Kingdom of The Spiders - Concerns Over Animal Cruelty

Concerns Over Animal Cruelty

Another common notion about the film is that it could not be made today due to the increased attention paid by animal rights organizations to film production. Indeed, many tarantulas died during production. This was partly because some of the creatures could not handle the constant changes in temperature and climate during the production process, but more because of the nature of the script. During the scenes where the survivors are trapped in the lodge, many spiders were stomped and crushed because the script called for the characters to kill them (as the spiders were supposed to be so dangerous to humans). Further, many more were crushed inadvertently during the scene where the creatures attack the town; several were stepped on and many others were run over by vehicles. In the scene where Gene Smith drives into town, the squad car's wheels clearly run over several spiders right in front of the camera.

With animal rights organizations now working with most film productions to ensure that animals are not harmed, a movie such as Kingdom of the Spiders would have to be made differently. During production of the similarly themed 1990 horror comedy Arachnophobia, for example, when the script called for a spider to be killed on-screen, the crew would substitute a fake rubber spider model or the carcass of a spider that had died of natural causes. Another method would be to use CGI models.

Read more about this topic:  Kingdom Of The Spiders

Famous quotes containing the words concerns, animal and/or cruelty:

    History in the making is a very uncertain thing. It might be better to wait till the South American republic has got through with its twenty-fifth revolution before reading much about it. When it is over, some one whose business it is, will be sure to give you in a digested form all that it concerns you to know, and save you trouble, confusion, and time. If you will follow this plan, you will be surprised to find how new and fresh your interest in what you read will become.
    Anna C. Brackett (1836–1911)

    All that is told of the sea has a fabulous sound to an inhabitant of the land, and all its products have a certain fabulous quality, as if they belonged to another planet, from seaweed to a sailor’s yarn, or a fish story. In this element the animal and vegetable kingdoms meet and are strangely mingled.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    To abolish a status, which in all ages God has sanctioned, and man has continued, would not only be robbery to an innumerable class of our fellow-subjects; but it would be extreme cruelty to the African Savages, a portion of whom it saves from massacre, or intolerable bondage in their own country, and introduces into a much happier state of life; especially now when their passage to the West-Indies and their treatment there is humanely regulated.
    James Boswell (1740–1795)