Frank Marshall is one of those mega producers. He helped bring awesome shit to the silver
screen like The Warriors, the Indiana Joneses, the Back to the Futureses, the Gremlinses and etc. He co-found Amblin Entertainment with Steven
Spielberg and Kathleen Kennedy, and was also second unit man on a bunch of
Spielberg’s stuff. The guy has had
success a million times over but in the late 80’s he decided it was time to
direct something. With his stature Frank
must’ve had the pick of the litter. What
would he make, an epic special effects adventure extravaganza? An epic heart wrenching period drama? An epic multi-world spanning tale? A spider invasion movie? Come again?
Yeah, he went with killer spiders. Who the fuck would have ever guessed
that? Well it’s probably a safe bet to
say Marshall and co pitched this premise as the Jaws of spider pictures. You
have the transplant local guy (Jeff Daniels (The Martian, Speed)) whose small town is being ravaged by a giant lethal
spider, he calls in the expert scientist(s) (Brian McNamara (Short Circuit) & Julian Sands (Warlock)), and the deranged professional
(John Goodman (Flight)), and they go
to war with the arachnid. It’s a solid
idea that’s worked well before and wouldn’t you know it, the damn idea works
well here.
However one thing they do that Jaws stayed away from for the most part is they anthropomorphized
the main villain spider perhaps a bit too much.
This thing gets pissed when humans collect his family/soldiers in the
Amazon jungle so he kills one of the expeditionists and hitches a ride with the
corpse all the way to the states. He
then proceeds to setup shop in an old barn and sends his minions out to kill
the residents of a small Californian town.
It just seems like the spider is kinda too smart. In Jaws
the humans invade the shark’s space so the fish was only doin’ what it
does. In Arachnophobia the spider ventures where it isn’t supposed to (can a
Venezuelan spider survive in a California climate anyway?) and that’s a little
harder to get behind. The story would
make more sense if it took place entirely in South America but they knew the
film would be more effective if they moved the events to an environment North
Americans could easily relate to. You
know, cottage style houses and football fields and Wheel of Fortune ‘n’ shit.
As far as the scares go holy shit do the filmmakers fuck
with a ton of people’s very common fear of spiders. A big part of the creepiness is that there
could be a deadly one RIGHT BEHIND YOU!
(Admit it, you at least thought about checking to see if there was a
spider the size of Andre the Giant’s hand sneaking up on you.) They pull out all the stops man. A spider could attack you anytime anywhere:
when you turn off a lamp, put on a shoe, in your shower, under your toilet, the
motherfuckers could be in your goddamn food for Christ’s sake. There is no safe space. You can’t even lock yourself in a room
because they can go under the door or come out the sink or anywhere else. Jeez.
There’s also other unsettling shit like humungous webs with
dead animal parts stuck in them and getting that web stuck all over your
fucking face! And don’t forget about the
vomit inducing crunch you hear when a spider is squashed under a boot (plus the
slimy gooey remnants it leaves behind).
I have to believe this is the best that a killer spider
movie can get (although I haven’t seen Kingdom
of the Spiders yet). It’s very
Spielbergian partly because he produced but also because Marshall had been
working with him for almost ten years at that point. So there’s plenty of that trademarked humor
mixed in to relieve all the tension from the nasty bits which is very welcomed. They seemed to use real spiders for a lot of
the shots but it’s obvious when they’re using a puppet for the main gigantic
one. And they didn’t go for a T-Rex
sized sonuvabitch like in the 50’s or 60’s which was a good move. They stuck to normal sized arachnids but
punched it up with the one very big one and in pure numbers with the smaller
ones. They weren’t afraid to show the
spiders off and I appreciate that because it would’ve been lame to hold back on
this concept. There are a lot of fucking
spiders everywhere in real life so go hog wild, er, spider wild?
Franky picked a weird one to make for his big debut but like
I said, I think he saw an opportunity to do a Jaws meets The Birds type
movie. You know, give this creature its
proper due. The picture wasn’t quite as
big as either of those but it did pretty well at the box office and with
reviews ‘n’ shit. In the end the film
accomplished what it was supposed to, make a couple of bucks, be entertaining
and remind you why you fucking hate spiders.
As a side note Marshall wouldn’t fare so well a few years
later with killer gorillas in Congo and
then have even less success with murderous huskies in Eight Below after that.
Anyway I’m not afraid to admit I got that arachnophobia. It ain’t paralyzing or nothing but those
things are hard for me to take. So it’s
all the more a wonder that this last viewing was probably my fourth or
fifth. It’s a fun time, but also one of
the freakiest.
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