Arachnophobia (1990)

A new species of spider is discovered in the rainforests of Venezuela, where British entomologist Dr James Atherton (Julian Sands) is seeking new specimens for tagging. It’s a formidable meat-eating beast, about the size of a baseball mitt, with a deadly bite.

It kills Atherton’s photographer, Jerry Manley (Mark L. Taylor) and then hitches a ride back to the US inside his coffin.

Once it arrives in his bucolic rural hometown of Canaima, California, it mates with a domestic spider, spawning thousands of hybrids – each as deadly as a copperhead – which start lurking in the shoes and toilet bowls of the locals.

The plot includes all the essential elements: (a) the old fuddy doctor who refuses to accept the alarming evidence, (b) the narrow-minded local law enforcement officer who resents outsiders, (c) the bright young doctor whose warnings are ignored, (d) the loyal wife and kids, (e) the plain-spoken local woman who sticks up for the new doc, and – of course – (e) the scientist called in at crisis point to shake his head gravely and announce that a deadly infestation seems to be at hand.

The film’s hero is bright young doctor Ross Jennings (Jeff Daniels) – a man who has a paralysing fear of spiders. He has just moved from San Francisco with his photographer wife Molly (Harley Jane Kozak) and their kids into one of those charming little Victorian houses you find only on the back lots of movie studios.

Soon, bad things start to happen.

The kindly local widow bites the dust. A young football player topples over dead. The old-fogey doctor, Sam Metcalf (Henry Jones), refuses to order an autopsy, but then events conspire to prove him wrong, and soon, spider man Dr Atherton has been called in from the university and is shaking his head in the approved manner.

The spiders in Arachnophobia are wonderfully photogenic, partly because director Frank Marshall is good at placing them in the foreground, shooting them in closeup and allowing their shadows to cast alarming images when the characters aren’t looking.

He’s also clever at establishing where the spiders are, then allowing us to cringe as the people in the movie do precisely the wrong thing. The toilet seat scene is a splendid case in point.

And yet, for all the creepy-crawly shocks in the film, Arachnophobia never goes over the edge into sheer disgusting horror.

It maintains a certain humorous edge – especially in the scenes involving John Goodman as the friendly local exterminator, Delbert from ‘Bugs-B-Gone’, who knows a big spider when he sees one, throws away his biodegradable and ecologically sound chemicals and gets out the dangerous stuff – he’s the Rambo of bug killers.

Directed by Frank Marshall and developed by Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment for Disney’s Hollywood Pictures, It’s the kind of movie where you squirm out of enjoyment, not terror, and it doesn’t pound you over the head with violence.

Dr Ross Jennings
Jeff Daniels
Molly Jennings
Harley Jane Kozak
Tommy Jennings
Garette Patrick Ratliff
Shelley Jennings
Marlene Katz
Delbert McClintock
John Goodman
Dr James Atherton
Julian Sands
Sheriff Parsons
Stuart Pankin
Chris Collins
Brian McNamara
Jerry Manley
Mark L. Taylor
Henrietta Manley
Lois De Banzie
Dick Manley
Warren Rice
Dr Sam Metcalf
Henry Jones
Evelyn Metcalf
Frances Bay
Coach Henry Beechwood
Peter Jason
Edna Beechwood
Jane Marla Robbins
Bunny Beechwood
Theo Schwartz
Becky Beechwood
Cori Wellins
Bobby Beechwood
Chance Boyer
Milton Briggs
James Handy
Irv Kendall
Roy Brocksmith
Blaire Kendall
Kathy Kinney
Margaret Hollins
Mary Carver
Mayor Bob
Robert Frank Telfer

Director
Frank Marshall