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Title: Tarantulas: The Deadly Cargo (2006) |
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Review of Tarantulas: The Deadly Cargo
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Comments for Tarantulas: The Deadly Cargo
- Posted on 2008-05-20
A Multitude Of Tiny Fangs To Invenomate You...
Our story opens w/ two guys in Ecuador trying to get a cargo-plane full of coffee back to the states. These two would-be coffee bean barons are played by Howard Hesseman (Dr. Johnny Fever from WKRP) and Tom Atkins (The Fog, Halloween 3, Maniac Cop, Night Of The Creeps). They end up smuggling 3 men out of the country in exchange for cash to pay off the Ecuadorian military. What the pair doesn't know is that they've also taken on a host of other tiny, deadly stow-aways! This leads to death and destruction when the venomous beasties bite everyone on board. The plane crashes in the vicinity of a small american town. The "deadly cargo" is unleashed, and panic ensues when the local yay-hoos start biting the dust. Claude Akins (The Curse, "The Night Stalker", Monster In The Closet) is in charge of the fire dept. and Pat Hingle (Commissioner Gordon from Tim Burton's Batman movies) is the town doctor. Together, they must find a way to stop the onslaught of thousands of fuzzy feet! TARANTULAS: THE DEADLY CARGO is another 70s made-for-tv-movie that remains watchable to me, but then I'm a sucker for killer bug movies! While not as good as say, ARACHNOPHOBIA, KINGDOM OF THE SPIDERS, CREEPY CRAWLERS, or PHASE 4 (the original 70s version), it is far superior to doglogs like THE SWARM any day! So, if you enjoy bugs that kill and the humans who must survive them, then T:TDC will certainly satisfy...
Score: 4
- Posted on 2008-03-10
Tarantulas: Are Deadly Silly.
Tarantulas: The Deadly Cargo (Stuart Hagmann, 1977)
It says pretty much everything you need to know about American television in the seventies that this turkey was nominated for two Emmys. (Thankfully, none of them were for acting, writing, or directing.) Not only that, but like many disaster movies, no matter how bad, it attracted a surprising wealth of talent.
The plot, which you probably guessed form the title if you've seen any Irwin Allen movie: a bunch of deadly spiders hitch a ride on a plane from South America (because all small killer animals must come from South America). When the plane crashes (for the spiders have attacked the pilot, who's played by Tom Atkins), the spiders get out and lurk around attacking the inhabitants of the nearby town, which happens to contain a fruit-packing plant. Coincidentally, these spiders are big fruit fans, despite having been all over coffee beans for the first half of the flick, so they make a beeline for the oranges-- which are, of course, the town's livelihood, and since the town's in a drought, this shipment of oranges is critical to the town's survival.
Watching this now, thirty years after I first saw it, makes me wonder whether those actors I so revered back then are actually all that good. Tom Atkins, who graduated to big-screen fame a few years later, turns in a decent performance, but he gets killed off very quickly. Claude Akins, as the town's fire chief, gets top billing, but has all the personality of a wooden post here. Pat Hingle does a great job as the retired town doctor who must cope with the crisis (the regular doctor is out of town, naturally), but others I would have expected to turn in great performances are just awful; Howard Hesseman is so unmemorable I'd forgotten he was in the movie between seeing his name in the opening credits yesterday and going to the IMDB page to look stuff up this morning. Deborah Winters should have been nominated for an overacting Emmy. Bert Remsen should have been arrested for Impersonating a Hal Holbrook. And it only gets worse from there.
The acting is, of course, not the only travesty to be found here. Guerdon Trueblood's script, probably cranked out in the same weekend that spawned the other four killer-bug movies he wrote (including, to my knowledge, the only killer-bug sequel from the glut of killer-bug movies, Terror Out of the Sky), is so bad it makes The Swarm look like Oscar material. (Oh, wait. The Swarm WAS Oscar material, which should tell you everything you need to know about American film in the seventies.) Hagmann's direction is lackluster at best; it may not be coincidence he never worked in Hollywood (or anywhere else that we know of) again.
All that said, you don't go searching out killer-bug movies from the seventies unless you're on a nostalgia trip, I don't think. Anyone seeing this now for the first time is going to think it's absolutely awful, and I'm not going to argue with that assessment. If you caught it for the first time before puberty, however, this is pure nostalgic gold. So what if it's dumber than a box of hammers? **
Score: 2
- Posted on 2007-04-06
Sure it's a cheap T.V. movie, but at 10 years old it sacred the ........
This is yet another of those late night movies that I watched growing up(with every light that I could turned on and feet firmly on the couch) and when I found this one for a dollar I grabed it up. I must say that it's not as good as I thought it was, but I had fun watching it again and yes I kept my feet on the couch.
Score: 3
- Posted on 2006-12-15
Rare made-for-TV movie finally on DVD!
"Tarantulas: The Deadly Cargo" is a 1977 made-for-TV movie which has been out of print on VHS for many years, and now is available on a licensed Canadian DVD (if not in stock on Amazon, it can easily be bought on ebay). It has very good picture quality, and was not taken from a VHS or poor analog source by the looks of it.
The movie itself is, well, pretty bad. I say this mostly because of the ridiculous plot and "facts" that are brought up in the movie. I've owned a Rose Hair Tarantula for some 15 years, and of course love watching any spider or tarantula movies. I remember seeing Deadly Cargo when I was a kid on TV, and spent years trying to track it down on VHS. This DVD looks much better than the VHS copy I managed to get a year or so ago.
SPOILER:
The "expert" in the movie reveals that this mix of large Mexican orange/red nee and desert tarantulas aren't tarantulas.. but are the deadly brown recluse spiders instead! Yep, because while there are actually no tarantulas whose bites are deadly to humans, they are big and therefore scarier, than the small brown recluse spiders. Gotta love those 70's made for TV movies!
If you're looking for a "good" killer tarantula film, I'd recommend KINGDOM OF THE SPIDERS starring William Shatner. While it's obvious some animals were hurt during the making of the movie, it's well above this movie. And for killer spider movies, ARACHNAPHOBIA is the way to go.
Remember, spiders and tarantulas are our friends!
Score: 4 - Posted on 2006-09-18
Unbelieveably Bad in Every Way
Maybe not ALL ways--it WAS only 97 minutes long.
I usually like creature vs. humans movies...I even liked "Kingdom of the Spiders"...but this one was just plain stupid. No one could willingly suspend his/her disbelief to the extent necessary to find the story anything but eye-rollingly idiotic.
Score: 1