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The Appropriate Tune - "Boris The Spider", by The Who
I’ll tell ya, I was not a brave kid when I was a kid. Didn’t like the dark, didn’t like water, didn’t like heights, it all got a thumbs down from. I especially wasn’t a fan of the creepy crawlies, bugs, spiders, crabs, republicans, all those slimy things with too many eyes and nasty mouths. So naturally I’ve spent much of my film watching ‘career’ avoiding movies that might feature these things in abundance, because my goal is actually to enjoy what time I have on this planet. But not today. Today we’re getting uncomfortable.
In Arachnophobia, Jeff Daniels (Dumb & Dumber, The Purple Rose of Cairo), stars as Ross Jennings, a doctor who has recently moved to the small town of Canaima California. Unfortunately there are a couple of problems. For one, the doctor who was supposed to retire has decided he’s not going to do that, leaving Jennings in a bit of a financial bind. For two, the basement in his new house is totally fucked, so there goes his wine cellar. And for three, he’s a terrible arachnophobe just as the town is getting infested with a highly venomous, extremely invasive and incredibly murderous breed of spiders from the mountains of Venezuela. When it rains it pours, right?
So this isn’t a ‘giant spider’ movie as I was expecting (probably thinking of the David Arquette vehicle Eight Legged Freaks) but a ‘lots of spiders’ movie (like the Willia Shatner vehicle Kingdom of Spiders). Except unlike Kingdom of Spiders, which had a lot of unmoving arachnids, these things are everywhere and they’re crawling and jumping all over people, and they make sure to get plenty of closeups. So even if you’re more tolerant of the normal size spiders, they make sure you are going to be experiencing a world of hell every which way you can.
This is actually the debut film of Frank Marshall by the way, a co-owner of Amblin Entertainment at the time, and I think you can feel the influence even before you see Spielberg’s name in the executive producer spot. It’s very classically cinematic in that Spielberg way, especially in the opening with that surging, brass-heavy orchestration and the sweeping shots of Venezuela, but even in the ‘small town authorities ignore obvious warning signs until threat becomes impossible to ignore’ setup is reminiscent of Jaws. By the way, one of the other movies that Marshall directed was Congo, which was also Spielbergian, except that instead of dinosaurs and sharks it was gorillas and Tim Curry.
Which I don’t say to write Arachnophobia off, because obviously to be compared to one of the most successful directors ever isn’t an insult, but also because Marshall isn’t just playing copycat. There’s a bite of gallows humour here that I don’t feel comes up often in Spielberg’s own projects, that helps balance the movie on that line between horror and comedy. I mentioned that the film had the influence of Spielberg, but you could also see the film as one calling back to those classic horror movies of the past that were popular at the time. Not a specific, serious remake like The Blob or The Fly, but a madcap tribute to that era like Killer Klowns from Outer Space. Except without the cotton candy cocoons filled with blood, and more John Goodman being John Goodman.
Obviously if you have severe arachnophobia then you don’t need me to tell you to avoid this movie, you’re already doing it. For other folks, I’d say this would actually be a solid pick for a family movie night. It’s got the frights but nothing graphic, it’s got comedy, it moves at a brisk pace, it’s got Mimi from the Drew Carey Show in a minor role, it’s an easily digestible, easily enjoyable movie. And when I say digestible, don’t think about that one statistic that says you swallow around 12 spiders while you’re asleep every night.
STATUS: RECOMMENDED
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