Giant Spider Movie: ARACHNOPHOBIA (1990)
Our giant spider odyssey has finally led us to Arachnophobia, the greatest spider movie of all time, probably, I don’t know. Top three, at least.
If most of the giant spider movies I have reviewed so far are considered B movies, then this must be an A movie. It was produced by Steven Spielberg, who you may have heard of.
In addition to the movies he directed, Spielberg had a Producer’s hand in so many mainstream Hollywood hits of the 1980s. These include The Goonies, Gremlins, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Poltergeist and Back to the Future. It wouldn’t have been the same without him.
I realise Arachnophobia was released in 1990, but that’s still the 1980s as far as I’m concerned. It takes time for a new decade to establish its identity. The 90s didn’t kick off until sometime in 1991 when Nirvana cleared the decks.
But I digress. My point is that you know a movie is legit when Spielberg puts his name to it. Another clue is that it received a theatrical release. I saw it at the Gallery Cinema in Slough (previously known as Maybox), a ten-screen multiplex that opened in 1987.
Quick aside: check out the list of movies that were on at the same time (this picture is from November 1987): Nightmare on Elm Street 3, Who’s That Girl, Full Metal Jacket, Roxanne, Innerspace, Blind Date, Dirty Dancing, Creepshow 2, Maurice and Ishtar. Can you imagine that abundance of riches now? Maurice is the only one I hadn’t heard of – it’s a period gay romance starring a young Hugh Grant. In case you’re interested.
Horror or comedy? Why not both?
I watched Arachnophobia in the theatre despite my own fear of spiders, or possibly because of it, and the movie became a firm favourite despite scaring the bejesus out of me.
Back then, I saw it as a straight-up horror movie. When I first heard someone describe it as a comedy, I couldn’t quite believe it. I get it now, although I still think it’s mostly a straight thriller until John Goodman beams in from another universe with his wacky theme music and one-liners.
It works, don’t get me wrong. It’s clear what they were going for. Director Frank Marshall said he wanted people to be scared but laughing, like a roller coaster. Movies are described as ‘roller coasters’ way too often, but here it is used appropriately.
I have said this before, but mixing horror and comedy is a difficult balance to get right. Lean too much into the comedy, and it undermines the horror. Lean too much into the horror, and it’s just bleak, and bleakness without the fun isn’t a pleasant feeling, at least for me it isn’t. I’m a wuss.
The best horror-comedies that spring to mind are The Lost Boys, Tremors, Deep Rising, Night of the Creeps, Gremlins, Return of the Living Dead and [INSERT GLARING OMISSION HERE].
They work because the comedy tempers the horror just enough so that the experience is an exhilarating one. Scary and fun, what a cocktail. Who cares if the marketing department is left pulling their hair out trying to figure out how to sell it, and the movie bombs as a result? That’s not my problem. These are the kind of movies that become cult classics and ones I return to time and again.
With Arachnophobia, I wouldn’t say they totally nail the balance between the two, but it’s a noble effort. I wouldn’t watch it multiple times, and perhaps that’s the ultimate test of whether it works for me. That said, I’ve watched it at least four times, and that’s not nothing.
Jurassic Park conspiracy theories
Arachnophobia starts with a loooooooooooong prologue (much like this review) that lasts sixteen-and-a-half minutes. A photographer, Mister Manley, arrives in Venezuela to take pictures for a Professor who is looking for new species of insects and spiders (uh oh). Mr Manley has a fever and keeps mopping his brow, which may become relevant later (this movie is great at foreshadowing).
The adventurers travel to a sinkhole that has been cut off from the outside world for millions of years. They joke about finding dinosaurs there, and there is a Jurassic Park feel to the prologue. This was three years before that movie, and I wondered whether Spielberg and co were making in-jokes about a movie they hadn’t made yet but were already thinking about.
A quick date check shows that the Jurassic Park novel wasn’t released until November 1990, several months after the release of this movie, so it was probably a happy accident, unless Spielberg received an advance copy*.
*What am I talking about? Of course, he received an advance copy. He’s Steven fuckin’ Spielberg! I just checked. Universal Pictures and Amblin Entertainment – that’s Spielberg’s company – bought the rights in 1990 before the book was published!
Anyway, the prologue is a neat template that could have been used for literally any monster of the moviemakers’ choosing. It’s almost disappointing that they burned it on mostly regular-sized spiders. But given that there hadn’t been a mainstream movie about spiders in many years, I believe they correctly identified a gap in the market.
The more I think about it, the more I realise that this Spielberg bloke knows what he’s doing.
A note on spider size: most of the spiders in Arachnophobia aren’t giant, but the final boss, the General, as they call him, is definitely of ‘body positive’ proportions. He is 15 inches across, which is bigger than the largest natural spider by leg span, the giant huntsman (12 inches).
The General would cover a large plate, although I’m not suggesting serving him up at a dinner party or anything. Your guests will not thank you. I’m just using it for scale, you understand.
Doctor Atherton, I presume
Julian Sands plays Doctor Atherton, expedition leader and exposition dealer. That means he explains everything, like I’m doing now, even though you already got it.
I noticed that Doctor Atherton calls Mister Manley ‘Mister Manley’ eight times. He seems to have a fetish for it, although he does shorten it to ‘Manley’ when he’s being impatient.
He even jokes about naming a new species of butterfly ‘Proteus Manleyie.’ I probably spelt that wrong because of the squiggly red line under it. But then, why would a made-up word for a species that doesn’t exist be in the database? There’s only one solution: right click, add to dictionary.
A representative of the local native tribe leads them to the sinkhole, but won’t enter himself. This should really be taken seriously, but it isn’t. The hubris of man. Man proposes, God disposes. All that stuff.
Dr Atherton smokes out the sinkhole, and all kinds of critters fall from the canopy into collecting buckets, including…okay, you know.
The spider looks dead at first, but then leaps onto Manley’s camera. He shakes it off and stomps it; round one to mankind! But from the bushes, the General eyes up revenge and stows away in their kit.
Once back in camp, Manley’s fever worsens, and he goes for a lie down. The General hops into his bunk for a snuggle. One bite and Manley dies – it’s that venomous. One hit kill!
Revenge comes with eight legs
In the spider’s defence, maybe the spider that Manley squished was the General’s best mate or something. Told from his point of view, this whole movie is a revenge flick. A mild-mannered spider is pushed over the edge by evil foreign invaders who pillage his village and capture and murder his tribe (like in Ator: the Fighting Eagle). With nothing left to lose, he embarks on a rampage of revenge on those who have wronged him and his kind.
Dr Atherton, obviously not a medical doctor, blames Manley’s sudden lack of life on the fever (I told you it would be relevant), even though he’s got blood running out of his mouth.
To add insult to injury, the General stows away in Manley’s coffin for the ride back to the good ol’ USA and snacks on him for the entire journey. When they open the casket, he looks like something out of a zombie movie and don’t forget that Arachnophobia is rated PG somehow (it was the 80s, what can I tell ya?).
Invasion USA
Overall, the prologue is solid. Despite its length and excessive Manleyness, it sets up the story nicely. We then cut to the Californian town of Canaima, which, for all you fact fans, is the name of the national park in Venezuela where they filmed the prologue.
The town is picture-perfect. Even the mortuary has a picket fence. And a pet cat. And a pet dog. They both take one look at the spider and hightail it out of the cat flap.
I’m not sure if they would do that in real life (the cat would probably have a go), but it works to build up the General as a credible threat. It pushes open the cat flap on its own, plus it’s a nice reversal of the food chain.
Crow, however, doesn’t give a fuck. It swoops straight down and carries off the General. Has he no respect for rank? You might think this would undermine the General’s street cred, but he asserts himself by biting the crow mid-flight. It falls to the ground and dies (one hit kill!).
The General lands near the house of a family who are literally just moving in, which is excellent timing. The General moves into their barn.
The family in question is Doctor Ross Jennings, his wife Molly and their two kids. They are big city types who went to Yale but have moved to the country from San Francisco to escape the douche bags earthquakes.
To kill or not to kill (a spider)
Ross is the town’s new doctor. Also, he’s scared of spiders (I’m sure there’s a scientific term for that, but it’s slipped my mind). This is established immediately when his son finds one in a packing box, and Ross says, ‘let’s get your mum to take care of it.’
I don’t think I’ve identified more with a fictional character in my entire life. I, too, delegate spider-related duties to my wife, because of a past trauma I’m still not ready to talk about. But whereas my wife kills them with extreme prejudice, Molly does what my mum used to do and escorts the damn thing outside.
‘What’s the problem with that?’ I hear you cry (it might just be the voices in my head again). I’ll tell you the problem, whoever you are. The problem is that Molly doesn’t just escort it outside; she finds a new home for it in their barn, where it hooks up with the General (he has his own pad, after all) and produces a batch of one-hit-kill baby spiders. All of this could have been avoided if it weren’t for the spider Samaritan*.
*Probably not true, as Doctor Exposition later states that there are 50,000 spiders per suburban acre, so the General would have his pick of the ladies. Even so, from those numbers, it’s obvious that killing the single spider that invaded your house isn’t going to make much difference, so just do it.
Anyway, it’s funny how they show Ross and Molly about to christen the new house, if you know what I mean, and then cut to the spiders about to christen the barn, if you know what I mean (you know what I mean).
I also like how Ross has his own spider origin story, much like my own tale of the spider who escaped from under a glass and ran at me (I’ve said too much). Ross’ tale is simpler: he remembers a spider walking on him when he was a helpless baby. It’s unnecessary: nobody needs a reason to fear spiders, we just do, and nobody questions it. But it’s a nice touch.
Ross’ rotten luck
Molly finds the General’s nest in the barn and takes Ross there to cure him of his irrational fear of spiders (if only there were a more succinct way of expressing that). The barn loft is covered in a massive network of webs, which Molly assumes was all produced by the single house spider that she saved. Even Tim Berners-Lee couldn’t create a web that big (I’ll see myself out).
Ross freezes around spiders, except when the plot requires that he doesn’t. On this occasion, he makes it most of the way up the ladder until it breaks. He falls, gets covered in web, screams, and a half-eaten rat nearly falls into his mouth.
As a therapy session, it could have gone better. On the bright side, at least he didn’t meet the General or one of his psychotic offspring.
It’s not going well for Ross at this point. The old fart doctor he was supposed to replace decides he’s not going to retire after all because he’s afraid he’ll die (which is foreshadowing – he’s definitely going to die).
Ross’s only patient is his neighbour Margaret, who is annoyingly healthy (which is foreshadowing – she’s definitely going to die).
The wooden floor of Ross’ house is rotten, and someone could fall through it at any moment (which is foreshadowing – someone’s definitely going to fall through it).
The rotten wood gives the movie an excuse to introduce Delbert McClintock (John Goodman), the town exterminator. Company name: Bugs-B-Gone. He deserves his own spin-off movie, but at this point, I don’t think we’re going to get one.
Delbert tells Molly they haven’t got a termite problem, just bad wood. The solution: ‘tear out bad wood. Put in good wood.’ Can’t argue with that kind of expertise.
Doctor Death
Margaret throws Ross a party to drum up some more business for him, but this coincides with the baby spiders leaving the nest and fanning out to terrorise the town. After the party, Margaret becomes the first victim when she is bitten by a spider.
That’s right, Ross’ only patient dies, right after he took her off the unnecessary blood pressure medication prescribed by the old fart doctor. Old Fart then blames Ross for her death (I can see why, to be fair).
It gets worse. At Margaret’s funeral, the local football coach throws Ross a bone by asking him to check his players for hernias, which involves a lot of coughing and cupping of balls. It’s not much, but it’s honest work. Trouble is, one of the players is bitten by a spider straight after and dies. What are the odds?
As a result of these two incidents, Ross earns himself a new nickname with the townsfolk: Dr Death. Probably don’t put that on the billboard. His children are initially upset but later his daughter is seen laughing with her friend about it. Kids bounce back.
Ross’ luck finally takes a turn for the better when the old fart doctor becomes the next spider victim and he inherits an entire town’s worth of patients. The whole ‘Doctor Death’ thing is instantly forgotten, and his practice is bustling.
More good news for Ross: Old Fart manages to tell his wife he was bitten by a spider before he dies, so Ross finally has a suspect for the killings that isn’t himself.
Doctor Atherton returns
Nobody believes it’s spiders, of course, especially the small-minded Sheriff who hates big city folks, but the toxicology reports prove Ross correct. This leads Ross to call the foremost spider expert, Doctor Atherton, who you may remember from the prologue as the idiot who set this whole sorry chain of events in motion.
Doctor Atherton recognises the name of Canaima but doesn’t make the connection to Mister Manley right away. We see that he is keeping another of the Venezuelan spiders in a glass Terrarium. It’s probably the General’s son, who the General is searching for, like a less cute version of Finding Nemo. Doctor Atherton twangs its web like a guitar string to attract it, which is more foreshadowing that I’ll come back to later.
Some plot happens, and then Doctor Atherton and his assistant Chris arrive in Canaima to explain stuff. I was particularly gripped by his lecture on the spiders’ reproductive habits.
It appears that the General and the house spider not only produced a nest of drone spiders but also a queen. The General then dumped the house spider and replaced her with the new queen, who is his…daughter, I think.
I have no idea how Doctor Atherton knows all this, but he is correct. The house spider must have been awarded the barn in the divorce, because the General and his daughter move out and set up their new nest in Ross’s wine cellar.
The good news is that the first generation of drone spiders cannot breed and are short-lived. The bad news is that the queen’s offspring might be fertile, and that means WORLD DOMINATION, probably.
The hunt begins
Everything is suddenly urgent. Ross, Delbert and Chris head to the mortuary, assuming that the nest must be there. Ross forgets about the massive nest in his own barn.
The mortician and his wife are dead, killed by a spider in their popcorn as they watch Wheel of Fortune.
They don’t find the nest of course (damn you, Crow), so they decide to pinpoint each attack on a town map. It makes a neat circle with Ross’ house right in the middle of it.
Meanwhile, Doctor Atherton has already figured out that the nest is in Ross’ barn, he just doesn’t tell anyone. He sees a photograph of it on the wall of Ross’ practice, taken by Molly earlier in the movie.
He arrives at the barn with the Sheriff. The Sheriff then leaves to tell Ross, while Doctor Atherton starts playing bass guitar on a string of web. Big mistake. The General leaps on him and kills him.
We never see the Sheriff again. They filmed a scene where he is killed by a spider in his police car while on his way to tell Ross, but it was cut from the final movie. Debate amongst yourselves whether this should be considered canon.
Home invasion
When Ross arrives home, Delbert takes care of the original nest and discovers Doctor Atherton’s body. Ross and Chris enter the house, where Molly and the kids are enjoying a quiet evening.
Instead of just GETTING THE FUCK OUT, Ross and Chris walk in like amateur spies who have been told to not act suspicious. I’m surprised they weren’t casually whistling with their hands in their pockets. The spiders must have known the game was up because hundreds of them suddenly swarmed out of nowhere.
It’s a thrilling scene, but it doesn’t really make sense. Why appear now? Ross’ house would have been the first target for the spiders after leaving the nest. And why swarm, when for the rest of the movie they wander about individually?
Spielberg does this at times: sneaking in a ridiculous moment near the end of the movie but getting away with it because you’re so caught up in the drama to notice (like when the shark jumps on the boat at the end of Jaws or when the T-Rex attacks the raptors after entering a building somehow in Jurassic Park).
The scene is a bit ‘teleporty’ as well, a phenomenon not seen since Kingdom of the Spiders. They lock themselves in the bathroom, and a few spiders run under the door. Then in the next shot, the bathroom walls are covered and more spiders are hanging in front of the window to prevent Ross from escaping. Where did they come from?
The General’s last stand
Everyone escapes through the window except Ross. He runs out of the bathroom, forgetting the selective paralysis he sometimes experiences around spiders, dodging them left and right, then leaps head-first off the landing, plummets and smashes right through the floor and into the basement, where the new nest is.
The foreshadowing of the rotten wood has finally paid off!
The good news for Ross is that the drone spiders aren’t allowed into the nest due to their cannibalistic nature (they would eat the queen’s brood, which is about to hatch). The bad news is that the queen and the General are both home.
Ross fights the queen off with a shovel and electrocutes it by chucking it at the fuse box. He then engages in a running battle with the General before his selective spider-induced paralysis kicks in again. The General slowly crawls up his leg.
A piece of wood is lying strategically across Ross’s torso. When the General reaches it, Ross smacks one end, which catapults the General into the fire.
The General comes back for one last sting, so Ross shoots him with a nail gun that sounds like a 44 Magnum (you’re taking the piss now, Stephen). The General conveniently hits the nest, and all the spiders burn up together. World domination…cancelled.
Weird epilogue
There is a sting in the epilogue, but not what you think. Ross and Molly move back to San Francisco and open the expensive wine he was saving. They are surrounded by packing boxes and I expected a stowaway spider to emerge, setting up a sequel set in the city. But this doesn’t happen.
Instead, an earthquake hits and spills their expensive wine. And that’s the end. I’m not quite sure what to make of it. Is the message that they were better off in the country, or is it ‘better the devil you know?’ Or it could be that Mother Nature is going to make you spill your wine one way or another, so pick your poison.
Personally, I think the earthquake releases a multitude of giant spiders that were previously trapped underground, and we’ve got ourselves a franchise (sorry – shared universe, I keep forgetting).
The General’s species can be the good guys next time. Even though they are much smaller than the mole spiders (that’s what I’m calling them), their one-hit-kill capabilities would even the odds.
Let’s just hope that the spiders from the centre of the earth aren’t made of lava or something. That would be silly.
Rating: 7 spider legs out of 8
