Colin Moore
I considered an “Ant Man” matinee until I took on this review and got de-bugged. “Kingdom of the Spiders” put me over the top, one of a slew of nature-run-amok movies produced in the years following the true classic “Jaws.” “Sweet Jesus!” gasps William Shatner. Yeah, Shatner. In the movie’s final seconds his Doctor “Rack” Hansen prys open the wooden slats barring a window. Rack, entomologist babe Diane Ashley and a few token nobodys have barricaded themselves in the town lodge after an all out assault by venomous tarantulas. When they peer out, the view is B-movie heaven, the helpless country town blanketed in white webs. Fakish painting. Bad, unintentionally comedic movie. But at least it used real arthropods (some were rubber). “Empire of the Ants” (1977) does too though when photographically enlarged to convey the mutating effects of toxic waste, the results are…not good. In certain shots their legs don’t touch the ground. But with observations like “Remember that sugar refinery that we passed on the way here? Something funny…” how can you go wrong? You can.
Whether “Arachniphobia” sits near the top of this heap depends on what you look for in your creature feature. The approach seems to vary from the gradual creep-out of the pre-digital era (“Them,” “Squirm”) to the sudden sucker-punching mayhem of productions that show all and early (“Eight Legged Freaks,” “Snakes on a Plane”). “Phobia,” celebrating its 25th year of existence this month, was marketed as a “thrill-omedy,” a word CinemaBlend’s Rich Knight calls “the dumbest word I’ve ever heard,” and “Just saying that word makes me want to puke.” Three cheers for brute honesty. Regardless, the movie was a moderate hit for first-time director Frank Marshall, the better known co-founder of Amblin Entertainment, colleague of Steven Spielberg and spouse of now Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy.
The story applies many of the genre’s supposed must-haves (the doctor/entomologist, the small town, the disbelieving townsfolk) while ignoring others (the money-grubbing mayor, biohazard mutations). Jeff Daniels (“Dumb & Dumber”) plays Ross Jennings, a physician with a physician sounding name who moves his young family from San Francisco to small-town Canaima for clean air and work. He’s set to take over the practice of its retiring doctor, aging crab apple Metcalf (Henry Jones), but is denied the job after said crab apple changes his mind (Can doctors do that?). Woe is Jennings. Not only is he economically sterile but must call on his wife Molly (Harley Jane Kozak) to remove the tiniest of joint-legged invertebrates from their new home. Since the crib Jennings has suffered from some form of arachni-PTSD apparently; a spider crawled up his body when he was 2. Spielberg kept it simpler in his animal flic. Chief Brody (Roy Scheider) was a landlubber afraid of the water, period; no incredible story needed. Couldn’t Jennings have been scared of…legs? Financial hope comes to Ross in the form of one elderly patient before she mysteriously dies, then a stint monitoring the high-school football team (in a turn-and-cough scene that goes on far too long) until a player is struck down following a seizure. Of course, we know the truth. The source of this deadly mischief arrived aboard the coffin of one of Canaima’s very own residents, a photographer assigned to a bug hunt in a Venezuelan sink hole. That’s what you get for messing with the local wildlife. The General, as the spider is called, shacks up in Jennings’ barn, impregnating a local species. One big happy toxic family.
“Thrill-omedy.” While the word doesn’t generally induce the same fluid expulsion as for Mr. Knight, it is a challenging genre pairing, usually at the expense of the thrill (“Army of Darkness”) if the comedy is biting enough. “Phobia”’s balance of laughs and chills doesn’t fully flop but better to take a page from the likes of “Goonies” or “Beetlejuice” and build humor into the characterization. “Phobia”’s comedy is mainly for scene/shot punctuation. A better categorization might be Thriller Light. The exception is town exterminator Delbert McClintock (John Goodman), a kind of Jerry Lewis as John Wayne as Ghostbuster. “I’m bad,” he proclaims after crushing a spider under his boot. At times funny too but underused. In the world of the do-over, Marshall and screenwriters Don Jakoby and Wesley Strick (“The Saint,” “Wolf”) might let “Jaws” be more their guide and limit the bug hunters to 2 or 3. The parallel to Spielberg’s film is already there, with Jennings as out-of-towner Brody, entomologist Atherton (Julian Sands) as Hooper and McClintock as Quint. Adding the town sheriff (Stuart Pankin), the county coroner (James Handy) and a nerdy assistant (Brian McNamara) to the mix is great for job creation but bad for on-screen bonding. By the closing credits it’s hard to consider them anything other than familiar strangers.
So what did Marshall learn from the director of “Jaws”? Not to show your hand possibly. What ultimately aided the Spielberg film were the very problems that kept the mechanical sharks from “acting” (bad weather, salt water in the hoses). In the end, the filmmakers were forced to suggest the beast using other methods, Quint’s yellow barrels for example. ”The shark not working was a godsend. It made me become more like Alfred Hitchcock than like Ray Harryhausen,” said Spielberg. Marshall does likewise in how he unwraps his villain (the General at least), using legs, shadows and reflections until the final showdown with Jennings when we’re permitted full body shots and the most unsettling part of any hairy arachnoid – its glistening eyes. Worth a re-watch? Because of its age, “Arachniphobia” is probably more of a family film than ever. Quck fangs in the flesh and a spider emerging from a victim’s mouth are the worst of it, nothing compared to current expectations but for some Thriller Light will do just fine.
