“Expertly blends horror and tongue-in cheek comedy” – Variety

Produced by Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment, ARACHNOPHOBIA brilliantly updated the classic mid-century creature feature for the Goonies generation. Modeled on Hitchcock’s The Birds (also showing this month!), Frank Marshall’s “thrill-omedy” (as it was awkwardly marketed) pits hordes of killer spiders from the jungles of Venezuela against the residents of a sleepy seaside town. Starring Jeff Daniels as a spider-fearing doctor and St. Louis’s own John Goodman as a slobby, incompetent exterminator, ARACHNOPHOBIA is comedy-horror at its most expertly balanced. With an impressive mix of real spiders and animatronic effects, the film is pure delight. As Roger Ebert put it, it’s “the kind of movie where you squirm out of enjoyment, not terror.”

This film is screening as part of Arkadin’s series ANIMALIA MANIA, which spotlights films heavily featuring non-human creatures — some friendly, others deadly.