They say Hollywood is a dog-eat-dog kind of town, but the stars of the 1977 cult classic "Kingdom of the Spiders" took that mentality to a whole new level by literally trying to devour their competition.

The film, which finally arrives on DVD on Tuesday, features an army of orange-kneed tarantulas in the title roles, and that furry-limbed critter happens to be cannibalistic, which presented director John “Bud” Cardos with the prospect of an especially tense lunch break each day.

“Each one of those spiders had to be kept in  almost like a cottage-cheese container,” said Cardo, who didn't have the benefit of CGI special effects back in the day and had to use genuine creepy-crawlies (and a few rubber props here and there). 

Spider wrangler Jim Brockett of Brocketts Film Fauna imported 5,000 tarantulas from Mexico to star in this arachnid version of “Jaws," which stars William Shatner as a vet in a small Arizona town who is faced with an infestation of vicious spiders feasting on the inhabitants. The reason for their human appetite? Their natural food supply has been decimated because of the use of pesticides.

Brockett cast orange-kneed tarantulas as the antagonists because “they were readily available and we needed a lot of them and they are also pretty people-friendly, so they actors weren’t going to get bitten.”

These creatures are also reclusive. “They live in burrows,” Brockett says. “The only time they actually come out is to hunt food.”

The 80-year-old Cardos says Shatner was a “real trouper” when it came to working with the spiders. But casting the female leads was a different matter.

“We were over at Culver Studios at the time when we started casting,” Cardos said. “I had two small fish aquariums on my desk and I had one of these big tarantulas in each of them. When the girl would come in to read I would pick up one and put them on her. Some of them ran out of the room.”

But not Tiffany Bolling, who plays a sexy entomologist. “She said, ‘Isn’t he nice?’ and starting played with the spider. I said, ‘This is the girl we need.' ”

Shatner initially turned down the film, but Cardos, who had worked with the "Star Trek" legend, pulled him into the web.  “I went over to his house and we had a few drinks and pieces of cheese,” Cardos said. Before the director left Shatner’s house, the actor agreed to do the film

Also appearing in the film was Shatner’s then-wife, actress Marcy Lafferty, who plays the widowed sister-in-law whom the good doctor is lusting after. Cardos says it wasn’t a package deal to take them both. “I liked Marcy very well,” Cardos said. “It just so happened we were casting and Bill said, ‘How about Marcy?’ I said let’s talk to her.”

“Spiders,” which was shot in Arizona, featured a lot of the inhabitants as extras. Most, Brockett says, didn’t mind playing dead with the tarantulas scuttling over them. “A lot of them just volunteered,” he said. “It was that 15-minutes-of-fame thing.”

Though these tarantulas don’t bite, their abdomen hair can cause problems. The hair, Brockett says, is their main defense. When attacked in their burrows, they use their back legs to flick hair at the intruder.

“Some of them are shaped like corkscrews or ...  like fishhooks, and they work their way into your skin and make you itch a lot. Back in the 1880s, they used to sell capsules of tarantula hair as itching power.”

Trying to get the tarantulas to move on command was pretty simple. ”You blow a little air on them so they would move away from where the air is coming from,” he says. “So a lot of times we would use a straw and blow at the spider and he’d run away from that.”

When it came to the scenes with numerous tarantulas, the creatures were placed on set with their cups over them so they couldn’t move. When Cardos yelled "Action!" about six people would scurry to lift up the cups so the tarantulas could move. These scenes had to be shot quickly before the tarantulas started to devour each other.

Today, rules for animal and insect safety on sets are far more stringent, Brockett says. “A few spiders were killed,” Brockett admits of the 1970s set. “Nothing was killed intentionally. [These days] when a bug dies [naturally] we put it in alcohol, so when you need to swat a fly or stomp on a cockroach, you use one that’s already dead.”

-- Susan King

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On Wednesday, William Shatner was at Madame Tussauds Wax Museum and this is one of the photos from Getty Images. It's Friday and that means it's a good time for a caption contest. Boldly go to the comments section and give us your best line about this cosmic moment.

-- Geoff Boucher

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Susan King, purveyor of many things film and television and beyond, falls into "The Twilight Zone" in her latest Classic Hollywood column as she gets out the word about The American Cinematheque Egyptian Theatre's tribute to this seminal series on Friday. She also talks a great deal about Rod Serling and the barriers that science fiction had to hurdle. -- Jevon Phillips

"You're traveling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind; a journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. That's the signpost up ahead -- your next stop, the Twilight Zone."

With those now-famous words, TV audiences 50 years ago were introduced to Rod Serling's breakthrough sci-fi series "The Twilight Zone." The series, essentially morality plays with evocative twists of fantasy, ran for five seasons on CBS -- and endlessly in reruns and the public imagination.

One week, viewers could be on a plane with a troubled young man who insists he sees a monster on a wing; another week, an elderly woman could invite death into her house. Performers included veterans such as Ida Lupino and newcomers like Robert Redford and William Shatner.

"He created a new form of television," said screenwriter Marc Scott Zicree, author of "The Twilight Zone Companion."

Science fiction was basically viewed as kids' stuff," he says. "There is a great interview that Mike Wallace did with Rod just prior to 'The Twilight Zone' where he says to Rod, 'Now you are doing this kind of kids' stuff, are you giving up writing anything important?' "

Read the entire article HERE.

-- Susan King

And here's a portion of a great "Twilight Zone" episode featuring a certain Starship Enterprise captain out of uniform.

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Photo: Rod Serling.  Credit: Museum of TV and Radio

Last-minute notice, but ... Rod Roddenberry, son of "Star Trek" creator Gene Roddenberry, will be signing the first issue of a new comic book series, "Days Missing," along with the book's creator Trevor Roth, tonight at Golden Apple Comics in Hollywood (7018 Melrose Ave.).

Attendees will get a free "vintage 'Star Trek' poster." Does that mean Ricardo Montalban as Khan or William Shatner with Tribbles in hand? Not sure.

The book itself is described as telling "the stories of a mysterious being known only as The Steward. His ability to literally fold days of time has allowed him to secretly remove critical days from our shared history that have forever changed the course of mankind." Oooh, sounds like it could have the same title as Oliver Stone's new historical series "Secret History of America."

Not another branch in the "Trek" universe, so to speak, but definitely sounds cosmic.

-- Jevon Phillips

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William Shatner is a fount of pure genius. All you have to do is stand there and let it splatter on your shoes. If you doubt me, watch this...

-- Geoff Boucher

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CREDIT: Captian kirk photo from the Los Angeles Times archives.

It's a funny old universe, isn't it? Take this Priceline commercial from a while back. That's William Shatner at the wheel, of course, but what about the guy in the back? Well, that's Robert Pine, who you may remember as the sergeant on "CHiPs" and from a zillion other roles through the years. Robert Pine's son is ... Chris Pine. Yes, that's right, the new Captain Kirk. Here's a little story Chris told me over lunch at a Greek restaurant a few weeks ago:  

"William Shatner and I have never met. I wrote him a letter in the beginning, when I first got the role, and we were going to go out to lunch, which never happened. And we need to get together sooner than later. Absolutely. And I'm looking forward to it. Here's a funny thing: My father, strangely and oddly enough, about two weeks after I got the part, he had a Priceline commercial. The first thing he said when he met him was he walked into the makeup trailer put his hand out and said, 'Hello son.' Of course Shatner had no idea what he was talking about. But he appreciated it after it was explained to him. In the commercial Shatner plays a chauffeur and my dad is the rich guy in the back. It's just so weird for me, you know? What are the chances of that?"

-- Geoff Boucher

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The final days of 2008 are ticking down, but the news never stops. Here's a busy Monday morning edition of Everyday Hero, a roundup of handpicked headlines from the fanboy universe.

SO IS IT LIKE MATTER-EATER LAD? In the category of reader's digest, we bring you "The Big Skinny: How I Changed My Fattitude," which may be the first "memoir-as-self-help-book-as-graphic-novel," presenting a true challenge to the shelfing system over at Barnes & Noble. The book is the handiwork of Carol Lay, the cartoonist behind the weekly strip WayLay, and she talked recently to Michael C. Lorah about living large: "'I was obese when I was 19, reaching 206 pounds before my mom sent me to a doctor who put me on diet pills. I shed 40 pounds pretty quickly, but then I was addicted to speed for a few years. Over the next 28 years or so I yoyo-ed between 140 and 160, but I was often at the larger size. And I was unhappy. Not because I was fat; I was fat because I was unhappy, but the two states feed on each other. One day I looked at a photo of myself and made a decision to change. At the same time I started taking a good look at myself so I could root out the underlying causes of my self-defeating behavior. This part was necessary for me to finally make a whole-body change. I needed to understand where I’d been in order to see what wasn’t working for me any longer. This is what I put in the book that makes it different. I tell my story, a personal journey –- sometimes funny, sometimes kind of sad, but always honest –- as it relates to changing this aspect of my life. And the graphic aspect of this book really makes it stand out. The information is accessible, immediate and entertaining. The color is gorgeous –- I’m very happy with how it turned out.'" [Newsarama]

TALKING "TORSO": Filmmaker David Fincher was talking to MTV about "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" (a film, by the way, that now has a grim footnote after a shooting in Philly) and the topic turned to "Ness," his planned (and retitled) adaptation of "Torso," a true-crime tale that sits on my "favorite graphic novels" shelf. The director of "Fight Club" and "Zodiac" said nothing to dissuade rumors that Matt Damon and Casey Affleck are likely cast members and he talked a bit about the allure of the Eliot Ness story: "'[Ness is] kind of the self-righteous, American do-gooder,' Fincher told MTV. 'He was an interesting and extremely flawed guy who had a lot of problems. He did a lot of destructive things in the name of cleaning up the streets.' Fincher said it was the 'flawed' heroism of Eliot Ness that attracted him to the story in 'Torso,' which was initially published in 1998 by Image Comics. The graphic novel chronicles Ness’ experiences after rising to fame as the leader of Chicago’s Prohibition-era law enforcers 'The Untouchables,' and his decision to leave Chicago for a position as Cleveland’s Safety Director — only to have an investigation of the notorious 'Torso Murderer' complicate his life and career. 'Not to take anything away from [Ness] — he wasn’t an evil guy at all — but at one point in his career he burned to the ground a shanty town in Cleveland,” said Fincher. 'This was three or four years after the Untouchables. He was just like 27 when The Untouchables happened. He was really young.' 'He sort of fashioned himself as a J. Edgar Hoover,' added Fincher. 'The bureau’s image of Ness and how he stole some of their limelight is in there.'" [MTV]

FACES TO WATCH 2009: This past Sunday's Los Angeles Times Calendar section had a feature on "Faces to Watch for 2009" in film, music and the Web, and I wrote two of the entries; one is Chris Pine, who I am officially predicting will do great things as the new Capt. James T. Kirk (a forecast based entirely on the 30 minutes' worth of footage I've seen from the J.J. Abrams revival of "Star Trek"), and the other is Malin Akerman from "Watchmen," who pretty much makes me dizzy when she does that whole curvy crimefighting thing. Also check what my colleague John Horn wrote about Sam Worthington, who poised for a huge 2009 with "Terminator Salvation" and will also star in the upcoming "Avatar," and a longer (and great) article that Hero Complex contributor Denise Martin wrote about Tahmoh Penikett, who is going from "Battlestar Galactica" to "Dollhouse." [Los Angeles Times]...ALSO: Speaking of "Star Trek" and "Watchmen," previews for those films finished atop Cinematical's list of the seven best trailers for 2008.

SHATNER TALKS ... AND TALKS ... AND TALKS: Writer Nancy Franklin has a fun appraisal of the new talk show hosted by William Shatner, although she doesn't mention how thrilling it would be if Chris Pine were to be announced as one of the upcoming guests. Here's what Franklin did write: "William Shatner is, forty years after the end of the original 'Star Trek,' a ham that has got only more delicious with time. As much of him as there is out there — Priceline ads, the ABC series 'Boston Legal' (which just finished its run last week), the public squawking about whether or not he was invited to George Takei’s wedding or how he felt about being left out of the new 'Star Trek' movie — is there ever enough? I think not. His half-hour interview show, 'Shatner’s Raw Nerve,' on the BIO channel (an offshoot of A&E), could bring on Shatner fatigue, though, thanks to a guest list that is rigorously uncompelling, daring you not to yawn. Some of his guests this season are Tim Allen, Valerie Bertinelli, Kelsey Grammer, Judge Judy, Jenna Jameson, and Jimmy Kimmel. But, as it happens, Shatner’s intense weirdness makes things compelling. In the first two episodes, he elicits some thoughtful comments from Allen on death and on screwing up his life, and he attempts to have a worthwhile exchange with Bertinelli on the subject of sin. Unsurprisingly, beneath Shatner’s persona of an egotist glorying in and making fun of his own egotism — and please, Bill, don’t ever change — is a very engaging oddball." [The New Yorker]...ALSO: To see some footage from "William Shatner's Raw Nerve" go to bottom of this post. Also you can read my odd interview with Shatner at a Starbucks on Ventura Boulevard right here.

KEANU STIFF, WRITER SURPRISED: The remake of "The Day the Earth Stood Still" hit theaters way back on Dec. 12, so it was a bit odd to see it as the subject of an Editorial Notebook piece in today's New York Times opinions section. More surprising, though, is that its author, Brent Staples, is unaware that actor Keanu Reeves is actually a mannequin. Staples compares the new film to the original and found that the new "Stood Still" left him unmoved: "The minimalist — and altogether cool — effects in the 1951 film leave lots of room for the performers. Michael Rennie is aces as Klaatu, the brainy, handsome and thoroughly polite alien who threatens to eliminate every creature on the planet — kittens, puppies and cute little babies included — if earthlings become a danger to the galaxy. Watching the movie as a middle-aged man, I saw what I lacked eyes to see as a 12-year-old. There is no shred of sentimentality in Rennie’s performance. He is a congenial exterminating angel, dropping round for tea to tell of horrors to come. Rennie’s Klaatu is God-fearing, emotionally sophisticated, superior to but indistinguishable from the earthlings among whom he walks. That’s an open-minded characterization at the start of a decade dominated by red-baiting and fear of outlanders in general. Keanu Reeves’s Klaatu is numbingly monotonic. He is emotionally underdeveloped, and suffers from a robotic flatness of affect. Instead, the scriptwriters gave him powers that are predictably demonstrated through pricey special effects that do not sustain dramatic momentum. With all this digital sleight of hand, the performers are reduced to the equivalent of bystanders at a fireworks show." [New York Times]

TAPE EJECT: It's not really a fanboy story (although it does mention Superman), but I had a big front-page story in the L.A. Times this past week on the final pop-culture death of the VHS tape and if you're curious you can find it right here.

ON THIS DATE: Today is the 32nd birthday of Danny McBride, who blew it up real good in "Tropic Thunder" and will be running from dinosaurs this summer in the remake of the Krofft Bros classic "Land of the Lost." Today is also the 36th birthday of Jude Law, whose filography includes a surprising number of sci-fi films with "Artificial Intelligence:AI," "eXistenZ," "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow" and "Gattaca." Next, Law will be starring as Dr. Watson opposite title-role star Robert Downey Jr. in Guy Ritchie's "Sherlock Holmes," so to celebrate let's try to keep everything elementary today.

This Sunday (Dec. 7) the Los Angeles Times Calendar section features a special package of science fiction stories that include a piece on Keanu Reeves and his alienated role in "The Day the Earth Stood Still," an article on Sci Fi (the cable channel) facing a crossroads with the end of "Battlestar Galactica" and even a fun look at the fashion of sci-fi cinema through the decades. That's just the start -- there's plenty more in the section. I wrote a cover centerpiece for the package, which is a look at three venerable franchises -- "Star Wars," "Star Trek" and "Battlestar Galactica" -- looking for new life and new audiences. Here's an advance excerpt of that story. I will put a link here to the entire story this weekend. It's a great section on Sunday, get a copy if you can. -- Geoff Boucher

(UPDATE: Here's that now-active link to the entire article)

The future looks very familiar. Science fiction, by its nature, is a celebration of the new, but you wouldn’t know that by watching Hollywood’s space operas. "Star Trek," for instance, is on the way back to theaters next summer in hopes that moviegoers will still want to boldly go where millions and millions have gone before. And it’s been more than 30 years since "Star Wars" made film history, but the Force is still very much with us -- whether we like it or not -- with a seventh film in theaters this past summer, one of the year’s bestselling video games and a new weekly animated television show (there’s also talk of a live-action series in the next year or two).

And that’s just the tip of the meteorite. The "Terminator" and "Robocop" franchises are being revved up now for more mechanical-man mayhem, and classic films such as "Forbidden Planet" and "When Worlds Collide" are in the remake pipeline, while the new take on "The Day the Earth Stood Still," starring Keanu Reeves, opens Dec. 12.

Even "Battlestar Galactica," which began as a small-screen "Star Wars" knockoff in the 1970s, has been revived with spectacular results and will break new ground in 2009 with the TV movie "Caprica" on Sci Fi, with a series to follow.

The question, though, is why does Hollywood keep looking to the past? "Science fiction should be about ideas and what it means to be human, it should always be about the new and the challenging," William Shatner said on a recent afternoon as he sipped a Starbucks coffee and watched traffic zoom past his Ventura Boulevard office. So why does Hollywood keep putting its money in the same old Enterprise? "'Star Trek' connected with so many people for so long, and 'Star Wars' is the same way," he said. "There’s a thrill for fans to see the heroes they know."

Shatner won’t be one of those heroes in the new "Star Trek" film -- a sour point for the actor who played Capt. James T. Kirk on television and in seven films and had hoped for a cameo -- but Paramount Pictures is absolutely hoping that the new film, directed by J.J. Abrams ("Mission: Impossible III," TV’s "Alias" and "Lost") will have the warp power needed for a 21st century "Star Trek" franchise built around young stars such as Chris Pine (Kirk) and Zachary Quinto (Mr. Spock). Those ambitions go a long way to explaining the Hollywood fixation on tried-and-true properties.
It’s difficult to find a sci-fi project in recent years that wasn’t based on an earlier film or television show, although "Minority Report," "Signs" and "Children of Men" did buck the trend.

Ronald D. Moore, creator of the modern “Battlestar Galactica,” said that commercial priorities push risk-adverse studios toward properties with established names, but he said it’s wrong to presume that artistic ambition is stifled by remaking the familiar.

We you told yesterday that the gossip blog Dish Rag had cornered both Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner at a swanky opening-night affair at the Los Angeles Philharmonic and asked each of them their view of Proposition 8, which would ban same-sex marriage in the Golden State. Nimoy was adamantly against the ballot iniative but Shatner was vague (it sounded like he thought it inappropriate to bring up politics during his evening of performing arts).

BUT we here at the Hero Complex went back through the archives and found out that, at least in 1969, Shatner was very vocal in favor of keeping it gay.

-- Geoff Boucher

Bill Shatner sat down for coffee with the Hero Complex a few days ago and made it clear that he feels left out because he wasn't invited to be in the new "Star Trek" film. So I was surprised when I read this quote from J.J. Abrams, the director of the new film, who was asked about Shatner's ire during an interview with AMC.com.

"It was very tricky. We actually had written a scene with him in it that was a flashback kind of thing, but the truth is, it didn't quite feel right. The bigger thing was that he was very vocal that he didn't want to do a cameo. We tried desperately to put him in the movie, but he was making it very clear that he wanted the movie to focus on him significantly, which, frankly, he deserves. The truth is, the story that we were telling required a certain adherence to the 'Trek' canon and consistency of storytelling. It's funny -- a lot of the people who were proclaiming that he must be in this movie were the same people saying it must adhere to canon. Well, his character died on screen. Maybe a smarter group of filmmakers could have figured out how to resolve that."

This quote got back to Shatner and he has responded via video in an interview with his daughter, Elizabeth:

Clearly, Shatner is smiling through gritted teeth. He's trying to chide Abrams but also sweet-talk the director into finding a last-minute spot for him in the film. I don't think it's going to happen (principal photography was completed in March) and it's going to be an awkward situation for Abrams, who certainly doesn't really need a 77-year-old Shatner in a film that follows young Kirk and his crew in their earliest adventures when they are fresh from Starfleet Academy.

-- Geoff Boucher

July 2008 photo of J.J. Abrams by Dan Steinberg/Associated Press

Communications were down and the captain looked confused. “These computer guys are working in my office,” William Shatner muttered, “so I don’t know where we should go to talk.”

The 77-year-old was standing in the lobby of his Studio City office, which is lined with more photographs from his beloved equestrian pursuits than his interstellar acting career. He looked at the ceiling and then the door. “I know: Let’s go to Starbucks. I don’t have my wallet, though. Will you buy me coffee?”

Wow, Mr. Priceline paycheck can’t pay for a cup of joe?

I'm joking, of course; I was genuinely thrilled to spring for a triple-shot decaf for the man who gave us all James T. Kirk, the bane of the Klingon empire and the master of the strained staccato delivery. I wasn't the only one a little geeked to see the venerable old space cowboy; the barista got the “Star Trek” icon's autograph on an empty cup and then customers kept coming by our table to shake his hand. One gushed about “Boston Legal,” and another, oddly, expressed a passion for those Priceline.com ads. “Maybe coming here,” Shatner whispered, “wasn’t a good idea.”

Shatner is shorter than you think and bow-legged after all those years in the saddle, but the main impression he makes is as a man of fairly intense focus. He brought a stack of notes to the café and scanned them, then looked up like a professor about to start his lecture. “Let’s begin, we have plenty to talk about.” I sat up a little straighter and looked at my tape recorder to make the sure the red light was on.

And there was a lot to talk about. There is a new “Star Trek” film coming, and Shatner is peeved that he won’t be in it (more on that later), but it’s just about the only thing he isn’t in. This past weekend he popped in on “Saturday Night Live” and Sunday night he may well be picking up his third Emmy for his sublimely kooky role as lawyer Denny Crane, the scene stealer on “Boston Legal” (and previously on “The Practice”). “Boston” returns for its final season on Sept. 22.

There’s also Shatner’s sometime-career in music, his recent autobiography and the deep shelf of sci-fi novels with his name on them, as well as his pitchman work. There’s also a brand new venture: The actor is getting into the comic-book business by partnering with Bluewater Productions Inc on adaptations of his novels about heroic deep-space struggles. Two books, "Man o' War" and "Quest for Tomorrow," will each be given a mini-series treatment, while his far more famous "TekWar" will be an up-ended series. (Darren G. Davis, president of Bluewater, tells me this "TekWar" will also be more faithful to the original novel than the 1990s television series of the same title, which itself yielded a Marvel Comics adaptation.) There will be a fourth title, also, based on a new Shatner concept that is still under wraps.   

“With all of these comics, I have final approval," Shatner told me. "This is not a licensing arrangement, this will be me involved very directly throughout the process. They are going to do adaptations of my ideas and also sequels; they will be in the stores in March of 2009. I loved comics as a kid. I used to sit under the sheets with a flashlight and read Superman when I was 6 in Montreal and now, with the comics as they are today, it’s thrilling, really.”