Film Review: Can’t Stop The Music (dir by Nancy Walker)

Posted on June 22, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

1980’s Can’t Stop The Music opens with Jack Morrell (young Steve Guttenberg) working in a record store. However, he’s got bigger plans that just standing behind a cash register. He quits his job and then roller skates around New York with a big goofy grin on his face. Everyone he passes is charmed. And why not? New Yorkers are famous for their good-humor and polite manners.

Jack is a songwriter but he doesn’t have the voice necessary to sell his songs. His platonic roommate, former supermodel Sam Simpson (Valerie Perrine), decides that what Jack needs is a band to sing his lyrics. Luckily, Sam knows a singer named Felipe Rose. He spends all of his time dressed like an Indian brave. There’s no specific reason given for his costume choice, it’s just something that he does. Sam and Jack are also able to recruit a construction worker (David Hodo), a “leatherman” (Glenn Hughes), a cowboy (Randy Jones), a G.I. (Alex Briley), and a singing cop (Ray Simpson). The name of the band? The Village People!

Yes, Can’t Stop The Music is fictionalized story of how The Village People came together. It was directed by TV actress Nancy Walker. It was a major studio production, one that was expected to build on the popularity of disco and bring in a lot of money. Unfortunately, it was released at the same moment that disco stopped being trendy. Can’t Stop The Music has a reputation for being bad and campy. Both of those things are true but I should point out that it’s also a remarkably boring film. The movie is full of characters who are constantly coming and going. Sam has a large collection of friends and former co-workers, all of whom just tend to randomly pop up. Most of them don’t really add much to the overall plot and, indeed, it’s hard not to resent being expected to keep track of all of them when there’s really no reason for many of them to be in the film. A pre-transition Caitlyn Jenner plays Ron White, a lawyer who is mugged while delivering a cake and who ends up as Sam’s boyfriend. As much as I made fun of Jenner as a performer while reviewing CHiPs, Jenner is even worse in You Can’t Stop The Music. In fact, Jenner’s performance is one of the worst that I have ever seen. If Ron angry? Is Ron sad? Is Ron in love? Is Ron an alien from outer space? You never really can tell, largely because Caitlyn Jenner’s performance is so inept. It’s not so much that Jenner can’t show emotion and one gets the feeling that Jenner isn’t even sure what emotion is.

As for the Village People themselves …. well, this film leaves little doubt that none of them were professional actors. Felipe Rose probably comes the closest to giving a credible performance but, as individuals, the members of the Village People aren’t that interesting and it takes forever for them to actually become a group. Even after they become a group, they still can’t generate enough on-screen charisma to really hold our attention. Who knew the Village People were so boring?

The majority of the film plays coy as far as the subtext of the Village People’s song are concerned. Steve Guttenberg’s character is definitely gay-coded without the film actually coming out and saying so.. The construction worker gets a fantasy in which he imagines being lusted after by several female groupies. The first few performances of the Village People are rather bland and it’s almost as if the film is trying to avoid the fact that the Village People’s songs and the personas of the performers all paid tribute to gay culture in the 1970s. But then the film hits the YMCA production number and suddenly, the Village People are frolicking with half-naked, muscular men while joyfully singing about everything that’s available at the YMCA. For that brief moment, the film embraces the campiness of the Village People and this major studio production actually becomes a bit subversive. It’s also one of the few moments in the film in which anyone seems to be genuinely happy. The Village People seem to be having fun. Unfortunately, the YMCA sequence is the exception instead of the rule.

Can’t Stop The Music‘s sin isn’t that it’s boring as much as it’s just bland. It’s an incredibly blah film. No film about New York in the 70s has any right to be so forgettable.

Horror On The Lens: Kingdom of the Spider (dir by John “Bud” Cardos)

Posted on October 19, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Agck! I hate spiders and today’s movie has got a lot of them!

Fortunately, it also has William Shatner and some lovely Southwestern scenery.

Still, if you have a thing about spiders, this film will probably scare the Hell out of you, which makes it perfect for October. Fortunately, William Shatner gives a very William Shatenerish performance and therefore provides some relief from all of the tarantula horror.

Here is 1977’s Kingdom of the Spiders!

Kingdom of the Spiders (dir by John “Bud” Carlos)

Posted on August 18, 2022 by Leonard Wilson

While many celebrated International Cat Day on August 8th, it also happened to be National Tarantula Appreciation Day. As a result, I decided to return to a film that terrified me when I was little (and watched when I was far too young), 1977’s Kingdom of the Spiders.

As a kid growing up near the beginning of cable, movies were regularly during the weekends shown on prime time TV. This consisted of about 5 main channels in New York City: CBS (Channel 2), NBC (Channel 4), ABC (Channel 7), WNYW (Channel 5, which would become Fox in the Mid80s), WWOR (Channel 9), and WPIX (Channel 11). In addition to this, Channel 5, 9, and 11 would have movies playing on weekday afternoons just before the nightly news. I ended up watching Kingdom of the Spiders at my grandmother’s house, from under her bed. I didn’t sleep well for a while after this movie.

I don’t know why she ever owned it, but my Grandmother had this near clear shower curtain with a giant red and black spider on it. The web started from the center and spread out to the edges of the curtain. The image below is the closest approximation I could find to the one she owned. This was the source of my arachnophobia, which caused me to either enter the bathroom with my eyes closed, or use the basement bathroom (which had the rare added chance of seeing actual spiders). She tried to make me see the reality of it once, scooping me up and lifting me in front of the curtain to realize it was just a plastic sheet. My imagination was a little too much, however, and all I saw was something that wanted to cocoon and drink me dry. I screamed and flailed in her arms, and that was the end of that.

The premise for Kingdom of the Spiders is incredibly simple. At first, life is pretty comfortable in Verde Valley, Arizona. You’ve a family of cattle ranchers in the Colby’s (played by Spartacus‘ Woody Strode and Can’t Stop the Music‘s Altovise Davis). However, when a farmer’s cattle begin to fall ill and eventually dies, Dr. Rack Hansen (William Shatner, Miss Congeniality) is brought in to figure out what’s happening. Between heavily flirting with this brother’s widow Terry (Marcy Lafferty, Star Trek: The Motion Picture and Shatner’s wife at the time) and taking care of her daughter, Laura (Natasha Ryan, The Amityville Horror), it’s a surprise Rack has the time to help the Colby’s out.

When he sends in the blood samples to a lab for more research, the diagnosis is spider venom on a highly toxic scale. It’s so toxic that a spider specialist, Diane Ashley (Tiffany Bolling, Open House) is brought in to help. Of course, this springs Rack into action. After they meet, he cuts her off on the road, gives her his best one liner and then picks her up and takes her to his favorite restaurant (in her car, mind you). Rack’em, indeed.

Over lunch, they come to an understanding that DDT might be the cause of their tarantula menace. Having killed off their regular food sources of insects, the spiders have moved on to larger game. A quick visit back to the Colby Ranch confirms their fears. A spider mound is on their farm and the decision is eventually made to burn it down. Burning helps, but little do the humans realize that the spiders had exit strategies of their own. They also had additional mounds that the humans never even noticed.

With time running around out, Rack and Diane eventually decide the answer is more DDT, but the spiders thwart the attempt and decide from that point on, it’s all out war. Can the town survive the assault?

So, the spiders in Kingdom of the Spiders are just tarantulas. While all tarantulas are spiders, not all spiders are tarantulas. We’re not talking about the small house spiders from Frank Marshall’s Arachnophobia. They can be dangerous too, depending on the type. The Brown Recluse in particular has venom that is necrotic and will eat away the flesh around a bite. This movie focuses on the large hairy ones.

From what I’ve read, while most tarantulas have venom, it’s not particularly dangerous to humans. The only real exception to this are the Funnel Web spiders of Australia. They’re super aggressive and their venom can kill. Thankfully, according to a USA Today article, no one on that continent’s been killed by one since 1980. Additionally, some tarantulas only really use their fangs as a last resort. They will usually choose to flick the hairs off their back, which sting the eyes and noses of most predators.

There were about 5000 tarantulas used in the movie, with a mix of real ones for the early close ups and fake models for some of the wider shots. I’ve always wondered if the American Humane Society supervised the film, because it looks looks like a number of them were killed (at least in the last third).

Shatner is pretty much himself here, bringing that style he always does to a role. It’s not the over the top levels of Captain Kirk or Denny Crane, but it’s still fun to watch. Though I haven’t been able to confirm it, I’m told that Tiffany Bolling was one of the few people that wasn’t scared to work with the arachnids and that helped to get her the role. Most of the cast are okay, thought their reactions to spiders might cause one to laugh more than to share in their fear. Granted, I’d probably react the same way as most of them.

There’s one part involving Mrs. Colby with a gun that shares the same musical piece used in David Cronenberg’s Rabid and Scott Sanders’ Black Dynamite. Much like the classic Wilhelm scream, this musical piece seems to pop up in older movies now and then.

Overall, Kingdom of the Spiders is a decent film to unleash upon your Arachnophobic friends to watch them squirm. The spiders may spend more time running away from their prey, but some low to the ground camera shots help to make things more interesting.