Kingdom of the Spiders (1977)
“This is our home, and no damned spiders are gonna run us out.”
William Shatner plays veterinarian to a remote ranchland corner of Arizona, where first cattle and then people are pestered by spiders of unusual number.
Woody Strode’s cow is the first character to spot the spiders, and turns in a fine performance before being venomed to death. Mr Strode is pretty good, too.
The score is entirely pilfered from other movie music, plus several country tunes by Dorsey Burnette and His Country Kicker Fingers.
It’s schlock and it’s slow, and be advised, there are no giant spiders here, just ordinary spiders only lots of them. I’ve always had a profound fear of spiders, but nothing here gave me even a moment’s slight fright.
I did rather like the ending, though.
Verdict: MAYBE.
♦ ♦ ♦
Kingpin (1996)
This was the first feature film from Bobby and Peter Farrelly, who went on to make There’s Something About Mary (good), Fever Pitch (so-so), and The Three Stooges (awful, I’ve heard). Kingpin is nominally a sports flick (bowling), or at least it’s built on the genre framework, while also targeting the Amish, disabilities, road movies, and stupidity in general.
Way too many classic pop tunes are used for setting the mood, and too many bowling fouls are never nopticed, and not a moment in the flick feels real enough to make an audience give a damn about anyone on screen.
It’s objectively a stupid movie, but revels in it, with at least two dozen bits that would’ve made my Christian brothers storm out in anger — pole-dancing Randy Quaid, anyone? Woody Harrelson stars, with Vanessa Angel, Bill Murray, Chris Elliott, and Quaid.
Very little here is funny, but it’s somehow fun, and that’s enough.
Verdict: YES.
♦ ♦ ♦
Kings of the Road (1976)
Wim Wenders makes crazy good films, on whatever the hell topic grabs his attention. This one’s crazy good, even for Wim.
“Everything must change. So long.”
Bruno is a projector repairman, traveling the tiny towns along the Berlin Wall for one-night gigs repairing the equipment and showing movies in dilapidated theaters. Robert is kind of a loon, literally defines the word, and drives a Volkswagen way too fast, then loses control and splashes the car into a lake. He never mourns whatever might’ve been in the car, just swims to shore and watches it sink.
And there, at the shore, Robert meets Bruno. Without even talking about the wreck, they share a lunch, and soon they’re best buddies in a road trip movie. But it’s Wim Wenders, so it’s more than that.
Sparse dialogue, stark visuals, heavy and light angst, with a rock’n’roll soundtrack. Everything and everyone meanders, takes their time, but also gives their time. It’s almost three hours long, which surprised me when I noticed it afterwards — I never noticed it during the film.
A man squats and drops an easy, matter-of-fact turd, which we watch emerge and plop to the ground. Also, why lift a cup of coffee with your hands, when there’s a perfectly good set of tongs on the counter at the cafe?
Yeah, every scene is either kinda or very beautiful, but never in the ordinary ways of movies. Every line adds something, and the Technicolor black-and-white visuals and the mood all combine to make this truly unique.
Verdict: BIG YES.
♦ ♦ ♦
King’s Row (1942)
A boy named Parris speaks French for fun. When he speaks English, every line is hyperwholesome, golly gosh shucks and holy macintosh! He thinks Cassie is the prettiest girl in the whole school, but Cassie’s father is Dr Tower, an MD with no interest in humanity, and without explanation he pulls Cassie out of school, permanently.
After ten minutes of kiddie drama, Parris grows up to be Robert Cummings, which makes sense — Cummings is a boring screen presence, and Parris is a boring man, headed to Vienna to study the newfangled ‘science’ of psychiatry. His headstrong, borderline obnoxious best buddy Drake becomes Ronald Reagan, and Cassie, prettiest girl who never came back to school, becomes Betty Field. The tomboy Randy becomes Ann Sheridan, Drake’s sweetheart, and Dr Tower is still Claude Rains, excellent at being awful.
King’s Row avoids the common movie/TV trope of painting all doctors as heroes in white coats. In explaining the then-newfangled field of psychiatry, it shows believably messed up people and how their parents messed ’em up. And it looks super, cuz it was shot by James Wong Howe.
But the story spins and twists, farther and farther-fetched, full of overwrought music and plot twists and earnest characters dealing with ceaseless adversity. Cummings plumbs the depths of his usually cheery soul to do some almost-acting, and he’s bad at it. Reagan is competent, and delivers his second most famous line, “Where’s the rest of me?”
This is Reagan’s highest-rated film at IMDB, but if you like it I think you need a shrink. Nobody in the movie seems like a real human, and it never hit me as more than a strange curio.
Verdict: MAYBE.
♦ ♦ ♦
Hundreds of Beavers (2022)
And now for something completely different — a modern black-and-white silent film with singing and dancing, grunts, groans, and sound effects, but virtually no dialogue.
An Arctic applejack brewer’s facilities are chewed and toppled by beavers, played by men in furry outfits. The ruined brewer then seeks vengeance against the beavers via a hundred skits using intricate, elaborate trick photography, all evocative of a Loony Tunes cartoon, although (mostly) live action.
Almost every scene, every shot is slapstick in the snow, plus puppets and claymation and other tricks coming and going too quickly to be assessed and described. It’s breathless and audacious, a new gag every five seconds, all so dad-gummed different from other movies the innovation might be enough to win you over.
It worked for me, for a while, but there’s a reason most Bugs Bunny cartoons run seven minutes. This runs an hour & 48, all absurdity that never even pretends to take a break, all beavers and bunnies and snow and ice and madcap sight gags and set pieces, of which very little actually qualifies as funny.
Watching Hundreds of Beavers in a theater would be unendurable, I think. Even watching at home in 7-10 minute bursts over a week or so, it was too much.
Verdict: YES, barely.
♦ ♦ ♦
9/3/2026
Logo illustration by Jeff Meyer.
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If you can’t find a movie I’ve reviewed, or if you have recommendations, please drop me a note. And I mean it — if you ask, I will get you the movie.
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No talking once the lights dim, and only real butter on the popcorn, not that fake yellow stuff.
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