Kingdom of the Spiders By Bernhardt J. Hurwood

Kingdom of the Spiders
By Bernhardt J. Hurwood
Based on the screen story by Jeffrey M. Sneller and Stephen Lodge
1977 Ace Books
Paperback, 180 pages

                Since I adore nature-strikes-back books and movies, I figured I’d better just stick to the novel of this one since I’ve heard that real spiders get injured and squished in the movie. Thousands of Mexican Red-knees were brought to the production and they were not taken care of. I will not watch that. But I do want to read about spiders killing humans, so I grabbed the novelization. I got more- and less than I bargained for with this book. The writing is absolutely abysmal, which caused a few bristling moments but quite a few moments of mirth as well.

 

                Camp Verde, Arizona is readying itself for an upcoming County Fair and the living is easy. Except that a few farm animals have turned up dead. Local veterinarian Rack Hanson and entomologist (rather than arachnologist) Dianne Ashley are on the case and they discover they are dealing with spider bites that are five times more venomous than usual. As the spider population grows, the human population dwindles and the entire town is in danger of becoming tarantula meat. The spiders are hunting in packs (not typical behavior) and are intent on decimating the town. There’s really not much more to the story than this.

 

                OK, first off, Hurwood repeatedly says that the spiders stand there “waving their antennae”, a body part that spiders do not have. Then again, he calls them insects a few times, too, which is also incorrect. It’s hard to know if this gaffe came from the original script by Sneller and Lodge or if it is Hurwood’s non-research. Also, Rack (whose nickname is explained) is played by William Shatner in the film and it reads as though the part must have been written for him. There’s no way to read the character of this bullshit-macho, womanizing letch with a heart of gold in any voice other than Shatner’s. At least he has some sort of characterization; nobody else does.

 

                So, it turns out that I’ve read another Hurwood masterpiece, the cat-horror of Claws written under the pseudonym of D. Gunther Wilde. I enjoyed that one a lot more but this one has its moments, even though Hurwood’s descriptions of the spiders rarely get any more ambitious than “ugly”. The writing is very lazy, perhaps because the author’s scary stories are more suited to children’s books and he isn’t used to flexing his horror muscles. At any rate, this book is pretty crappy but it’s easy to blow through (then forget) in a day or two. There are 16 pages of photos from the movie in the book.