It's hardly profound to say that William Shatner will forever be known for playing Captain Kirk on Star Trek, and the legendary actor has appeared in many other projects, including cult television favorites like T.J. Hooker and The Barbary Coast. Shatner also made some forays into the horror genre, and here's a look at five of them.
#1 - Incubus (1966)
Incubus is a weird curio with a strange history. The plot involves William Shatner as a soldier seeking a magical well to heal his war wounds, who discovers supernatural evils in the mysterious village housing the well. After his arrival, he must fend off a murderous succubus and an even worse incubus summoned to cause further mayhem.
The odd film features dialogue spoken solely in the constructed Esperanto language, and, despite looking visually haunting, the black-and-white film suffered a disastrous preview in San Francisco and never received wide distribution. Incubus remained lost until someone discovered a deteriorated print in France.
#2 - The Horror at 37,000 Feet (1973)
One of William Shatner's most iconic TV roles saw him suffer a near nervous breakdown after seeing a gremlin on a plane's wing in a classic Twilight Zone episode. Years after his Twilight Zone role, Shatner plays a former priest, now a passenger on a cursed flight, grappling with a mysterious demonic force interested in a mile-high human sacrifice!
Maybe it was a bad idea to fly along with Roy Thinnes, an architect transporting an ancient altar, that prompted the woes on the unfriendly skies. Look for other legendary character actors playing disaster movie stock characters in this odd CBS TV movie that gives Shatner a second chance at saving a cursed plane.
#3 - Visiting Hours (1982)
Back in the early 1980s, slasher movies flooded theaters, and many were paint-by-numbers copycats of one another. Some slasher films, such as Visiting Hours, stood out, thanks not only to the hospital setting but also due to the presence of William Shatner. Seriously, what's he doing in a slasher movie? He's playing a supporting role as journalist Lee Grant's boss. Grant makes an enemy out of a serial killer enraged by her feminist commentary, and the mad killer follows her to a hospital where she's been admitted.
Okay, the plot sounds a bit like Halloween II (1981). Ironically, Visiting Hours went in front of cameras in Canada in 1980 before the Halloween sequel. Truthfully, the film would be utterly forgotten if not for Shatner's involvement.
#4 - The Devil’s Rain (1975)
William Shatner plays Mark Preston, a driven man battling a satanic cult led by Ernest Borgnine! Imagine a twisted mashup of Star Trek, McHale’s Navy, and Night Gallery, and you’ll get a visual image of this twisted gem. What is the Devil’s Rain? Without giving too much of the plot away, it has something to do with a book of condemned souls that Shatner and Borgnine have a keen interest in. The over-the-top film ends with a wicked climactic meltdown (literally) over those condemned souls.
Directed by Robert Fuest of The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971) fame, The Devil’s Rain is a strange low-budgeter that went from drive-in fodder to cult movie infamy. When you watch it, keep an eye out for several recognizable character actors and also for a young John Travolta in his feature film debut.
Kingdom of the Spiders (1977)
An army of hungry, migrating, venomous tarantulas is on the loose because pesticides killed their primary food source, so they're switching to a secondary source: a small Arizona town. William Shatner's tough guy veterinarian character, Rack Hansen, rises to face the eight-legged threat and a mayor channeling Jaws to worry more about bad publicity and low tourism numbers than the tarantulas.
Kingdom of the Spiders rode the combination of 1970s animals-on-the-loose and eco-horror fads to a massive box office gross. Tarantulas are real creatures, and the idea of them going berserk because of human folly is plausible. That makes the scenes of humans fending off swarms of REAL tarantulas additionally unnerving. Kingdom of the Spiders is the crown jewel of the charismatic Shatner's horror adventures.
Honorable mentions to A Christmas Horror Story (2015), an anthology film where Shatner's DJ character frames the stories, and Impulse (1974), a wicked thriller with horror elements. While his non-horror roles far exceed those in the genre, William Shatner did make some memorable and impactful scare films in his career.