30th anniversary of Arachnophobia - July 18. 1990

I only watched this movie for the first time recently. I was under the impression it was some sort of slapstick comedy involving spiders. I was pleasantly surprised. This was a real blast. It felt like it was trying to combine the tones of Gremlins and Jaws, and it succeeded quite admirably. There's some true terror and suspense here and first time director Frank Marshall does a good job with the buildup, letting us get to know the town and characters before all hell breaks loose. The film has strong production values with Spielberg and Kathleen Kennedy (!) producing and Frank Marshall who produced several classics with them and was a 2nd unit director on films like Raiders of the Lost Ark, Back to the Future, and Who Framed Roger Rabbit. We have Spielberg's normal editor Michael Kahn working on the film, great cinematography by Mikael Salomon (The Abyss) and a great score by Trevor Jones (Cliffhanger, The Last of the Mohicans, Labyrinth) and animatronic effects by Chris Walas (Gremlins, The Fly) . Jeff Daniels is also a great everyman lead and he has great support from John Goodman and Julian Sands. This is basically a B movie with an A list budget and crew. How many horror movies, especially creature features, today would take the time and money to go and film a 15 minute  prologue in Venezuela complete with sweeping helicopter shots? This movie has kind of been lost in the shuffle when it comes to films in the Amblin catalog of the time and it did OK but not great business when it came out but I'd say this deserves to be just as fondly remembered as those other films. There are have been talks of a remake of Arachnophobia but I'd say it won't be as good. Especially since they no doubt will use CGI spiders instead of the mix of real and animatronic ones this movie used and there is no doubt it won't look as good

Fun facts


-the spider on the poster was removed from the VHS and DVD covers for some reason. They put it back on the Blu ray covers


-the trailers and TV spots marketed the movie more as a wacky comedy. Featuring John Goodman's character heavily, even though he actually has an extended cameo. They also used the term "Thrillomedy" to describe it, something that hasn't really been used again






-When Jeff Daniels came on board to play Dr. Ross Jennings, the film was a serious horror movie, one that Daniels told Philadelphia's "Daily News" was pretty formulaic" "You could tell that the lines were kind of written by computer," he said. He and Frank Marshall were hoping for a more ironic tone, so the script went through several revisions, and the filmmakers studied Alfred Hitchcock films and Jaws (1975) to get the tone right. One key change: Daniels' character was given a fear of spiders.


-recent article on the special effects of the film 

news.yahoo.com/arachnophobia-special-effects-secrets-153429564.html