‘Arachnophobia’ Still Has Eight Legs After 30 Years

It’s been thirty years since Arachnophobia was released, and it wouldn’t be at all surprising if it was considered required viewing for film students who want to understand the formula for a one and done creep out thriller that abides a wide audience appeal.

Long before 1990, American culture became obsessed with spiders. It can be argued that this particular corner of horror extends to ants and bees, if we’re talking about bugs and insects as the go-to tiny, and often oversized monsters, we’re meant to contend with. The classic giant ant films, Them! (1954), and the more realistic Empire of the Ants (1977) were not the gateway, but a symptom of our fascination. Additional credit to the trend has to go to the time when low and medium budget drive-in monster movies were all the rage in the late 1950s. Movies like Tarantula (1955), The Monster That Challenged the World (1957), Earth vs The Spider (1958), The Fly (1958), and The Wasp Woman (1959) are only the short list. Even The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957) featured a “giant” tarantula house spider as one of Grant Williams’ threats.

The trend may have begun with America’s fixation with the perfection and cleanliness of “the good old days.” Everything was Spic and Span back then. Vintage ads are riddled with pressure to clean and to keep things clean. You can’t watch a collection of old commercials without seeing the animated “Raid!” ads. The phenomenon was likely an inspiration for the character, Upson Pratt in “They’re Creeping Up on You,” the final story in the great anthology movie, Creepshow (1982) “God damn bugs!”

RELATED: Halloween Kills, The Forever Purge, Candyman Get New Release Dates

Buena Vista Pictures

The trend continued through the decades with the effortlessly titled movie, Bug (1975), Kingdom of the Spiders (1977); and proved bugs were our best horror bane with a 1986 remake of The Fly, starring Jeff Goldblum and Geena Davis. By 1992, trendy bad guy horror was on board, following the success of the Jason Voorhees and Freddy Krueger franchises, as we welcomed Candyman in 1992. It reminded us bees were creepy and scary. We went to outer space to fight alien bugs in Starship Troopers by 1997, and in Peter Jackson’s 2005 version of King Kong, bugs made you forget about a giant ape in a giant ape movie for six excruciatingly icky minutes. It may be one of the best scenes featuring bugs in cinematic history. Fight me. But, step back first. Stumble backward into the time machine, Seth Brundle style.

In the 1970s, the thriller category began to welcome bugs on the scene with cult classics like The Swarm (1978). It’s Piranha (also 1978) with bees, if you’ve never heard of it. You never heard of Piranha? It’s Jaws with a gazillion tiny sharks. Disaster movies were very popular at the time, and it was a natural progression to bring massive numbers of dangerous insects into the picture. It was as if disaster movies had a baby with our love for being terrified by bugs. Maybe Food of the Gods (1976) was the illegitimate first child that went up for adoption.

In the ’70s, we even circulated a rumor that the popular bubble gum called Bubble Yum had spider eggs in it. That urban myth was as real for us as Mikey from the Life cereal commercials dying from consuming Pop Rocks and Pepsi at the same time. Picture those Mentos and Coke videos happening in a kid’s belly. Boom! Those were our memes back then. The generic earwig nest in your brain, or the cockroach living in your ear survive to this day. Nah, they have to be dead by now… rotting bug carcasses in your head. Push it further in with a Q-Tip. No one will ever know.

RELATED: John Carpenter Releases Two New Tracks Ahead of Vinyl Release

Buena Vista Pictures

In the 1980s, horror took a minor break from bugs to concentrate more on slashers and zombies, but by the time 1992 rolled around, we were all about to suffer from arachnophobia. Some of us more than others. I’m looking at you, Jeff Daniels. In the opening scene of Arachnophobia, we’re gently reminded that all bugs matter when the guy we initially think is the main character (Mark L. Taylor’s Jerry Manley) finds the veinticuatro on his person. The leader of the expedition explains it’s the 24-Hour Ant… “They kill in sufficient numbers” …to the background of a beautifully pleasant score. “Just what the world needs… more bugs!” the doomed Manley says shortly after.

They’re headed to “Tepuis, a place where species have survived in isolation for millions of years.” the expedition photographer is told. “Oh, any man-eating dinosaurs?” Nope, but only three years later, Jurassic Park (1993) will borrow the formula. It’s simple: Humanity messes around where it doesn’t belong; and soon nature throws away the welcome mat and starts killing people. Of course, first you have to mate two unlikely lovers. In Jurassic Park’s case, it was frog DNA and dinosaur DNA that did the abracadabra. In Arachnophobia, it’s a rare and deadly spider that makes the intercontinental trip to Small Town, USA, and bumps uglies with a common barn spider. It’s so rare that in typical ’90s fashion, they fog a tree to kill thousands of other rare bugs just to collect a sample. But fuck’em, right? They’re bugs!

Buena Vista Pictures

We spend some time developing characters, family dynamics, and local politics as we need to. Then we get to the good stuff. Lots of spiders, people mysteriously dying, and as if laughing at Jeff Daniels’ Ross Jennings for his irrational fear isn’t enough, we get comedy relief from John Goodman as Delbert McClintock, the exterminator. The year is 1990, but Arachnophobia is a perfectly 1980s movie that should be on your watch list. It still stands up today, even though we gave bugs to kids with A Bug’s Life (1998) and Antz (also 1998, around the time we started adding a Z at the end of something plural to make it marketable). I still remember every bug war and bug sanctuary I made with my collection of Miracle Whip jars when I was a kid. Maybe bugs belong to kids, and we develop the dread of dealing with them as adults. To handle it we make fun of the old classics that were originally meant to terrify us. You’ve seen Eight Legged Freaks (2002) and Big Ass Spider! (2013), right? As fun as they are, we may have gone overboard with dipping comedy into our horror. Two great tastes that taste great together, indeed. The glory days and golden age of bug movies may have been the late 1950s, but the sweet spot between then and now happened in the late ’80s and early ’90s. Arachnophobia lands smack dab in the middle of that sweet spot.

If you haven’t seen it set yourself a date with a DVD or your favorite streaming service and a bottle of Ross Jennings’ chateau, and get to know how it’s done. It’s creepy fun with a plethora of character actors you need to know and a seamless combination of animatronic and real spiders.

Ross Jennings: “Chris, I’m scared to death.”
Chris Collins (Brian McNamara): “Yeah, we all are, but our brains secrete a neurotransmitter that enables us to deal with them.”
Ross Jennings: “I don’t think I have that particular neurotransmitter.”
Your friendly neighborhood Horror Geek Life writer (Kurt Marquart): “That’s ’cause you got the Arachnophobia, Ross. Excelsior!”


RELATED: ‘Tyson vs. Jaws’ Showdown Set for Shark Week 2020

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.