Coventry Review of Kiss of the Tarantula

Kiss of the Tarantula (1975)

Never been kissed? ...Keep it that way.

[7/10 · 8 December 2005]

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.