Ever since she was a child, Susan Bradley (Susan Eddins) has been fascinated with spiders. Martha (Beverly Eddins), her mother, on the other hand, hates them. Whenever she sees Susan playing with a spider, she kills it and insists that her husband, John (Herman Wallner), reprimand the child. He’s fine with Susan’s interest and refuses. When Susan (Rebecca Eddins) is 10 she overhears her mother on the phone with John’s brother Walter (Ernesto Macias). Walter and Martha are having an affair and plan on killing her father. Susan hates her mother but loves her father. She puts a tarantula in her mother’s bed. When she wakes up Martha sees the spider, has a heart attack and dies. In this town John is the local mortician and Walter is the chief of police. Not knowing the cause of the heart attack, they bury Martha.
By the time Susan (Suzanna Ling) is a teenager she has been ostracized by her peers because of her father’s slightly creepy profession. On Halloween some of her classmates sneak into the mortuary to steal a casket for their party. Susan catches them. They terrorize her and find her stash of tarantulas. One of the furry little creatures gets squished and Susan goes ballistic. The guys leave. To get revenge Susan follows two of them to the local drive-in. While they are necking with their girlfriends, Susan releases some tarantulas into their car. The resulting panic kills three of them and sends one of them, Joan (Rita French) into a catatonic state.
Susan’s classmates Nancy (Patricia Landon) and Bo (Jay Scott) believe that Susan is responsible for what happened at the drive-in. Their plot for revenge ends up backfiring and sleazy Uncle Walter, wanting to get Susan in bed, decides to interfere. Really bad idea.
“Kiss of the Tarantula” was released in 1975 and was directed by Chris Munger. It is an American horror movie.
You’re not exactly riveted to your seat and the plot is your standard 1971 “Willard” style revenge flick, but there is always something satisfying about seeing creeps and perverts get their comeuppance and the ending is something not to be missed. Actually, the ending is really good. The spiders are not the only repellent things creeping around.
As far as I know, no one in the movie actually dies of spider bites. Most of them died due to heart attack or some other panic response from seeing a cluster of spiders coming at them. In fact, tarantula venom, at least American tarantula venom, is weak and does not kill. Essentially, tarantulas are mellow and prefer to run away. At least that’s what I hear. A bite is similar to a bee sting so unless you are allergic to the venom, or something gets into the wound and becomes septic your normal spider bite is creepy and uncomfortable but harmless. One tarantula bite most often will not kill you, but I’m not sure if a hundred bites will.
Four of the actors in the film have the last name of Eddins and are related, the mother, Beverly Eddins plays Martha, the father, W. James Eddins plays Sgt. Wes Matthews, and their two daughters Rebecca and Susan play Susan Bradley at age 10 and 5. Jay Scott, who plays Susan’s classmate Bo Richards, is also the tarantula wrangler.