Arachnophobia

Not satisfied with the alien malevolence implied by the sneering confidence of your average house spider, director Frank Marshall's Arachnophobia, written by Don Jakoby and Wesley Strick, imposes a hierarchical, hive-based structure upon these creepy crawlies. For, you see, somewhere in Venezuela, deep in the core of a table-top mountain, there exists a tree that is home to dozens of species of undiscovered butterfly and a generalissimo spider that can pump out its own, subordinate colony. Setting aside the kind of farcical war on drugs-era alarm that a South American import could, slowly and methodically, infiltrate small town America, Arachnophobia is still unusually strict about how it separates its villain, in this instance a terrifyingly fertile prehistoric spider, and its many rosy-cheeked victims. The spiderling scions sent out from the collapsing barn of Jeff Daniels' newly rehoused GP are not only pure, prowling evil but seem to be laser-target at the elderly. 

These adventurous and resoundingly unsympathetic arthropods knit themselves into an older lady's lamp, or they trample their way into the abundant snacks of an aging mortician, then lie in wait to deliver their deadly venom. The elimination of the more doddery inhabitants of this picturesque, Californian village coincides with the arrival of Daniels' Dr. Jennings and, perhaps more crucially, his snubbing by a mummified practitioner who had promised this San Francisco import the inheritance of his medical beat. This would seem to be a persistent source of comedic exasperation for Jennings, but this doesn't quit pan out. Although a Doctor Death label is briefly proposed by his cagier neighbours, it fades into the background once secondary characters like the late Julian Sands' softly spoken entomologist or John Goodman's bug exterminator begin gobbling up everybody's attention. Although handsomely photographed by Mikael Salomon, Arachnophobia is a touch too genteel to really dazzle. Like many of its Amblin stablemates, the film is a high concept in desperate need of the neurotic mania that a director like Steven Spielberg (or Joe Dante) is able to, effortlessly, access.