bkoganbing A bunch of nasty poisonous variety of tarantula come up from Ecuador in a plane piloted by Tom Atkins and Howard Hesseman. The eight legged critters snuck aboard their plane with a cargo of coffee, and three illegal aliens. But the tarantulas do their dirty work on the plane and it comes in a ghost ship, just like Renfield and those rats in Dracula, a much better movie.The creatures which seem to multiply exponentially upon arriving in California farm country make for the warehouse where the oranges are stored. As the towns people discover what has descended upon them it's Fire chief Claude Akins has to figure out a way to kill the bugs without destroying the oranges in this one crop economy town. After all can't let the Department of Agriculture know. They might just kill all the oranges and the mayor of this place Bert Remsen says that just can't be.I'm not sure of the science in all of this. All the actors including some very known players besides those already mentioned just seem to be sleepwalking their way through this gobbler.

Adam Foidart "Tarantulas: The Deadly Cargo" is a critter feature that offers no scares and little thrills. When a batch of Guatemalan tarantulas finds themselves in a sleepy little American town, we have a crisis on our hands! Oh not so much that people might get fatally bitten by these arachnids. The real issue is that they have nested themselves In the shipping centre that contains all of the locally harvested oranges. They can't use pesticides to get rid of them because that would contaminate the fruit, but if they wait too long the produce won't be fresh anymore. Can you feel the terror already?! While the acting and sets are good, the story moves at a snail's pace and the stars of the show, the tarantulas, aren't used in any creative or inventive way. We always see the tarantulas simply crawling on the ground, slowly making it's way in the general direction of the would-be victims. It isn't frightening. Spiders are frightening because they can crawl on walls, hide inside little objects and appear at any moment. By using mostly static tarantulas (which are spiders that are easily recognizable and commonly known to be harmless) the scares simply don't happen. I also found myself restless during the beginning of the film. A long portion of the introduction is wasted on the setup where we meet characters that are simply killed off a few minutes later. This is precious time that could have been used to develop our main characters and make us care about them. Easy mistakes make the whole production look amateurish, particularly when you realize what the "real crisis" is.Overall "Tarantulas: the Deadly Cargo" is dull and audiences won't be scared or excited to watch it. Although there are a few jokes at its expense that can be made, even as a "so bad it's good" kind of film it's not terribly entertaining. (On DVD, November 16, 2012)

TrickRider58 I have to admit, I was surprised by this movie. I bought it as part of a 2 DVD set with "Ants" for $5. Needless to say, I was expecting a "so bad it's good" movie along the lines of "Rockula". Instead, I found an interesting, if unspectacular... thriller? Horror movie? I really don't know what this is. It's not terribly scary, and the only really tense moments come at opposite ends of the film. Nevertheless, this is a good movie. It has a solid script, fairly god acting, (usually) and great music from Mundell Lowe. That's not to say it doesn't have it's flaws. The "cute kid" of the movie is less than competent, and I'm being nice. It also feels like the director doesn't use his full potential during the entire movie. During the climax, we see that he is a genuinely good director, capable of injecting tension into a scene, but just seems to be coasting through most of the movie. Hopefully, his other movies draw on that potential.

richard.fuller1 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.