cult film freak: PHILLAN BISHOP FINISHES SCORING WITH 'KISS OF THE TARANTULA'

Written by James M. Tate / 7/23/2026 / No comments / body count , creature , ernesto macias , horror , phillan bishop , revenge , rural , seventies , spiders , thriller

PHILLAN BISHOP FINISHES SCORING WITH 'KISS OF THE TARANTULA'

7/23/2026 | No comment

Suzanna Ling in KISS OF THE TARANTULA Year: 1975 Rating: ***1/2

Ironic that murky synthesizer composer Phillan Bishop's last of three horror scores is the most befitting, sounding perfectly synced with the story-at-hand instead of what are his signature arcade-in-purgatory sound effects (preceded only by Les Baxter's more jarring than sinister FROGS music): that seem otherwise randomly layered throughout...

Beginning with an actual organ in-place of the strange Moog noises, the ongoing thematic melody is a hybrid of children's lullaby and funeral dirge... the latter befitting a troubled, lonely but insanely gorgeous girl named Susan: shown at three different ages, the daughter of a manor-dwelling mortician...

Rebecca Eddins in KISS OF THE TARANTULA

Opening with lithe 5-year-old blonde (actress) Susan Eddins during Bishop's eerie prelude, followed by Susan's older sister Rebecca Eddins as the 10-year-old... who should have had more scenes other than the extremely important rudimentary/plot-projecting murder of an abusive/cheating wife/mother (their real life ma, Beverly Eddins)...

Looking like Melissa Gilbert combined with Linda Blair, this pre-teen girl seems more realistically into keeping and obsessing on critters... rather than the eventual leading blonde bombshell Suzanna Ling, far too alluring and sexy to be, for example, bullied by a group of high school jerks, who would more realistically surround her on the porch GONE WITH THE WIND style...

Suzanna Ling in KISS OF THE TARANTULA

But Ling, despite only appearing in this one 1975 creature-feature, is quite effective with a narrowed, glaring, vengeful expression combined with a vulnerable pout and sometimes an alluring, sensual gaze...

So like WILLARD with rats and SSSSSSS with snakes, KISS OF THE TARANTULA involves an introverted, critter-loving teenager's body-count revenge (ending with a buried-alive sequence involving a molesting cop uncle), using the titular creepy-crawlers perfectly suited for Phillan Bishop's always creepy electronic music: sadly a coda (after MESSIAH OF EVIL and THE SEVERED ARM) for a one-man genre-composer more unknown than underrated.

Rebecca Eddins on her role as 10-Year-Old Susan in KISS OF THE TARANTULA

My mom [who played the mother] was a working actress for a while, mostly theater and some commercials. My father, a colonel in the Army, actually had a bit part in the film as a policeman. He was the one with the mustache. The casting director saw him when he brought me to the set for filming, and asked him to play the part! He was a battalion commander at Ft. Benning at the time, and the film was on location in Columbus, GA...

That film was a true family affair for us! My younger sister Susan is the little blonde walking through the woods in the opening credits [each play younger versions of Suzanna Ling)... And I had to handle the tarantula and let it crawl up arm without freaking out at the audition to get the part! I handled them many times on set... Only one cast member got bit as I recall — the stunt man that rolled around in the culvert with a slew of them!