Tarantulas: The Deadly Cargo

Two would-be coffee exporters / human traffickers (Tom Atkins and Howard Hesseman) run into trouble when they discover some unexpected, eight-legged stowaways on their cargo plane. It seems that the hairy arachnids of the title have decided to forfeit their native Ecuador for the good old USA. Going from bad to worse, the ill-fated flight crashes just outside of the small town of Meadowmere, California.

When the tiny, fanged passengers fan out on their mission of destruction, it's up to the crusty town doctor (Pat Hingle) and cranky fire chief (Claude Akins) to combat this horde of creeping doom.

There's also a big orange crop that simply must be harvested, or it's greedy owner will have an aneurysm. His blindness to the unfolding tragedy around him is reminiscent of that exhibited by the soulless mayor in JAWS.

As made-for-TV movies go, TARANTULAS: THE DEADLY CARGO isn't bad, though the cheeeze-factor is quite high. Some of the death scenes are surefire chuckle-inducers! Of course, several unbelievable / absurd events take place for no discernible reason, including the explosive "motorcycle jump" sequence. Still, it's all a lot of fun to watch, as long as you have a hankering for enjoyable nonsense...

I saw this thing when I was eleven, so I related most to Matthew Laborteaux who was not yet on Little House on the Prairie. I rooted for him when he was teasing the spider with a stick and was dismayed when he met his fate. My sister, who hates spiders, jumped constantly during this thing. I had to argue with my brother, who wanted to watch 'Charlies Angels in Hawaii' or something. I eventually saw this movie tho. Like some bad influence from Irwin Allen, the spiders, which were all over the small town, end up in the warehouse with the produce, the town's main source of income and major export. A truly strange plan for killing the spiders is hampered by a bad, bad man, which endangers those within the warehouse with the spiders. It's not one you would want to watch twice, but once would leave it stuck in your mind. Check out 'Kingdom of the Spiders' with William Shatner tho. It's better.

this movie isn't' total crap,but it's not great either.but you cant really expect much from these types of movies.there's almost no suspense and not very much excitement in this movie.it just sort of plods along to the end.it's entertaining,if nothing else.i mean,you get some horrid dialogue,sometimes delivered just as horridly.the acting isn't great,and some of the characters are as dumb as could be.i guess it's sort of in the category of so bad it's good.i thought the spiders were pretty good actors,at least.i've watched quite a few of these movies and this one is no better or worse than any other one of this type.i find this type of movie a good way to waste 90 minutes or so.besides,none of these movies come close to being the worst movie i have seen,so that's something.

Some animals just lend themselves to horror movies, and as movies such as Tarantula, Kingdom of the Spiders and Arachnophobia have proved; big spiders are one of them. Tarantulas: The Deadly Cargo was made for television, so it's probably unfair to expect great things from it; and while the film does have its moments, I really wouldn't add it to the list of films that prove spiders are prime candidates for having horror films made about them. The plot is pretty simplistic, which isn't really surprising considering the television origins and basically focuses on a bunch of tarantulas from South America being released in a town in California. We focus on a small airplane carrying coffee beans that have spent a lot of time in storage. Unbeknown to the crew, these particular beans have become infested with huge spiders that kill some of the crew and cause the plane to crash in the aforementioned Californian town. It's not long before the spiders have got off the plane and begin killing local residents; causing the authorities to take action.

Most horror films about spiders have the antagonists with something about them - perhaps they're genetically modified, a new type of spider, absolutely huge or maybe there's just thousands of them - this film doesn't bother with all that, all we get is just a bunch of pretty average looking spiders, and it's really not all that menacing - I constantly wondered why the lead characters didn't just put on a big pair of boots and go round stomping on them all. The film was obviously a pretty cheap production as there is no special effects and the sets are very minimal. Unfortunately it would seem that they couldn't afford to hire someone to write an imaginative screenplay either, as despite some standout moments - there aren't a lot of them, and the main sequence in a warehouse, while well done, is really too silly to take seriously if you take a minute to think about it. The conclusion to the film includes an interesting method of getting rid of the spiders - I have no idea whether or not it would work in real life, but one thing is for sure - a big pair of boots would have worked better and wouldn't have involved so much messing about. If only I were there to lend a hand

The JAWS craze went beyond hungry fish as the TV-Movie TARANTULAS: THE DEADLY CARGO winds up with a town torn between business and people's safety, with cranky Bert Remsen in the Murray Hamilton mayoral position, running an orange mill where the furry-legged-critters wind up...

That's after what seems like two separate short films, especially the intro where grungy maverick pilot/smugglers Howard Hessmann and Tom Atkins sneak coffee beans away from the local crooked government, and they wind up as Janet Leigh-from-PSYCHO characters in that they only seem permanent...

After crash-landing in the orange crop town, inadvertently bringing the titular CARGO along with them, this otherwise title-oriented creature-feature builds mystery/thriller tension as random deaths are initially enigmatic, disconnected with the tarantulas and, before computers, fearless crews known as spider wranglers provided the genuine article, making for more bonafide viewer-cringe moments...

Although. Visually, they're a very beautiful black and yellow color, and are actually known as Banana Spiders, shown a lot in the finale when buried lead Deborah Winters, older sister of LITTLE HOUSE child actor Matthew Labyorteaux and owner of a local airfield, is eventually teamed with Charles Frank as her boyfriend/partner, Pat Hingle the town doctor and Claude Akins the stalwart fire chief, who, although capable enough as a banded group, were more intriguing on their own before everything got figured out, far too soon.