One of the most exciting events of the past few weeks has been the re-release of Kingdom of the Spiders in honor of its 28th anniversary. The DVD features a director’s cut and no less than seven alternate endings that were filmed before director Bud Cardos made the decision to go with the infamous and controversial “the entire town is a spider web” ending. The film’s stars– in addition to William Shatner, Tiffany Bolling, David McLean and Altovise Davis- also included well over 7,000 tarantulas. Of these, a mere 11 are still alive and living at Rancho Araña just south of Santa Barbara. When I visited them last week, I found a group of arachnids just as feisty as the day on the set when they swarmed Bill Shatner’s trailer and drank his stash of Miller High Life.

R.C.: Looking back from the distance of 28 years, are you all still as proud of the movie now as you were then?

Spider 1: Look, did you do your research for this piece? Because the movie was nominated as Best Horror Film of 1977 by the Academy of Sci-Fi, Fantasy and Horror Films. What’s not to be proud of?

R.C.: And yet you were locked out of the Oscars…

Spider 7: We’ve dealt with discrimination our whole lives. If you dwell on it, it takes over, it’s all you can think about. It stands in the way of your career.

R.C: Take me back to what it was like on the set. I’ve always wondered how it was working in those spider hills.

Spider 2: Hot!

Spider 3: Dark and…

Spider 4: Dusty!

Spider 11: We’d be out there, crawling around the piles of dirt in the hot sun for hours at a time. And Bud [Cardos] would be like, “No, crawl here. Look menacing. Crawl on top of one another!”

Spider 4: And yeah, we weren’t really into that, the crawling on top of one another, because it's not natural spider behavior to sit on top of one another. I mean, we don’t hang out in packs. We’re solo operators. I only crawl on another spider for one reason, you know what I mean? And it wouldn’t be one of these guys!

R.C.: But was your behavior in the film realistic in other ways?

Spider 3: It was a movie! Do you believe everything you see in movies? Listen, there’s no way in hell I would swarm an air-conditioning vent with 80 other guys… And we don’t spin webs.

Spider 7: We don’t bite humans!

Spider 9: A lot of spiders died making this movie and that’s the dirty little secret no one wanted you to know…

R.C.: Well, I wondered because I saw a lot of stomping, slapping and throwing…

Spider 9: And we don’t exactly have the luxury of skeletons like you or big Bill Shatner…

R.C.: We’ll get back to William Shatner in a minute but first I want to know more about this safety issue…

Spider 1: Guys were getting stomped and thrown and set on fire. That scene where the light bulb exploded? I lost my best friend. Burned to death. I wanted a sit-down with the executives but they refused. They wouldn’t sit down with a spider. The union had to get involved.

R.C.: Did you ever get satisfaction?

Spider 2: We got an increase in pay and they brought in some dummy spiders they made out of fuzzy cloth to use for the rough stuff. So some of the brown blobs you see them throwing, those aren’t real spiders. That’s another dirty secret – fake spiders.

Spider 8: But really, what I remember is being bored a lot of the time. It was always, “Crawl in the grass. Crawl on the driveway. Crawl on the bed.” Shit, that was a lot of crawling! I like to hide out in the shade and rest during the day…

Spider 2: I remember 6 AM. calls and I’d be like, “I just finished scarfing down two lizards and now you want me to crawl around for nine hours? Shit!” I don’t do my best work on a full stomach.

R.C.: So what was it like working with William Shatner? Had you seen Star Trek?

Spider 4: Well, the guy is an ego-maniac. Completely narcissistic.

Spider 5: They had to take all the mirrors off the set because he kept losing track of scenes, looking at himself.

Spider 6: He had blown through all the Star Trek money, is what I heard.

Spider 7: They spent more money on tight jeans for Bill than for all of us spiders combined. He said, “They don’t need money. They don’t have bank accounts. What are they going to do, put the money in their burrows for safe-keeping?” And he said it real snotty.

R.C.: What was it like working with Bud Cardos?

Spider 1: That guy’s kind of a cock.

Spider 2: The guy was obsessed with webs and we were like, “We don’t do webs.” I mean, the whole damn ending is one big web and I was confused; left scratching my cephalothorax, you know?

R.C.: Let’s talk about the years since Kingdom… Have any of you worked in the industry since then?

Spider 5: I got my start in 1975, in a movie called The Giant Spider Invasion. That was a good one, although the spiders were mostly rubber. It’s hard sharing billing with rubber. But since Kingdom I’ve mostly worked on Broadway.

R.C.: Oh, anything I would have heard of?

Spider 5: That depends. Have you heard of Mama Mia?

R.C.: Of course.

Spider 5: I was part of the original cast.

Spider 6: In 1998 I was Spider of the Month on Tarantulas.com.

Spider 4: My third cousin was in the first Spider-Man movie. He bit Tobey Maguire and, if you believe what he says, he really did bite the shit out of him.

Spider 5: I’ve done some animal shows… Some Wild Kingdom, some Animal Planet, some National Geographic. The nature of my work had been mostly educational but I’m always open to a feature film role.

R.C: Well, thank you all for taking time to meet with me. I’ve already watched the DVD twice and I’m really glad to have it as part of my personal library. Wait, one of you hasn’t said anything… (scans notes) Number 10? Is Spider 10 here?

[confusion among the spiders]

Spider 8: Uh, it looks like…

Spider 1: Spider 10 died while we were talking.

Spider 2: But don’t feel bad!

R.C.: I feel horrible!

Spider 7: He lived a full life, had some laughs, saw the things he wanted to see.

Spider 6: Tonight, pour out a little liquor for him.