of his victims, at her father's mortuary never to see the light of day, or breathing in any fresh air, again.

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.

Before KINGDOM OF THE SPIDERS revolutionized the use of spiders as villains in horror films, there was KISS OF THE TARANTULA. Made on a miniscule budget with a no-name cast, KISS is easily one of the worst horror films of the 70s. Promising chills and delivering nil, this one is not even recommended to bad movie fans.

A young girl grows up displaying an infatuation with spiders and in her teen years, uses them as tools in killing her vicious, hateful classmates. Sounds good, right? Wrong! This is the sypnopsis given in every movie guide and is not the majority of the film. There are approximately three tarantula attacks and the rest is a plot by the girl to get rid of her incestuous uncle. No, she does not use the spiders on her uncle. She instead breaks his legs and buries him alive! The spider scenes are not effective, even for an arachnophobe for me. One standout scene is when a swarm of tarantulas chase down a man in a closed airduct, which is both claustrophobic and horrifying! That's it, that's the only thing about the movie that I can recommend.

I spent $15 buying this and wish I hadn't. Don't make the mistake I did. Either rent it, or better yet, don't even do that! Avoid KISS OF THE TARANTULA! It is a waste of time and money for all involved, including the viewer.

There's a lot of potential here and it wasn't a struggle to get through it. A perfectly decent watch. The only big issues are really the questionable plot details.

1) When 3 of 4 teenagers at the drive in are scared to death, they only show the funeral of one of them. They only ever talk about one of them, never the other 2. I questioned for a bit if they were even dead but no, they're never seen alive again and look pretty damn dead in the scene.

And 2) the way most of them die is strange. They're scared to death by the spiders. The mom, I could understand since it was sort of established she had a fear of spiders so waking up with one on your chest right by your face would be horrible. Enough of a set up that I could suspend my disbelief that fear could kill her at all. But later in the film, a man dies of fear when he's trapped in a vent shaft and has spiders crawl over him. But he isn't afraid of tight spaces or spiders as far as we ever see or hear. They may be common fears but unless you, personally, are actually afraid of it it's not actually a 'fear'. For example I'm not scared of clowns at all. So why would one standing around doing nothing unusual scare me to death?

But most of the film, including the general plot of a spider loving girl, incestous pedo uncle (who definitely got what he deserved at the end, even it was one hell of a punishment) and ignorant but adoring father is pretty interesting :)

There's good, there's bad writing and there's weird. I'd recommend it to someone who isn't fond of gorey or graphic kills, definitely, but of course you should check if they're okay with spiders or not. Haha.

The 1970's were rife with killer animal films. Jaws, Grizzly, Willard, Ben Stanley, and this lame, borefest of a film. Many, many films have used tarantulas as villains, but the truth is; they're slow, have tiny fangs (unless one is a bug) and have about the same toxicity of a bee. They're actually quite pretty. In this movie, a strange girl has an affinity for the hairy fiends and uses them to kill anyone she considers an enemy. The looks on peoples faces as they get bit is hysterical, as is the car full of teens who are 'attacked'. One guy kicks out a window and a girl slashes her throat on it, getting killed. Everything about this movie is quite silly, right up to the end when her incestuous uncle is hidden in a coffin beneath the corpse a woman to be buried. Really, really dull. I regret that I watched it. Really.

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.