i dont get it, so theyre doomed or what?
but why couldnt they just burn through the webbing? set fire to the web outside of the house, wait for it to burn or melt.
i dont know.
they should have showed all the spiders moving in on them, then raised the camera to show the mat painting, so that you know theyre doomed for sure, that is, if that's the reason for the doom-ending.
i'm superphobic; can't stand phonebooths, heights, or blue tights
The ending is suggesting that Shatner and his friends will not be making out of that cabin alive.
sharescotty should have just beamed them up
"She's Goth. She's never heard of David Lee Roth." RM
Wow! I thought they made it!... course it's been almost 3 decades since I saw this and besides the spiders were better actors than Shatner and Tiffany Bolling. :)
LOL! How true. I recall Tiffany Bolling from the '70s as pretty much a perennial "special guest star" on various crappy TV shows of the time. She almost always played a character who was victimized in some way. An abused wife or what have you.
And Shatner? I could probably count the number of truly *good* performances he's turned in over his entire career on the fingers of one hand. <G>
He's actually capable of delivering a good performance, but he needs a director who isn't afraid to crack the whip and make him do it.
hey dont mess with the shat hes cool.
Just watched it. off youtube.
Impressive matt painting at end.
Yeah looks like they are doomed, its one of those you choose the ending like "Italian job" or "the thing".
Those endings are cool.
Ending? Here you go:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2WWJyjGH48
I remember the ending a little differently. They looked out and saw the town covered with web, but then the camera moved to the light fixture up above, and spiders were starting to crawl in.
Am I thinking of a different movie?
Just to let anyone know. The youtube link is no good anymore.
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Hi,one can never be too rich or have too many friends. You're talking like those people Alfred Hitcock didn't like,the plausibles,who always wondered why someone didn't do the obvious thing,if they did there'd be no story. Why didn't Janet leigh run for her car when she heard Norman and his mother arguing in Psycho? If Jason was alive in Friday the 13th part two,why didn't his mother find him in part one? Was there no body,funeral? If Jason could track down the original girl in the big city to kill her,why couldn't he find his Mother? Why didn't the fire department simply hose down the spiders? Did everyone stand still so spiders could crawl all over them? Just one or two would get me running.
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They can because the script says so. You might not know this, but this is just a B-movie from the 70's, hence the not realistic part.
Rodney Dangerfield biography reviewed!http://axelfoleypresentsstandup.spaces.msn.com/
Most tarantulas don't spin webs to catch prey the way many spiders do, but they're quite capable of producing silk. They often line their burrows with it and some species lay out "trip lines" to alert them when prey (or a predator) passes by.
Arboreal tarantulas, such as many Avicularia species, do spin webs.
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My pleasure. I'm a veritable storehouse of useless information. <G>
One of the other reviewers mentioned that tarantualas don't tend to bite and only flick their hairs when they're feeling threatened. But in a film where the spiders are thrown around and swatted and probably shot with an air hose to get them to walk, do we really think that none of the actors got bit?
When you take a dozen tarantulas, put them on an actor, and have him swing around as though he was being bit, what will the spiders do? Just hang on?
What about at the end when the spider is on Shatner's cheek and it looks like it's sucking his cheek...? I've got to imagine that a tarantula bite to the face is going to hurt like heck!! So how would they manage to pull that scene off with no harm coming to Shatner?
I guess these message boards are going to have to suffice until we get a DVD release with commentary on it. But I see that there are a lot of tarantula experts hanging around here, and I like to hear their input. For me, it's just hard to imagine filming such a movie with creatures that "can" bite and whose bite is said to be VERY painful.
"One of the other reviewers mentioned that tarantualas don't tend to bite and only flick their hairs when they're feeling threatened. But in a film where the spiders are thrown around and swatted and probably shot with an air hose to get them to walk, do we really think that none of the actors got bit?"
How readily a tarantula will bite depends on the species, and to a certain extent on the individual. Most of the species commonly seen in pet stores are fairly docile, but that isn't true of all species. You probably don't want to free-handle a Goliath birdeater, for example (some people do it, but hey, some people bungee jump too <G>). Old world tarantulas lack their new world counterparts' ability to flick urticating hairs as a means of defense, and so usually bite much more readily. Old world species also tend to have more potent venom, which makes the bite considerably more painful.
"When you take a dozen tarantulas, put them on an actor, and have him swing around as though he was being bit, what will the spiders do? Just hang on?"
Believe it or not, usually yes. Tarantulas are very delicate. A fall of only a couple of feet can kill them, and they know it. If you're waving your arm around trying to throw the spider off, it's probably not going to think about biting. All it cares about in a situation like that is holding on for dear life. <G>
"What about at the end when the spider is on Shatner's cheek and it looks like it's sucking his cheek...? I've got to imagine that a tarantula bite to the face is going to hurt like heck!! So how would they manage to pull that scene off with no harm coming to Shatner?"
Most of the spiders used in the movie were Mexican red-knees and various native US Aphonopelma species, which rarely bite (but are notorious hair flickers - and my GF has a red-knee, that's, quite frankly, pretty pissy). Also, for that type of shot, the spiders are usually chilled to the point where they're barely able to move before the scene is filmed. Tarantulas, like all spiders, are cold-blooded and can't tolerate low temperatures. Finally, the "spider wranglers" have most likely weeded out the aggressive ones before production even starts.
To be honest, I think you have to be stupid or crazy to let *any* live tarantula near your face. A bite is inconsequential, but if the urticating hairs get in your eyes, you're in *very* serious trouble. Permanent damage or even blindness isn't an impossible outcome. Those hairs are the spider's main line of defense, and they are *nasty*.
"I guess these message boards are going to have to suffice until we get a DVD release with commentary on it. But I see that there are a lot of tarantula experts hanging around here, and I like to hear their input. For me, it's just hard to imagine filming such a movie with creatures that "can" bite and whose bite is said to be VERY painful."
Again, that depends on the species. Most new world tarantulas, even the largest ones, are no worse than a bee sting as far as venom potency, but the big ones also have big fangs - larger than a rattlesnake's in some cases - and the puncture wound alone can be quite painful even without envenomation. But tarantula bites are generally nowhere near as painful as scorpion stings or centipede bites. In any case, most tarantulas would rather run and hide than stand and fight.
To be honest, the initial pain of the bite only lasts a few minutes. The blankety-blank itching afterwards is the worst part. <G>
Yay!! Thanks for the info. Very informative.
sharewell, many of the tarantulas were just dummys, just like the one on shatners cheek. when you look at the scenes with the thousands of tarantulas only a few actually run around.
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We are the knights of Camelot, we eat ham and jam and spam a lot!
No, the one on his cheek was real. There's an interview with him on YouTube about this film and he details how they did the take several times and when they had the perfect shot they couldn't use it because a photographer was in the way. Shatner was not happy about this at all.
Here's a link to the interview: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82K1LmfGcus
It's better to rest in the warm body of a friend, than in a cold hole in the ground.
Excellent post, I hope you're still on IMDB (it's been 2 years), so you can see my appreciation.
Yeah, I'm sure a LOT of hair was kicked, and there were a lot of bare rumped spiders running around. Shame though that we all know that hundreds were needlessly killed.
I've had a few tarantulas but I've never been bit. I love 'em, I think I'll go buy one this week.
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A year ago, I was in a pet store, and in the one terranium, they had a pink-toed tarantula (you can see one in the bonus features of the new DVD of this movie). It had built a kind of nest for itself in the front corner of the tank against the front glass going from the floor of the tank to the top, creating a solid wall of webbing to hide behind from the rest of the tank. While not into spiders (I've got arachnophobia and can only watch them on TV or when behind glass like that), I thought it was interesting to see the nest it had made for itself. The wall of webbing was very much like what was shown in the movie when people were cocooned.
shareI always figured it was to show the Tarantula's had moved on and were heading to attack other town's , etc!
shareI remember seeing this as a kid ... and it was on IFC last night so I got to re-watch it. Woot! Right?!
Following the "logic" of the film, we are told they put their food in cocoons. We can deduce from that what we want ... the town is covered in one of their cocoons. I thought they survived it all but would have to "dig out" as a child; but now I think they are fodder.
But this doesn't by any means mean they aren't going to move on to another town once their are through with this one ...
i'm sure that would have worked as well,, i just really liked the ending though very nice.
are you going to bark all day little doggie,, or are you going to bite
The ending did leave it up to you to decide...when i saw this ages ago as a kid i figured they eventually got out too but it would be difficult for them to escape with the spiders all over everything and inside cars etc.
shareIf you listen to the COMMENTARY, the director John Bud Cardos says that a sequel was written, and was about to start filming a few years back, with Shatner playing the lead role again and so, since someone official wrote a sequel... even though the movie wasn't made, it must mean at least Shatner survived.
I've always thought of this as not unlike an insect version of Hitchcock's "The Birds" in some ways. I mean the birds had been mistreated for a long time and struck back and now we have the spiders doing the same thing. I think the survivors have a chance but you have to wonder just like in The Birds if they will make it out or be attacked.
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One can fairly assume that whole army of spiders were waiting outside in the webbing. So in opening the door so that they can set the fire, a whole horde of spiders would rush on in, taking out as many of them as they could.
But I guess the whole point of the final shot was to say that no one is getting out of there alive.
BLACKOUT!