Tarantulas: The Deadly Cargo is a made for television movie from 1977 that stars Claude Akins, Charles Frank, and Deborah Winters. This movie came out the same year as another made for television horror, Ants! and is just as much fun, making for a double-feature that will make your skin crawl and have you looking around the house for bugs and spiders!
Tarantulas: The Deadly Cargo begins in Ecuador, where a pair of reckless money-hungry pilots Buddy (horror legend Tom Atkins, The Fog, Night of the Creeps) and Fred (Howard Hesseman, WKRP in Cincinnati) bribe officials to fly a load of coffee beans from South America into San Francisco where they hope to make money sells top of the line beans. But they didn’t check the bags first! These bags of coffee beans have big ugly tarantulas in them. The turbulence from a heavy thunderstorm causes them to escape and kill a passenger. The plane is forced to take a crash landing, and before you know it, the angry arachnids are attacking the population in Finleyville, California. Cindy Beck (Deborah Winters, Kotch, The People Next Door) and her fiancé (Charles Frank, All My Children) are called in to investigate the murders along with Bert Springer (screen legend Claude Akins, Curse, Rio Bravo). The tarantulas, seeking food, have found their way to an orange packing plant where the bugs will get plenty of vitamin C! A plan is made to kill off the spiders using buzzing sounds of wasps, their natural enemy.
Yes, it sounds hokey with the oranges and wasps buzzing sounds, but Tarantulas: The Deadly Cargo is still a fun and entertaining movie! No, it’s nowhere near as good as Kingdom of the Spiders or Arachnophobia, which to me are a pair of superior spider invasion flicks!
Tarantulas: The Deadly Cargo receives a Blu-ray release from Kino Lorber, with an O-card slip case that features newly commissioned art by Vince Evans. This release gets a brand new 2K Master. The picture quality is decent with some nice colors and some sharp textures to the scenery but like many television movies on Blu-ray, it’s not as sharp or robust as one would like. Flesh tones appear accurate, with lots of details during close-up shots. Film grain is present throughout. No DNR has been applied.
The DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 soundtrack is perfectly fine with nothing all that aggressive. Dialogue, background noises and the jazzy score by Mundell Lowe all come in clearly. English subtitles are available for this release.
For extras, this release has a commentary track by The Made for TV Mayhem Show Podcast Hosts Amanda Reyes, Dan Budnik and Nate Johnson and a series of Kino Lorber trailers from their huge library of titles.
While not a cream of the crop for bug invasion films, Tarantulas: The Deadly Cargo is still a lot of fun to watch. This Blu-ray release with the 2K scan easily surpasses the DVD. And the commentary track for an extra make this release all the better! Recommended!
Tarantulas: The Deadly Cargo
Director- Stuart Hagman
Cast- Claude Akins, Charles Frank, Deborah Winters
Country of Origin- US
Distributor – Kino Lorber
Number of Discs – 1
Reviewed by – David Steigman
Date –7/17/2022