Kingdom of the Spiders – USA Network – 1987!
I haven’t given you many reasons to visit Dino Drac After Dark lately, but if you decided to do it anyway, get ready for big time treasure:
It’s a 1987 USA Network broadcast of Kingdom of the Spiders, complete with commercials!
(God, that screams “Dino Drac After Dark.”)
I’ve actually run the movie here before, but it’s so much better with the old ads — not to mention the bookending segments hosted by Commander USA!
Word of warning, though: Kingdom of the Spiders stars a horde of live tarantulas, and the little critters were not treated kindly during filming. Some actually die onscreen. As much as I’d like to give this childhood favorite a pass, I can’t in good conscience run it without that disclaimer.
That being said, this was one of the first horror movies I ever rented, and it haunted me. The fact that the spider scenes are so crude means that they’re also super real, so there’s a sincere creep factor in play.
A quick scan of the ads reveals everything from Cool Ranch Doritos to Salon Selectives. If nothing else, enjoy those!
Amazing Stories!
Here’s a pair of episodes of Amazing Stories, the NBC anthology series that I was very much a fan of.
Truth be told, the episodes were infamously hit-or-miss, with some being RIDICULOUSLY good, and others being absurdly hokey and boring. Most anthology shows were like that, but since Amazing Stories didn’t have a set “vibe,” the disparity was more noticeable.
There are episodes I plainly can’t get through, while others — like, say, the one where Christopher Lloyd plays a psychotic beheaded teacher — were sincerely awesome enough to have worked as theatrically-released films.
I can’t remember much about these two episodes, which probably means that they weren’t among the best of them. Still worth a watch, even if only for curiosity’s sake!
“GHOST TRAIN”
“SECRET CINEMA”
Enjoy!
(And feel free to chat about other stuff, too.)
Commercials from 1995!
Close out the weekend with a batch of TV commercials from 1995…
Looks like there are some real treasures in here. Enjoy!
Rawhead Rex!
Happy Saturday night!
…it really FEELS like one tonight, too. We had a hot day here, but now it’s way cold and way windy and way dark. The perfect ambiance for RAWHEAD REX.
This one’s from 1986. I’ll copy/paste the YouTube description, which sums it up best:
“Ireland will never be the same after Rawhead Rex, a particularly nasty demon, is released from his underground prison by an unwitting farmer. The film follows Rex’s cross country rampage, while a man struggles to stop it.”
I actually have seen this, and can vouch for it. The titular monster looks something like Pumpkinhead mixed with Goro mixed with a chocolate fountain, so if nothing else, there’s that.
