Kingdom of the Spiders (1977, John ‘Bud’ Cardos)

Kingdom of the Spiders opens with some scary music for the title reveal, then an original country song by Dorsey Burnette starts playing over the titles, extolling the virtues of Verde Valley, where Kingdom takes place. It’s a terrible opening titles sequence, followed by the film’s first failed attempt at suspense. Unfortunately, it will not have any successful ones. This first one, involving a bunch of spiders attacking a cow, forecasts the film’s lack of ability for suspense, humor, or anything whatsoever. I mean, there’s good photography from John Arthur Merrill and a handful of affable or inoffensive performances, but otherwise, Kingdom hasn’t got it. It doesn’t even have a kingdom.

After the spider attack—entirely from the spiders’ points of view, so we don’t know it’s spiders yet—the film introduces leading man William Shatner. He’s just a small-town, rural vet, but he carries a lot of sway. He could quarantine the farmers, and wouldn’t it be too bad if he did, what with the County Fair coming up? Shatner’s actually pretty good as the town vet. He and Woody Strode have decent chemistry, even though neither is doing a particularly good (or bad) job. Of course, Shatner’s first scene involves his widowed sister-in-law Marcy Lafferty (married to Shatner in real-life at the time, which ends up being awkward given the love triangle). Shatner gets to ride a horse and do his own stunts, so he’s having fun. Then Lafferty comes on to him because all the ladies love Shatner in Kingdom, only she moans her dead husband’s name (his little brother who died in “‘Nam.”). Shatner tosses her off him—not the last time Shatner tosses a costar violently in the film—and heads off, but not before shaming her a little for her behavior.

Shatner heads off to the state lab to turn in the cow’s blood for testing in what seems the set-up for a scene at a university, but the action just cuts to Strode and wife Altovise Davis having a quiet night at home. Strode and Davis are fine in the movie, but they give off big “Davis married her dad’s best friend Strode” vibes. Or “Davis married Strode in exchange for Strode giving Pa some acreage.” It never feels quite right. But then the movie treats them like they’re living in the thirties, so maybe Strode’s lying to Davis about the state of reality. So it would track, especially for Davis’s frontier woman costumes.

Pretty soon—in time to threaten the County Fair, natch—big city spider scientist Tiffany Bolling comes to town to see what’s happening with these spiders. She’s snooty to Shatner, who mocks her, but then once they’re working together, he just constantly sexually harasses her, sometimes physically, as he makes it clear they need to find the nearest bed or sleeping bag. Bolling manages to churn out endless expository passages while Shatner’s mooning at her, touching her, or otherwise distracting her. Bolling’s not exactly good. The writing on her part’s lousy and director Cardos doesn’t do anything for his actors, but Bolling’s got great timing. Up until she falls for Shatner’s macho charm, anyway. Until then, which is when he starts bossing her around like a possession, Bolling’s the only one who seems to know how to keep Kingdom moving.

Because, otherwise, it’s a slog. An intentional one. Cardos and editors Igo Kantor (the film’s producer) and Steven Zaillian (Oscar-winning screenwriter of Schindler’s List) belabor every action beat, drag out every shot, and just generally pace Kingdom like a slow roll through a rock pile.

There are some other surprises. Bolling and Lieux Dressler pass Bechdel in their first scene. They never do in any other scenes, quite the opposite, but it’s initially pretty cool.

Did I say “surprises” plural? It’s the only surprise. Except when Shatner flaunts Bolling to Lafferty almost immediately after telling Lafferty he’d eventually get horny enough he doesn’t care she’s his dead little brother’s wife, so he’d knock on her door. The longer the movie goes on, the less likable Shatner becomes. By the third act, you’re just waiting for a spider to get him.

Or for anything to happen, which it doesn’t. Except for a bewilderingly inept town panic scene.

With a better director, better script, better editors but the same cinematographer, and maybe even Shatner, Kingdom could be a fun homage to fifties sci-fi. Instead, it’s a dull, joyless turd.

Impulse (1974, William Grefé)

It’s an insult to hacks to describe Impulse director Grefé as such. There are very few directors with less sense of how to direct a movie (or anything) than Grefé. But then he’s simpatico with cinematographer Edmund Gibson at least in terms of skill. Grefé’s got terrible shots, Gibson shoots them terribly. But Gibson’s credited as Edwin, so apparently, at some point, he realized maybe he was impulsive working on Impulse.

Grefé kind of—and only because every other option is exhausted—but he reminds of a TV commercial director. Like, a seventies TV commercial director. He’s got way too much headroom, and he never does close-ups during the protracted expository scenes. Outside a handful of action sequences and field trips, it’s primarily people standing or sitting inside talking to one another. Impulse filmed in Tampa, Florida, but it’s supposed to be in a much smaller place. Maybe. Maybe Shatner just drove from one side of town to the other, looking for his next mark.

More on Shatner in a bit, I promise. But there aren’t any real exteriors. Either the producers couldn’t figure out how to get permits, couldn’t afford them but then also couldn’t just guerilla the shots. Impulse is artless low-budget filmmaking. If the whole thing was about getting Shatner to wear a bunch of silly, silly, silly seventies outfits—silly—to embarrass him later, it might make sense. Except in 1974, the producers wouldn’t have known Shatner can survive anything–even seventies Florida fashion.

So it doesn’t look anywhere near as good even a TV movie from the same period. Impulse is unpleasant to view. But it’s surprisingly well-edited. Editor Julio C. Chávez initially seems as unimpressive as everyone else involved, then there’s a long shot beach scene, and it’s ADR, but it’s not bad. And then there’s some sound work where it ends, kind of breaking the third wall. Like, someone’s not hearing a conversation, then the conversation directly addresses them, and they hear.

It’s wild. It’s not good; it’s bad, but it’s at least something different.

Then the last half hour, which has Shatner’s mentally unwell gigolo conman breaking down and attacking the entire supporting cast… the editing’s really good. The scenes are still crap—especially Gibson’s day-for-night, which is ghastly—but the cutting’s nice. So, kudos to Chávez.

Otherwise, there’s Ruth Roman.

Impulse is just degrees of bad performance and how close the needle gets to embarrassing. Shatner’s spins around the whole time occasionally slows down a little, but then reliably zooms. For terrible camp Shatner, Impulse delivers.

But Roman’s all right. She’s the local rich lady whose mansion gets the only establishing shot, and her best friend is young widow Jennifer Bishop. Bishop has a late tween daughter, Kim Nicholas, who cuts school to go moon over her father’s gravestone. She even projectile cries on it. She’s very sad.

So Bishop doesn’t date.

At least not until stud Shatner arrives. Of course, he neglects to tell everyone he first met Nicholas, giving her a ride to the graveyard one day. But don’t worry, Shatner’s got no further designs on Nicholas than killing her for being a tattle rat.

Nicholas is bad, Bishop’s bad. Harold Sakata—Odd Job from Goldfinger—cameos as Shatner’s former partner-in-crime who wants in on the take. He drives around an RV with a giant “Karate Pete” sign on it; like on the crime job. It’s silly.

Sakata just embarrasses himself. He’s at least having fun. Or what amounts to it in Impulse.

For the Shatner-inclined, Impulse is required viewing, like Portrait of the Artist at a Low Point. It’s also early-to-mid-seventies-low budget Shatner, so it’s hard to be too upset at the film. It’s always bad, it’s always strange, it’s always problematic. From the start—the flashback where young Shatner (Chad Walker, in his only credit) kills his mom’s violent john, defending them, but she resents him because women are awful. Only they won’t be later; they’ll do everything Shatner says; except Nicholas because kids are terrible. Anyway.

It’s poorly shot, but it’s also exceptionally mean to Walker.

Then the opening titles are actually incompetent. The title cards pause the action, but they’re not in line with the current action. They’re mini-flashbacks. It’s inane, in addition to incompetent. Another reason Chávez is an unexpected boon.

Impulse is awful. Of course, it’s awful. It exists just to be awful.

Except for Roman and Chávez, obviously.