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Released by: VCI Entertainment
Released on: September 11, 2012.
Director: Curtis Harrington/Chris Munger
Cast: Piper Laurie, Stuart Whitman, Janit Baldwin/Eric Mason, Suzanna Ling, Herman Wallner
Year: 1977/1976
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The Movies:
Ruby:
Directed by Curtis Harrington in 1977 and set in the early fifties, Ruby stars Piper Laurie in the titular role of Ruby Claire. A single mother, Ruby owns a small drive-in theater and looks after her daughter, Leslie (Janit Baldwin), who happens to be mute. Living in the house next door to the drive-in with Ruby and Leslie is Ruby's boyfriend, Jake (Fred KohlerJr.), who is crippled and blind. You'd think Ruby would need some help dealing with all of this, and she does - thankfully she gets it in the form of kindly Vince (Stuart Whitman), who does what he can to make things easier for her.
Sixteen years or so back, Ruby used to date a man named Nicky Rocco (Sal Vecchio), a mobster who was shot dead by members of his own gang but not before he gave Ruby a daughter. Ruby has given some of Nicky's former associates jobs at the drive-in, but soon enough these guys start winding up dead. Vince is fairly certain that Nicky's spirit has come back for revenge and calls up his old psychiatrist, Dr. Paul Keller (Roger Davis) for help as he has some experience in this field. When Leslie starts speaking in Nicky's voice, things start to get even more bizarre…
Cheaply made but fairly well acted, Ruby is well paced and features a few decent murder set pieces but borrow a lot from The Exorcist in spots. The film fails to convince us of its fifties setting (everyone looks very much like a product of the seventies here) but it's entertaining enough, the way a fun B-grade horror movie can be. A scene in which the projectionist at the drive-in is hung with film stock is interesting and sci-fi fans will get a kick out of seeing Attack Of The 50Ft Woman showing at one point and the interesting location makes this one a lot more interesting than it probably would have been otherwise.
A decent cast of recognizable players do alright with the material and the movie actually has some pretty cool southern gothic atmosphere working in its favor, particularly in the scenes that take place out of doors and at night.
Kiss Of The Tarantula:
Susan (Suzanna Ling), a young girl, is a big fan of spiders. She collects tarantulas, and oddly enough, doesn't have a lot of friends at school, probably because, well, she collects tarantulas (I wouldn't hang out with her either). Anyway, Susan's mother, Martha (Beverly Eddins), is having an affair with her brother-in-law. When Susan discovers that Martha is planning on having her husband knocked off so that she can run off with his brother, she takes matters into her own hands and places one of her lovely pets in her mother's bed while she's sleeping.
Mom wakes up, sees the spider, and has a heart attack, quickly solving that problem. Or so it would seem. Susan appears to have been scarred for life over this, and as she grows older, and seemingly more dysfunctional, she starts using her spiders to avenge misdeeds done to her in the past.
The film is a lot like 'Willard', which came out roughly a year before, and it basically just replaces rats with spiders. Not a particularly original film, Kiss of the Tarantula doesn't really offer a lot of scares either, with too much focus on the characters and not enough focus on what makes a killer spider movie effective (that being the killer spiders). The characters are marginally interesting, what with the incestuous back story and everything, and the use of spiders to exact revenge on those who Susan deems fitting is a cool enough concept to carry the film - but more killer spiders would have helped.
That being said, there is a definite camp appeal to the film and there are a few creepy parts to it (in particular when a man is chased through a ventilation duct by a group of the eight legged beasties), which make it enjoyable enough to at least be worth a watch.
Video/Audio/Extras:
Ruby is presented in 1.66.1 non-anamorphic widescreen, and it looks about as good as you'd guess an older non-anamorphic transfer would look. It's not particularly impressive but it's watchable enough. Kiss of the Tarantula is presented in its original aspect ratio of 1.85.1 and is enhanced for anamorphic TVs. The film shows some damage as should be expected from a 30-year-old low budget quickie, but colors are pretty decent and black levels are surprisingly good on this transfer. Again, like the first feature, not an amazing transfer but decent enough.
The Dolby Digital 2 Channel Mono tracks are clear and listenable most of the time, but there are a few instances during the films where dialogue is a bit muffled. For the most part though, everything is easy enough to follow despite the hiss and noise evident at times in the background. These are older low budget films, and this is probably as good they're ever going to sound without a serious remastering.
Extras? VCI has included the films' original theatrical trailers as well as a promo spots advertising other horror titles available from the studio.
The Final Word:
Two enjoyable oddities from the hallowed halls of seventies horror, these may not be the best that the genre had to offer for the decade but they're solid and worth seeing. VCI's DVD won't floor you with amazing quality but it's perfectly acceptable and it's priced right. Definitely worth checking out…
