Word: tarantula
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Dates: during 1997-1997
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DIED. ANTON SZANDOR LAVEY, 67, melodramatic founder of the Church of Satan who played the devil onscreen; of pulmonary edema; in San Francisco. The role stuck: LaVey kept a pet tarantula and roamed the streets in a black cape...
...comic premises go, this is not exactly a world-beater. But soon enough, the keepers--gentle souls all--are funnily up in arms defending their pets. A wandering tarantula motivates a genteel striptease, and the mean mogul gets his comeuppance. The script, by Cleese and Iain Johnstone, lacks Wanda's mean and giddy inventiveness, and the directors, Robert Young and Fred Schepisi, don't wind their material very tightly. Still, this good-natured movie is very much in the spirit of those ancient comedies from Ealing Film Studios in which nice, silly people defend some enclave of old-fashioned sanity...