Beyond directing The Candy Snatchers, Guerdon Trueblood was the king of writing insect movies. Ants!, Terror Out of the Sky, The Savage Bees and this movie, all within two years is how he did it.

Directed by Stuart Hagmann, Tarantulas: The Deadly Cargo pulls a switch on you as you’ve been led to believe that Tom Atkins and Howard Hesseman are the heroes as they fly out of Ecuador with a huge haul of coffee beans that just so happen to be filled with spiders. Yet after they crash in Finleyville, California, the movie shifts to the townspeople battling the furry eight-legged creeps, including Dr. Hodgins (Pat Hingle), Bert Springer (Claude Akins) and Cindy Beck (Deborah Winters).

The town is more concerned about selling oranges than dealing with the spiders until it’s nearly too late. The solution: make the sound of wasps so that the spiders stop moving, then dump them into buckets of alcohol.

Also: these aren’t tarantulas. They’re Brazilian wandering spiders.

That said, I’ll let a silly TV movie play all day long, like a warm blanket when it’s cold outside. It is my joy.

The Kino Lorber blu ray of Tarantulas: The Deady Cargo has a new 2K master, commentary by The Made for TV Mayhem Show podcast hosts Amanda Reyes, Dan Budnik and Nate Johnson, art by Vince Evans and a limited edition slipcase. You can get it from Kino Lorber.