This week on MeTV- It’s a fuzzy infestation featuring a familiar face from our “Super Sci Fi Saturday Night” who must battle terrestrial terror that somehow has ended up where no tarantulas had been before! Things get crawly and creepy with “Kingdom of the Spiders”!

We beam you down to Arizona- where local veterinarian Rack Hansen (William Shatner- “Star Trek’s” Captain Kirk) has a new puzzle to solve when a previously healthy prize calf suddenly takes ill and dies-but the cause of death does not seem to be a known cattle disease.

Rack sends blood samples to the Flagstaff university lab, but the answer arrives in the form of a pretty arachnologist, Diane Ashley. She shocks Rack by revealing that the cause of the calf’s death was-a massive dosage of -spider venom!? Rack is skeptical- no spider has that kind of lethal amount of venom! They travel to the Colby farm where the calf came from -and find a pet dog there has also unexpectedly died. When Colby shows them a huge hill that has appeared on the property- the reason is clear-it’s loaded with tarantulas! Diane theorizes that, though they are not native to the area, perhaps pesticides have been killing off the spiders’ food supply in their home area, causing them to migrate- and attack larger animals in order to gain sustenance.

Burning the spider hill does not seem to get rid of the problem, because soon, more local residents are attacked. The town’s mayor, worried about tourists not heading to the area for the upcoming county fair, decides that using strong pesticides will solve the problem-but the results are devastating. This leads to a small group including Diane and Rack, ending up trapped- with no way to escape the deadly arachnids that have claimed the area as their new kingdom!

“Kingdom of the Spiders”, a 1977 addition to the “nature strikes back” themed movies of that time period used about 5000 actual tarantulas in the production. Needless to say, if you have a phobia about spiders, you might want to avoid this one. We’ll tell you about the production, as well as the cast, which includes such notables, besides Shatner, as Woody Strode, Tiffany Bolling, and- Mrs. Sammy Davis Jr.?! Gwengoolie will provide an on-the-spot report, we’ll bring you a song, present a few scenes in “Svensurround”- and bring back a parody of William Shatner’s best known starring vehicle.

The sinister spider sense begins at 8 pm eastern/pacific, 7 central time. MeTV encourages you to again join in the live posting during the show, whether on Twitter/X, or on Bluesky-just make sure that you add the hashtag #svengoolie to your posts! In the Chicago viewing area, exciting Jules Verne/Ray Harryhausen classic “Mysterious Island” will encore at 11 am on our local station WCIU the U.

Make sure you check out the latest merchandise in our MeTV Mall- including the chance to get one of the limited copies of the original “Svengoolie Meets the DC Universe” comic book, featuring heroes and villains like Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman, the Joker and more-available with the purchase of a Sven bobblehead!

Tonight, come for Captain Kirk at the corral- and stay for the paralyzing pandemonium of the multi-legged menace on MeTV!