Arachnophobia is a 1990 family-friendly horror film directed by Frank Marshall and starring Jeff Daniels and John Goodman.
Plot[]
A venomous South American spider hitches a ride to a California town called Canaima. There, a doctor named Ross Jennings, his wife and kids move to the town from San Francisco. The spider known as, "The General" leaves the mortuary where the victim it bit named Jerry Manley is being held. a crow picks up the general intending to eat it, but the general bites the bird, which kills it, and it lands in the yard of the Jennings family's new house. The General takes refuge in a barn in the backyard.
The kids find a house spider in one of their moving boxes. Both Ross and his son suffer from Arachnophobia. Ross's wife Molly says it's bad luck to kill a spider in a new house, so she releases it outside. that night, the general mates with the house spider that Molly released, creating an egg sack that will soon spawn spider soldiers.
The next day, Ross is short of patients after the town doctor Sam Metcalf refuses to retire from his occupation. Ross is able to help a single patient named Margret Higgins. Later, the spider hybrids hatch from the egg sac, and one of them crawls to Margret's house where it bites her hand while attempting to turn off her lamp, killing her.
Sam seems to suspect that Ross is responsible for Margret's death. Later that day, another spider crawls into the helmet of a high school football player. The teen puts on his football helmet and gets bitten, collapsing to his death. The townspeople soon give Ross the nickname, "Dr. Death". That night while getting ready for bed after riding his treadmill, Sam is bitten on the foot by a spider, being their next claimed victim.
Now that Ross is the town doctor, he does an autopsy on all the victims, confirming that they were killed by an unidentified toxin. Ross gets in contact with an entomologist named James Atherton, who was on the Venezuelan expedition where the general came from. He joins Ross, a scientist named Chris, the sheriff, and an exterminator named Delbert McClintock. Together they investigate the spiders, where they learn that the spiders have no sexual organs similar to ants or bees and are soldiers that serve a general spider and his queen. They then search for the general before it's queen creates non hybrid spiders that will kill everyone in town and the next. Ross warns his kids that if they see a spider, they shouldn't catch it or kill it, instead just run.
After mapping out the locations of the spiders' victims, Ross concludes that the nest is in the barn in his backyard, though Delbert disagrees due to it being too cold for the spiders to survive. James enters the barn, and the general bites his neck, piercing its jaws through his skin drawing blood and killing him. The general figures out what the humans' plans are, so it sends its spider army to invade the house. Hundreds of spiders surround the Jennings family, coming out of the wall, the sink, and going through the doorknob. Molly and her kids escape through the bathroom window, but Ross in unable to due to spiders dangling around the window. Ross then falls through the floor into the basement.
The General spider staring at Ross.
Ross figures out that the basement is the nest, and successfully kills the queen, however, the general fights back and tries to kill Ross. He attempts to throw wine bottles on the general and set it on fire, but the general evades Ross's strikes. Ross then falls on the ground, where he's frozen in fear as the general crawls on Ross, staring at him. Ross sees that the general is standing on a piece of wood and flings the general into the fire. While burning alive, the general attempts to run towards Ross in order to bite him, however, the general is shot with a nail gun by Ross, killing the general and destroying the spider egg sac, finally conquering his arachnophobia. Delbert arrives to get him out of the basement and finishes killing the last remaining soldiers.
Sometime later, Ross and his family move back to San Francisco, where an earthquake happens. The movie ends with Ross and Molly going to check on the kids, and an aftershock knocks over his favorite wine.
Trivia[]
- The spider that portrayed the general was a female goliath bird eater wearing a fake abdomen prosthetic to make it appear bigger, and to make it seem like a new species of spider. Said spider was given the name, "Big Bob" on set.
- When filming the movie concluded, Big Bob was adopted by Mythbusters member Jamie Hyeneman.
- Aside from Big Bob, the general was also brought to life with spider animatronics of various sizes.
- The spiders used to portray the hybrid soldiers were Avondale spiders due to their very social behavior and being harmless to humans.