Arachnophobia

[00:00:04] Welcome to Movie Oubliette, the film review podcast for movies that most people have mercifully forgotten. I'm Dan. And I'm Conrad. And in each episode, we drag a forsaken film out of the Oubliette. Discuss it and judge it to decide whether it should be set free. Or whether it should be thrown back and consigned to oblivion forever.

[00:00:37] Movie Oubliette Oh, it's in Melbourne, Australia.

[00:01:01] We focus on forgotten fantasy, sci-fi and horror films because we love trekking through to pooies, making teenage boys cough and showering with a spider on our face. Oh, that's all sorts of awkward. Hello, Kodan. Hello, Dan. So you have a new keyboard fad going on.

[00:01:24] Yeah, I don't know what has happened, but I'm really addicted to a very small window of 80s Casio and Yamaha keyboards. Yeah, it's a range of keyboards that was still using synthesis, so still electronic, but trying to sound like real instruments. So you have like a clarinet sound and an oboe and strings and a harpsichord.

[00:01:51] But it's still electronic sounding, but it's so of that time, of that sort of between 82 and 86. But it's really retro. It's really lo-fi and I love it. And these keyboards are going for pretty cheap these days. A little bit more expensive because it has been quite a while since the 80s. So they're kind of verging on vintage now. Well, they are vintage, really.

[00:02:20] But they're still toy keyboards aimed at kids. But it's fascinating because some of these keyboards, like you can see they're made to teach kids how to play music. So they'll have like different technologies. So one has a play card that you slide in. It's got like a magnetic strip, like a big credit card. You slide it in and it reads this information and then it plays it on the keyboard with all these lights that light up above the keys.

[00:02:50] So you know which keys to play. It's amazing technology for the 80s. Yeah, it's really impressive. I remember, I think I told you I had the Casio SK5, which was a sampling keyboard. Yes, that SK range, highly, highly sought after these days. They go for like 200 bucks. Wow. Wow. Yeah. Mine's in a landfill somewhere. Oh, you should have kept it. Yeah, they're very, very sought after.

[00:03:19] Yeah, you could do four very short mono 8-bit samples or you could do two long ones. Ah, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or longer. Yeah, they're pretty fun to use, actually. Yeah, that's how I learned. Yes. Yes. So for you, sales? Yes. Yes. They dipped into the Warner Archive sale. This is Warner Brothers DVD and Blu-ray range where they put a lot of old or rare or niche

[00:03:48] movies out, remastered. Ah. And yeah, they had a sale. So I nabbed myself five titles. One was the 90s version of The Body Snatchers. Ah. Is that technically a sequel? Ah, it might be. It's directed by Abel Ferrara and it's got Meg Tilly in it from Psycho 2. Oh, wow. I think I've seen it. I don't remember. I haven't seen it. No.

[00:04:15] Steve Martin's comedy The Man with Two Brains. Looker. Oh. The Michael Crichton movie. Oh, I don't think I've seen that one. No. Time After Time, which is Nicholas Meyer's movie before he did Star Trek 2. Time Travel Romance Serial Killer. Right. Drama. And Demon Seed, which I know you've been wanting to do for many a year. Yes, yes.

[00:04:41] I still need to read, finish reading the original Demon Seed because I read the 90s rewrite of Demon Seed, which is not what the movie's based on. But yes, I have to get around to that. So yeah, that's good fun to just fill my shelf for, gosh, less than 10 minutes. $10 per item. Oh, amazing. That's great. Amazing. Amazing. Yeah. Okay, Conrad, let's move on to the mailbag for today.

[00:05:11] Yeah. So we heard from Film Aficionado and he contacted us to say, Red Line is the R-rated movie adaptation of the Super Nintendo game F-Zero that my inner child always wanted. How can I not love its rocking soundtrack, delightfully over-the-top characters and gleeful Verhoevenesque's insanity. Uh-huh. Yeah. I'm glad he had fun. He did, yeah. He enjoyed it.

[00:05:40] And Jasmine got in touch about our Minisode on Psycho 3, exclusively available on Patreon. And she said, This is how I remember Psycho 3 as well. A retread of the original and totally unsatisfying. I'm a fan of Psycho 4, one of the only good prequels I've seen. I admit I have not seen Pearl, but I'm not crazy about the movies that flanked it,

[00:06:09] so I chose to avoid it because it's a prequel. Ah, yeah. Pearl's definitely the best one, I think. Absolutely is. Actually, Jasmine, I would say, if you didn't enjoy the film either side, I think you'll love Pearl. Yeah. It's a different animal altogether. It's very different. It feels like a different world. It barely even feels like a prequel to me. Yeah.

[00:06:34] It's kind of like The Wizard of Oz as a horror film and Mia Goth is incredible and the final shot will stay with you for weeks. Yes. It did me anyway. Yes, yes, yes. I really need to check out Psycho 4. Yeah. Yeah, you're ready to. It's good. I need to complete the Psycho quadrilogy. Yeah, you should. Yeah. We should do that at some point.

[00:07:03] Anyway, thanks for getting in touch. We always love hearing from you. Yes, yes, we do. Conrad. All right. Let's get the movie for today underway. Yeah. I'll just skip on over to the Oubliet and I know what's going on in there. Oh. Oh. I'm in a South American rainforest. Oh, tropical. I don't know where the film is, but maybe if I turn this machine on, that will help.

[00:07:34] Wow. Smoking. Yeah. Okay. Okay. I'll turn that off. Wow. Loads of Blu-rays falling out of the trees. Oh, that one landed with a thud. I'll get this one. Oh, wow. Coming back. Okay. Oh, we fly. What do you have, Conrad? So I managed to clutch from the air a copy of the 1990 American horror comedy film, Arachnophobia,

[00:08:03] directed by Frank Marshall in his directorial debut, based on a screenplay by Don Jacoby and Wesley Strick, and starring Jeff Daniels, Julian Sands, Harley Jane Kozak, John Goodman, Brian McNamara, and Peter Jason. Hmm. Wow. So what happens in this movie?

[00:08:27] Well, in this movie, a lovely white middle-class couple called Ross and Molly Jennings have just moved their perfect nuclear family to the bucolic Californian town of Kanaima, where Ross expects to succeed curmudgeonly Sam Metcalf as the town doctor, only to find out the old coots changed his mind about retirement. Oh, no.

[00:08:51] When their quirky collection of lovable small-town neighbours begin dying in suspicious circumstances, including Dr. Metcalf, Ross suspects his worst fear, spiders. But the town suspects him. Wrongly, it turns out, because a prehistoric monster spider has hitched a ride home from

[00:09:14] deepest, darkest Venezuela in the coffin of a local photojournalist and mated with a local spider in the Jennings barn to produce a deadly army of venomous warrior arachnids out for world domination. Eesh. Can Ross overcome his childhood trauma and defeat the eight-legged freaks before they kill his family and then America?

[00:09:40] Will curiosity get the better of the stuffy British scientist? And just how big is Bugs Be Gone exterminator Delbert's bill going to be for this job? Find out after the break. Oh, yes. Yes.

[00:10:14] Welcome back. We're checking out Arachnophobia, the first film from Disney's offshoot Hollywood pictures and the debut of Frank Marshall as director after many years as a producer and second unit director. Dan, had you seen this one before? I have not. It's been on my watch list for forever. Like, it's the spider horror movie. It's the one that everyone mentions if you bring up spiders in horror.

[00:10:42] It is the movie to watch. And I've just, yeah, I just never got around to it. And it's a first time watch for me. Yeah. So this is one I'm quite familiar with. I think I saw it in theatres, you know. Oh, wow. Back in 1990. Yeah. As a teenager, I think I went there with friends. Oh, wow. Yeah, I was quite fond of it. Yeah. It's different. It's funny how they market it as a comedy. I mean, it is funny. Like, don't get me wrong.

[00:11:11] There are some great lines in there, which we'll get into in the movie awards. Yeah. But it is still definitely a horror. If you have a fear of spiders, do not watch this movie. It really cranks it up with the amount of spiders you see and just constant spiders everywhere. Yeah. Like, I felt a little bit icky after it. I just was checking light switches before I turned them on, you know.

[00:11:39] Checking on the toilet seats and, like, lamps and stuff, you know. Yeah. It will make you a little bit sort of antsy after watching it. Possibly more so in Australia or in New Zealand because there the spiders can be problematic. Australia and New Zealand, not so much. There's actually only one native venomous spider in New Zealand. Everything else is harmless.

[00:12:06] Or maybe it is harmful if it's, like, introduced, like, Australian spider. Australia, on the other hand, what spiders aren't venomous here? I think they all are. Good grief. The interesting thing about that is that Kim Newman pointed out in his book that the film has an inbuilt weakness in terms of marketing because this film did not do particularly well. Really?

[00:12:30] And that is that if you suffer from arachnophobia and you're going to find this film scary, you're not going to watch this movie. Right. If you don't have a problem with spiders, you just watch it and think, well, what's the problem? Just pick it up and put it outside. Yeah. So it kind of has a bit of a fatal flaw. So the movie was the very first, as I said, from Disney's new label, Hollywood Pictures, which they launched in 1990. Right.

[00:12:57] To sort of double their output of feature films aimed towards a more mature audience. Right. But it didn't do terribly well, this movie. So it opened on the 20th of July, 1990, so summer period, where it placed second behind Ghost, which was the juggernaut of the year. Okay. Ended the year with 205 million in box office in the US alone at number one. Sure.

[00:13:24] So this one placed second and then it fell to fourth and then fifth and then seventh and then it was gone. So it only got 53 million on a budget of 22. Wow. Yeah. Yeah, that's not much. It's not much, no. Ended the year is 19th. But this is kind of what Hollywood Pictures aimed for. It was sort of mid-budget movies. A lot of them were comedies and it rarely had like breakout hits.

[00:13:48] The biggest hit it ever had was The Sixth Sense, which garnered 670 million worldwide. So that was huge. But generally it aimed for just sort of middleweight movies that might just take off. Right, right, right. I mean, when you first saw this, did you find this scary? No, I don't have a problem with spiders at all. And I have to admit, I was a little bit disappointed with it as a teenager because I wanted more death, more gore.

[00:14:19] Whereas this really is still a family-friendly entry-level horror, I guess you'd call it. Yeah. I mean, I think yes and no. I think if you don't have a fear of spiders, it is pretty tame. It does feel like a PG movie. You don't really see any blood or gore. The deaths are not that horrific. They just kind of get paralyzed and that's about it. And the music, I mean, we'll get into it later.

[00:14:47] But the music is very wholesome sounding for the most part. It's very light. It doesn't have that sort of horror dread tone to the music at all. So even sonically, it doesn't come across as a horror. It comes across as a comedy. But I do feel like if you do have a fear of spiders, there are a lot of spiders to the point where it's unsettling.

[00:15:14] There are just so many spiders in that final act. So I don't know. It's an odd one because tonally, I guess it does feel like a comedy, but it is still definitely a horror. And I kind of feel like the comedy balances out the horror a little bit. In a good way, I quite enjoyed the amount of comedic relief in this movie. Yeah, I would agree. I mean, Jeff Daniels, of course, was known for both around this time.

[00:15:42] So this is when he's winning awards for serious dramas, but also being in Dumb and Dumber and being very funny. And he was very likable in things like Speed around the 90s. So he was a leading man. And he's a great choice because he didn't have a problem with having spiders thrown on his face. No. And he can win you over. He's very charming as an actor, very lovable. But he also has comedy chops so he can make you laugh too, which is great. Yeah. So you believe in him. It's a great sort of tonal mix.

[00:16:11] And then you surround him with this amazing cast of character actors. Yeah. And I love the way that they create this small town atmosphere with all of these very distinct characters. And they get a lot out of the dynamics with that. I mean, I think they establish the town really well, really quickly. Yeah. It's great writing. Oh, I 100% agree. Especially with all the side characters were interesting and more complex than you would normally expect from side characters.

[00:16:41] Yeah. And sort of the dynamic and the friction between Metcalf, the resident doctor who doesn't want to retire. He's told Paul Ross, I'm going to retire. Come and replace me. And then he arrives in this town. They've sold their house. They've moved the entire family to this town. And Metcalf decides, actually, I'm not going to retire. Fuck you. It's just like horrible.

[00:17:09] But I love the dynamic between all these characters because there is like this conflict. Yeah. I mean, it's kind of small conflict, but it's interesting. It makes the character interactions tense in some moments or a little bit snarky, I guess. Yeah, it does. You've also got the town sheriff played by Stuart Pankin, Sheriff Lloyd Parsons, who has this sort of low-key hatred of city people. So it's a bit of a cliched character.

[00:17:38] He was the high school bully, I think, a character. Margaret refers to him as the high school bully and just makes fun of him. So he's kind of a fairly broad comic character that's put down all of the time. Yeah. And then you've got Delbert played by John Goodman. Oh, he steals the show, doesn't he? He does pretty much. He shows up. So apparently John Goodman was deep into Roseanne, the hit TV series that made him a star, arguably.

[00:18:05] And he only had odd weekends off from that shooting schedule. Right. So I think they had two weekends with him where they had to shoot all of his scenes back to back in order. But yeah, he comes in and just steals the show with this ridiculous character. It's ridiculous. I mean, we'll get into his hair and costume. But yeah, he is comic relief personified.

[00:18:32] I heard that he was highly marketed with the trailer and all the marketing as one of the looks like one of the main characters. But he doesn't show up for a good 40 minutes or something. Yeah, they lent on it pretty hard. They probably showed most of his scenes in the trailer, which is a bit much.

[00:19:19] Right, right, right. Organises a party for them and so on. She dies in sad and gruesome circumstances. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's getting pretty heavy. And the town's sort of arguing with him and thinks that he's insane for wanting an autopsy. And they think maybe he's at fault for changing Margaret's medication. So it gets pretty heavy. And then in comes John Goodman to do his scene as the exterminator, checking the basement. And the music changes and the tone lifts.

[00:19:49] And you think, oh, okay. So you're balancing these two tones. Yeah. Really nicely. So it doesn't get too heavy and it brings it back again. And yeah, it's very nicely done. Yeah. I mean, when you look at it at face value, it's very depressing, the movie. There's a lot of funerals that they attend. Yeah. And there's a lot of people, like quite lovable people dying, like immediately as well.

[00:20:15] We have to mention that these spiders are instantaneously lethal. Yeah. One bite, five seconds later, you're dead. And there's no, we have to get the antidote or we have to do a tourniquet or anything like that. It's just death. So I was actually, like, it's a lot of peril involved. Yeah. Like I was thinking, oh my God, is one of our main characters, like our family going to get bitten and it's going to be instantaneous death.

[00:20:45] Like you can't come back from that. Like there's nothing you could do. No. But luckily none of our family gets bitten. But yeah, I've never really seen a movie with an animal so lethal. Yeah. And it does give you that one really good scene. I think the one where it really hits home is the scene where they are searching Margaret's house for the spider. Yeah. And that is genuinely tense. Yeah.

[00:21:11] Because everyone who's involved in that search, possibly with the exception of John Goodman, is terrified. Just terrified that they're going to find it. So they're all tentatively lifting things. But it's kind of funny at the same time. There's one character that accidentally walks into the plant and he gets a fright. Yeah. It's like, that's quite funny. Or when I think the sheriff is looking in all the mugs and they're just kind of swinging for ages. Yeah.

[00:21:40] It's kind of funny as well. It is funny. Yeah. And then he just gives up and starts eating her cereal from the cupboard, which is just so rude. Yeah, I know. That's weird. I did love how it was shot as well. How they shot the spiders. So it was all at the level of the spiders. So at table level, at floor level. And so it made it much, much more tense.

[00:22:09] And they just appeared out of nowhere as well. You would see a cereal bowl and then there would be a spider crawling around the edge or something. It was really well shot. It was, yeah. Yeah. What I really love about it is how much time it must have taken because they clearly went for shots where the spiders are in the same shot as the principal actors. Yes. Which meant that you are going take after take after take after take to get that scene.

[00:22:39] So you have that whole scene where Irv, the town mortician, who's quite a character too, he's preparing popcorn because he's about to settle down with his partner to watch Wheel of Fortune. Yes. And he's got this bowl of popcorn in the foreground. And this spider just walks around it. Just the right moment. And I'm thinking, good grief, how many takes was that? And it was a lot. It was in the 40s, I think. Wow. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's the thing as well.

[00:23:06] These are real spiders for, I'm guessing, most of the shots. Almost all of it. Yeah. So these were Delaney spiders, I think the director says, but they're often called Avondale spiders. And they shipped them from New Zealand. They did. Which is pretty amazing. Yeah. But they're harmless spiders. They look scary, but they're not. They're completely harmless. They're not venomous at all.

[00:23:34] But they must have got thousands because that final set, there are so many spiders. Yeah. It just makes me feel itchy just looking about it. Yeah. I think there's one particular shot of a sink with spiders just exploding out of every hole in the sink. That's really quite horrifying. And that took the filmmakers by surprise because they were not expecting them to come out so fast and in such a high volume. Oh, wow. Wow. Wow. Yeah.

[00:24:03] I mean, it must have been quite terrifying for these actors. Like these are real spiders with the actors in a lot of the scenes with the spiders. Yeah. I don't know. Like nowadays, obviously all CGI. Yeah. Yeah. Not a single real spider would be used. It would just be all CGI. It would be. No, I think they had to go for actors who fully understood what they were getting into.

[00:24:25] I think the only one who mentioned some discomfort was Julian Sands who had to hang upside down with cobwebs all over him with spiders crawling all over his face. And yeah. Because that's him. That's not a dummy. Right. Is it? Yeah. He had to enter into like a zen like detach himself moment and just let it happen until they got the shot. But yeah, he did not enjoy himself. Wow. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:24:52] I mean, there's a few scenes with like spiders on faces. Oh, I always think like, how did you do that? Like, it's obviously the real actor as well. Yeah. The mortician, right? He has a spider crawl out of his mouth. Out of his nose. But that's fake. That's not him. Oh, is it fake? Yeah. That's a dummy. Yeah. Right. It's not him. It's a good dummy. Good dummy. It's quite a good dummy. Yeah. It's not bad at all. But I think it's because you're looking at the spider.

[00:25:21] It's a bit of classic misdirection. Yeah. Oh. Oh. It's, yeah. It's, it's, it's, I, I just, it's funny because I don't, I don't even normally have a thing about spiders, but like this movie made me have a thing about spiders. It's, it's, it's really, it's really that unsettling. Yeah. It's interesting as well. Like researching spider movies. There are a lot of big, like really big spider movies. Mm.

[00:25:45] We're like eight legged freaks or like the sort of, some of the old ones, like Earth versus the spider kingdom of the spiders. Um, and there are some new ones and they're all trash, like big ass spider. Lava lantula, which is a spider that spits lava. Oh God. It sounds like an asylum film. Probably is. But there are some more recent ones like sting infested, which are both supposed to be pretty good.

[00:26:13] And there's one from 2019 called itsy bitsy, which I did start watching and it felt very B grade. Like it wasn't quite the level that I was expecting. I still have to finish that by the way. But, uh, yeah, there aren't that many. Oh, there, there are. But like, I feel like this is the more most sort of realistic, I guess, spider horror movie. Yeah. I mean, it's a real spider.

[00:26:37] I mean, it's slightly different in the sense that they're warrior spiders with a central queen, like a bee's nest or something, which is, I don't, I don't know about the entomology of that. I think that's unusual. Yeah. Certainly the characters in the film treat that as unusual. It is. But all of this is from this idea that they went to a valley in the deepest, darkest Venezuela and encountered a species that had never been encountered by human beings before.

[00:27:03] And then accidentally removed it from this area where it was geographically contained. And now it poses a threat to the world. So there is a sense that there are bigger stakes here, although I don't think they quite get to that. I think they do say at one point it'll be this town and then the next town and then the next town. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, we do have to mention as well, there are two spiders in this movie, or I guess versions of the same spider.

[00:27:29] So you have all these, I guess, warrior spiders, which are the smaller, technically smaller. Yeah. But they are quite large. So like if you saw that in your kitchen, you'd get fried. You wouldn't be pleased. Yeah. But then you have the queen and the, what was the other spider called? They called him the general. The general. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And they are huge. They are, I think they're bird eating tarantulas. Yeah, they are.

[00:28:00] I don't think they're venomous, but still, yeah, a bite from them would hurt a lot. And they are huge. Yeah. But there are some scenes where you can tell that is not a real spider. And I was a little bit disappointed because it's in the final, final scene with Ross battling the general. And it does kind of lose its terror aspect because, I don't know, to me, it looked very fake. Yeah.

[00:28:30] Like an animatronic. It is, yeah. It's a 1990s animatronic on a fairly small budget. So it's the work of Chris Wayless or Chris Wallace. I've never known how to pronounce his surname. Okay. But the guy who did Gremlins. So, of course, this is a movie from the Amblin stables. So you've got Kathleen Kennedy and Steven Spielberg as producers alongside Frank Marshall. So it is sort of bringing in that family of creatives.

[00:28:58] So, yeah, Chris came to them from Gremlins. So he's used to making small creatures. They thought he'd be great at this, too. I think he probably did the best you could back then on the budget that he had. But, yeah, maybe they put it on screen a bit too much or in too much detail. It's not terribly convincing, is it? Yeah. Like you see the legs moving. So it has that sort of spider movement to it. But you can see they're not actually walking on anything.

[00:29:28] They're just moving and the spider's just getting closer and closer. But there's no contact to Ross's body at all. And it's just not convincing. I'm sorry. No, this is the moment where Ross, of course, I mean, you get Chekhov's childhood trauma introduced right at the very beginning of the movie where he describes expositionally at great length. Right. This childhood experience he has where a spider crawled up his naked leg and he was in a diaper. It's his first memory or something. Yeah.

[00:29:58] And you just know as soon as he mentions it, okay, there's going to be a scene where there's a spider crawling slowly up his leg, isn't there? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm, yeah, I guess, you know, they're not going to have the real bird eating tarantula crawling up Jeff Daniels leg. No. It's probably, it's just not going to happen. But yeah, it doesn't, yeah, it doesn't quite work for me in that scene.

[00:30:23] I mean, that whole final scene in the basement felt clumsy to me. Right. Yeah. I mean, there is one thing in it that I do find a little bit ridiculous, which is that you have lots and lots and lots of shots of Jeff Daniels twirling to face the camera as the camera pushes in on him. Yeah. Why are we doing this over and over and over again? Yeah. I mean, for me, it felt clumsy because it was just the Ross character kind of stumbling around. Yeah.

[00:30:53] Not really having any sort of aim or goal or technique. Like, I mean, he picks up the lighter and throws bottles at one point. He's like, he's doing the flamethrower thing with a spray can. And it just felt very, like, I don't know, directionless. Like, he was just like, oh, I'll try this. I'll try this. Like, for a final climactic scene, it kind of lost it.

[00:31:20] Like, the energy was just kind of, it just deflates a little bit for me. It didn't feel that tense. It's, there is one scene, it was a good jump scare where he looks into the pipe. And, of course, the spider jumps out of it. And, yeah, I got a bit of a fright there. That was pretty good. Yeah. I think it's because it runs down at exactly the moment when you think it's not going to. Yes. Yeah. It's very good. It's good. It's good. But, yeah, I don't know. That final scene felt a little bit silly. Yeah.

[00:31:48] And I guess also because of the limitations on the animatronic. Like, you didn't really see the spider that much. Well, you did, but it didn't look scary. I don't know. I had a problem with that last scene. Yeah, I can understand it. I think it's because the scene before it is so good. I mean, the escalation with the family when they realise that the spiders are swarming into the house and they're trying desperately to get out of the house. So good. Yeah. That is so good. And then where do you go from there?

[00:32:17] And I think they tried to ramp it up by having Ross fall through the floor. Yeah. Into the basement and then realising that he is in the lair. And then I think his goal is to destroy the egg sack. But, of course, the general and the queen are trying to stop him at that point. So then he's trying to kill those two. Yeah. I think it would have been way more terrifying if he was just covered in spiders. But they're not going to do that, I guess. Not to Jeff Daniels. But, yeah.

[00:32:45] It just, like, in the house, it was horrifying with just so many spiders everywhere. And then in the basement, suddenly, there's, like, only two spiders. And it didn't seem like a level up from what we'd previously seen. It seemed like a step down. No, I can understand that. The film, for me, feels like an amalgam of two other films. Oh, yes. Jaws. Yes. And poltergeist. Right.

[00:33:15] And it is so very close to Jaws when you break it down. I mean, even the character types. You've got a man who has moved away from the big city to a small town to take up a public office. Brody is the police chief. He's a town doctor. Yes. You have the person who is the expert in the species who shows up and explains everything. You have the grizzled local hunter of that species.

[00:33:42] Of course, Robert Shaw is a little bit more serious than John Goodman in this movie. But that character dynamic is there. And you have the townsfolk who initially don't believe him when he's trying to raise the alarm, but eventually do. And then in terms of a finale, obviously, you can't get three men going out to sea in a boat to do battle with the beast. Instead, you end up with poltergeist, which is the house is invaded.

[00:34:08] Everything goes crazy until finally the father is doing battle with the beast by himself. They've kind of just molded the two together and created sort of a paint by numbers blockbuster for the summer on a mid-range budget. Yeah. I mean, it is very cliche, the movie. We'll get into it with the movies. But it pretty much ticks off all the cliches for horror with this premise. It felt very Stephen King as well.

[00:34:36] You've got a small town, new family moves into a small town. And normally that would be a setup to a haunted house movie. Like they move into a new house in a small town and ghosts and stuff. But this time we've got spiders. And it felt very 80s, I guess, as well. Like a lot of movies have this kind of setup, whether they were horror or not, or any other genre. So I don't know. Like, yeah, it is pretty cliche. I mean, we haven't really talked about Julian Sands' character, Dr. Arthurton.

[00:35:06] I kind of liked him. Like, I liked how the movie started not in Kanaima, but in Venezuela with the doctor going into the rainforest, getting lowered down. Like, location shooting, amazing. It's glorious, isn't it? I love it. It's this sort of sense of wonder that you used to get from 80s and 90s movies where they would go into the rainforest that I really miss.

[00:35:31] Like, you know, movies like even Jurassic Park when they fly to the island or Congo, which is also directed by the same director, Frank Marshall. Yeah. Where they go into the forest and or like 80s movies like Gorillas in the Mist or even Rambo. Yeah, true. That sort of like really like great forest location shooting where it just feels like we are definitely not in America right now.

[00:36:00] We're in the jungle and it's terrifying. Yeah. I do love the silent opening on Magic Hour, the journey through this untouched landscape. There's no music. There's just the sound of the wildlife. You're just floating across until you find the boat. And it's not until Julian Sands says, we're not going in on foot, we fly or something like this. Then the music launches and then it's the adventure and the helicopter shot.

[00:36:25] And it's very similar to Jurassic Park that came out in 93, three years later. Very similar, the opening. But yeah, I do love that. I mean, obviously, it's an Englishman in a pith helmet being directed by indigenous people with paint on their face. I know, I know. Come on. But, you know, what are you going to do? It's the cliche. What do you think of Julian Sands as an actor? Obviously, we have to acknowledge he passed fairly recently. Yeah, quite mysteriously as well.

[00:36:55] Yeah, he went for a hike and disappeared for months and months until they found his remains. Yeah, yeah. Very sad. Yeah, very sad. I honestly have not seen him in much. I have seen him in Warlock, I think. I can't really remember the movie, but he's in that. I'd love to do that at some point because that, again, is a Noobliot movie. Yes, yes. And apparently he was in Ocean's 13. Was he? I didn't know that. Yeah. And also Naked Lunch. But Naked Lunch was just like a big fever dream for me.

[00:37:24] I don't really remember anything about that movie. Oh, I remember him in that because he rapes somebody. He rapes a guy. Oh, okay. In that movie. Right, okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. I haven't seen him in enough. He's quite a strapping, attractive bloke, isn't he? He is. I remember him from his very first film, I think, Room with a View. Oh, yes. Merchant Ivory, costume drama. Okay. And I don't think he can act. I think he's as wooden as hell. Oh, really?

[00:37:53] Every line reading comes across as completely false to me. Really? Yeah. Oh. Even in this movie? Oh, yeah. Very much so. Oh, okay. I don't understand why they keep hiring him, but I think every line reading of his is really fake. Yeah, it's quite attractive, I guess. I mean, I don't know whether the ladies are swooning over him. Maybe that's why he's there. It's for the eye candy. Yeah, maybe. Quite possibly. Maybe. I didn't mind him. I don't know. He was very cliche, again.

[00:38:22] You know, you British scientist. Yeah. I did want to mention, like, another part of the plot that I am really frustrated with. So, his character's death. It's just stupid. Right. Like, he's an expert on the spider. He discovered it. He knows how lethal it is. He goes into the barn, and he just twangs a cobweb, and what did you expect would happen? You know.

[00:38:51] You know about the spider. Of course it's going to bite you. I know. Yeah, I hated that. It's ridiculous, isn't it? I think it's purely to get rid of him. I think because at that point, he's done everything that he can do. He's come along. He's done his exposition. He's told them what the stakes are. Right. The character has no function at that point. So, the obvious thing to do is to kill him. But to kill him in a way that makes him look like an idiot is a little bit disappointing. It's terrible. It's terrible.

[00:39:21] I guess we shouldn't mention some of the other characters. So, Molly Jennings, the wife, played by Harley Jane Kozak. I haven't seen her in anything either, apart from maybe when Harry met Sally, but I don't really remember her character. But she is, yeah. Yeah, she played some very stereotypical, wholesome, supportive wife. Yeah. Curse of the Spielberg wives. They're never particularly successful after they're in his movies, unfortunately. Right. Really? Yeah.

[00:39:48] All of the female characters in his movies. The men seem to go on to have great careers after being in Spielberg movies. But all of the Spielberg wife characters never seem to go very far. Even the ones he marries. Right. Wow. Okay. Yeah. Kate Capshaw. Because, I mean, she looked very familiar, but I haven't, I looked at her films, I haven't seen any of them. No.

[00:40:12] She's that very sort of soft, wholesome wife character that you don't really see much anymore. No. I feel like wives now look way too attractive than they should be. They look like models straight off a catwalk now. It's not quite as believable, whereas I feel like 80s and 90s wives look like normal people, I guess. Yeah, they do. I mean, the same could be said for the men, because all of them have washboard abs, even if they're sat in an office job every day. Yeah, yeah, definitely. It's ridiculous.

[00:40:42] It's ridiculous. It's ridiculous. Yes, yes, yes, yes. I think my favourite for that was the remake of the Amityville Horror, where you were supposed to believe that Melissa George had had 18 children or something. She was like 12. Wow, yeah, yeah, yeah. How did this happen? What was she? She was like 20 or 21 or something. She had 12 kids. Right, right, right. Stupid. Now it's time for Random Trivia. So, Dan, what creepy crawly trivia did you find in your Tupui today? Oh, yes.

[00:41:12] Well, this is more facts about the spider that they used in this movie. So, it's the Delana Casarides. That's its Latin name, spider. They did ship it from New Zealand, from the Landcare Research in Auckland. But it is actually not a native New Zealand spider. It's Australian. It's an Australian huntsman, actually.

[00:41:37] So, there's apparently more than 100 species of huntsmen in Australia. And most of them are not nice. They will buy you. But this one is, I think it's often called the communal or the flat huntsman or the social huntsman. And it is native to Australia. And it was introduced to New Zealand in 1924. I don't know why.

[00:42:01] And in New Zealand, it's called the Avondale spider because it used to be found mainly in the suburb of Avondale in Auckland. But there is also a giant spider sculpture in Avondale in the town centre. And it has been there for 22 years celebrating the Avondale spider. And it was taken down in October of 2024 to make way for a new library and community hub.

[00:42:29] And it's called Dale the spider. And it stands eight metres high off the ground atop a sort of five metre wide steel web. And the council is actually currently asking the community to vote on where to put it because they had to move it. But yeah, so they're very proud of Dale the spider. In Avondale, New Zealand. Oh, so they should be. Yeah. I hope they find a nice home for him. Yeah.

[00:42:59] Yeah, me too. That's our trivia. That's our trivia. Last thing that I found frustrating or like confusing, actually more confusing. So in the end, the defeat of all the spiders, happy days. The family moved back to San Francisco. Yeah. Sweeping shot of San Francisco. And then they're in their apartment.

[00:43:28] And they're celebrating how safe it is not being in the small town of all the spiders. And then there's an earthquake. Yep. Why? Yeah. Just to say, oh, nature is Mother Earth. You're not safe anywhere. Yeah. It's supposed to be a final gag. Yeah. You're not safe here either. I'm disappointed in that ending because it is clearly there for that one gag. Yeah. And A, it's not particularly funny. No.

[00:43:56] And B, they're morons. Why leave this town where you've made all of these friends? You've eradicated the spiders. Yeah. He's got this growing practice as the town doctor. He'd probably be a hero at this point. Yeah. Why have they moved back to San Francisco again? It doesn't make any sense for them. No. I think they should conquer their new environment and stay there. They shouldn't go back to San Francisco and then have a stupid earthquake gag. No. It's dumb. It's really dumb.

[00:44:25] Like, you could have just taken that entire last gag out. Yeah. And it would have been fine. It would have been just credits after they escaped from the house. Yeah. That's it. I agree with you. The only other thing that bothers me is the script, I think, could really go further into this suspicion around the doctor. I think they could have really mined that. But pretty much after the second victim, they'd absolve him of any suspicion because the local coroner is a little bit more savvy.

[00:44:54] He sort of listens to him and tests his theory first before jumping to a stupid conclusion, which I suppose is more realistic. Yeah. But I was hoping that they would ramp it up. Because you get through this fun phase where he has this nickname of Doctor Death, which I find quite amusing. And I thought if you'd really mind that and made him isolated in his own family, starting to doubt him, you know, if they'd really gone for it. Yeah. I think it could have been quite powerful. But they sort of dispense with it.

[00:45:21] The movie overall is trying to be too light to really get into anything. Yeah. Yeah. Which is a shame. Yeah. I thought that was quite fun. I mean, like watching some of the making of, like they went into this movie saying this is a, what do they call it? A thrill-omedy. A thrill-omedy. Yeah, I know. They needed to workshop that. That's not very good. It doesn't really roll off the tongue. No. But yeah, a thriller-comedy. They were going for laughs.

[00:45:49] That was the main thing, making this movie. I think the director or one of them says, everything had to be fun. You have the horror, but you had to have fun watching or going through the horror. And that's what the movie is. It is like quite funny for a lot of it. Yeah. But I think because you have the horror of the spiders, it's not as funny as it could have been. Like it's not slapstick. It's not dumb and dumber level of comedy.

[00:46:17] It's still subtle, I guess. Yeah. It's not eight-legged freaks. And even John Goodman is the closest it gets to camp. It gets a bit silly with his character, but generally not. The characters are quite broad in the town, like the mortician and his partner, the coach and his family, who were all training to be athletes as well. You know, the characters are sort of broad, but it's not out and out slapstick and silly. No, it's not. And it does keep the scares.

[00:46:47] The scares are pretty well executed for the most part. So it does sort of ride this middle lane nicely. So it just really depends on whether that's your thing or whether you're disappointed that it isn't one thing or the other. It's very middle of the road. Yeah, yeah. I enjoyed the scares. Like, it wasn't about the kills so much, but the buildup to the kills. So there was a lot of tension built with the spider now. Like, it's over here.

[00:47:16] It's above people or below them or behind a lamp. Like, the neighbor that gets killed. That's a great scene. It finally builds up to her turning off the lamp and then the spider bites. It's just really well done in a very PG way. It's very cleverly done because you get all of this suspense with the spider nearly getting to her cat and she picks her cat up out of the way. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. You're following it and there are all these near misses.

[00:47:43] And then finally, the film lulls you into a full sense of security by giving you a little sad moment where she's looking at the photograph, presumably of her dead husband. Yeah. And says how much she's missed him at the party today. And then she goes to turn the lamp off and the spider gets her. And I thought, oh, it's very good. Because you're misdirected. Yes. Suddenly, you think the scene's about something else. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. No, it's good. It's really good.

[00:48:11] I guess we should return to talk about the music. Yes. So it's very on the nose. Yeah. They're in the rainforest and pen pipes. Of course. Of course. You've got to do that. They're in rural America and then harmonica. Yeah. I did laugh at that. Yeah. It's funny. It's very on the nose. Like it's exactly what you expect. It is. To hear. Yeah. In the scenes. Yeah.

[00:48:37] So it's the work of Trevor Jones, who is South African, has primarily worked in the UK. He worked on Labyrinth. He worked on The Dark Crystal. So lots of Muppety movies before this. Yeah. I mean, a lot of great movies, though. Like he's, he did Notting Hill. He did Dark City, which I love. From Hell. G.I. Jane. Brastoff, which I also like. Cliffhanger. In the Name of the Father.

[00:49:06] And The Sender. A movie that we've covered on the podcast. Yeah. So he's done like some great movies. But I don't know whether I really enjoyed his score. It was too wholesome, I think. Yeah. I wanted a bit more dread. But that's not his fault, I guess. No, it's, I don't know. It could be the director. I mean, the thing is, I get the feeling this film is very heavily temp-tracked. Right.

[00:49:31] Because particularly in the finale, when I talk about the fact that it's very reminiscent of the finale of Poltergeist. If you listen to the music of that scene, I thought for the longest time that they had just tracked bits of Jerry Goldsmith's Poltergeist in there, but they haven't. Right. They have clearly gotten Trevor Jones to just copy it. Because it is so similar, but with the spider motif plugged into it.

[00:50:01] But orchestration, particular moments, the way it creates suspense, it is exactly the same as Poltergeist. Okay. And it's embarrassingly so. I have the CD of Arachnophobia by Trevor Jones. It does not have that sequence on it. Right. I think it's because he's ashamed of it. Oh, okay. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, Delbert's theme as well with the saxophone and the plonky piano.

[00:50:29] It's just like, wow, we're in a different movie now. Yeah. All of a sudden it's jazz. Yeah. It's real bad jazz, though. Oh, yeah. Like, it's like the selling home appliances type jazz. Like, it's pretty cheesy. It is. It's cheesy. And I think the drums and the pan pipes at the beginning are pretty cheesy. Awful. In fact, all of it is pretty cheesy and unconvincing.

[00:50:59] I've always quite enjoyed it. But yeah, it's too silly most of the time. Yeah. Yeah. It doesn't generate an atmosphere of dread, as you said. No. I mean, but I guess that's what they were going for. They were going for fun, comedy, wholesomeness. A lot of very harmonious setting strings. Yeah. Not horror strings. Just like very nice chords. Yeah. No, it's very pleasant on the whole. He was not the director's first choice.

[00:51:29] The director wanted John Williams or Jerry Goldsmith. Neither were available. So Trevor was a backup. And I think this was sort of his break into bigger budget Hollywood movies, mainstream movies. Yeah. And then he'd eventually go on a couple of years later to do The Last of the Mohicans, which is probably his biggest score. Sure. At that point. Mm. Okay. Okay. Yeah. It's okay. It's a bit cheesy.

[00:51:59] Yeah. I don't know. It's fine. Coming to you live from the Movie Oobly at Theatre, it's the prestigious Moobly Awards. Yes, it's Moobly Awards time. It's where we nominate our favourite arachnid infested parts of the film in a number of Burn It With Fire Now categories. Best quote.

[00:52:25] My favourite quote is from Ross Jennings, the lovely Jeff Daniels. And it's when his wife is talking to him about how much he's going to be respected in the town as the new town doctor. And he says, respect is fine. But actually, all I've wanted is to be feared. I really love his sarcasm in this movie. He's great. He's really funny.

[00:52:53] There are so many good quotes in this movie. But one I would like to pick out is from Dalbert. So Dalbert, the bug exterminator, he's investigating their house because it turns out one of the beams in the basement is rotting away. And Molly is asking him why it's rotting. And then Dalbert says, I'll tell you why. Bad wood. And she inquires. Well, so what do we do? And he replies, tear out bad wood.

[00:53:22] Put in good wood. It's really helpful, isn't it? I know. Best hair or costume. It's Dalbert for me. His teal green exterminator uniform with matching hat. But he's got his big curly locks kind of like spilling out the sides of the hat. So it looks ridiculous. And then he's got these kind of glasses that just look like goggles almost.

[00:53:51] Like they make him look even more ridiculous. It's amazing. Yeah. He does look ridiculous. Kind of like a ghost buster almost. That's what I was going to say. In that final scene, he looks like he's ready to bust some ghosts. He does. I was going to pick out Molly Jennings, her lovely middle class housewife outfit in the country. And she's got this long checkered sweater and this pink blouse.

[00:54:20] And she's got this lovely neat collar that's coming through the sweater and beige shorts. So she's kind of middle class housewife, but in the country. She's right. She's ready to go on a hike. Right. Okay. And bake a cake. Of course. Most 90s moment. I was going to say horror comedy creature features. Oh, yes. Because when I noted up, there's quite a few. You've got Tremors in 1990. Yeah.

[00:54:50] Jurassic Park is pretty comedic. Especially Jeff Goldblum. Oh, yes. Okay. Congo. We've already said, same director. Anaconda in 97. I don't know if that's supposed to be funny, but it's bloody hilarious. Deep Rising in 98, which we should really do. Yes. Lake Placid in 1990. Ah, yes. Yes.

[00:55:13] And Bats in 1999, which is kind of trying to do arachnophobia, but with Bats and Lou Diamond Phillips. Okay. It's not very good. Okay. Okay. Hmm. That's a good pick. That's a good pick. 90s, I guess for me, just pointing out things that are now outdated. Coin-operated parking meters. Oh, wow. I just haven't seen one for so long. Like, I mean, they don't exist, right, anymore?

[00:55:42] Nowadays, it's just a card-operated machine that prints out a little ticket for us, and we just have to put it in the windscreen. There's no, like, dedicated parking meter for every car spot anymore. Yeah. I don't know. Maybe in a small town in America here, it's all get out your mobile app. It's... Yeah. Yeah. That too. You don't do anything at all. Yeah. Yeah. Favourite scene. I think you might disagree, but I quite like the rainforest scene at the start. Oh, okay. Yeah.

[00:56:11] Like, when they're getting lowered, or do they get lowered into the cavern? Sort of the deep cavern down below, or do they tramp down there? I can't remember. I think they follow a trail down there, but they lower all their gear into it. Oh, that's right. Yes, yes, yes. Yeah. Yeah. But just the setting is just remarkable. It's beautiful. The light streams coming down, and all the foliage. Like, I mean, how did they find this spot?

[00:56:38] It's just picture perfect for the scene. And then they set up all these traps, and you're just thinking, what are these funnel things they're putting in the ground? And they start the smoke machine, which I don't think you're a fan of, but I kind of liked it. It was like... There was a lot of intrigue in the scene. Like, what are they doing? And then all these butterflies start just falling from the sky. And then a couple of louder thuds hit the traps, and then they find the spiders.

[00:57:08] But the whole scene just left me with a sense of wonder, and almost surreal in how it was executed. I loved it. Yeah. No, it's a beautifully shot scene, and yeah, full of wonder. It captured my imagination as a kid. I love the whole thing of them, how they capture things. Yeah, yeah. Favourite scene for you? For me, my favourite scene is a scene that I think perfectly combines the horror and the comedy. It is the shower scene.

[00:57:35] Their attempt to top Psycho, where you have Becky from the Beechwood family, the gymnast, is taking a shower. It's very tastefully shot. She's not exploited in any way. Yes, yes. There's no reality. No, there isn't. But yeah, she ends up with a spider landing on her face. I know. Unbeknownst to her. Horrifying. And it slowly goes down her body, in between her breasts even.

[00:58:03] That's how well framed that shot is. It even goes in between her breasts. Eventually, she freaks out when she realises that she's sharing the shower with this spider. And her father crashes into the room with the sun as well. And then she screams again because they get a full frontal eyeful of her naked body. So it's hilariously funny and awkward. But also, before that, just cringing, ducingly terrifying.

[00:58:33] Yeah, yeah. Most cliché moment. Okay, this is a time-honoured cliché. In any movie that's got a comedic aspect to it, you have to have a mortician who describes the horrifying condition of the corpse right before taking a bite out of a sandwich. Yeah. I don't know why. Why does that always happen? They're always eating while doing autopsies. Always.

[00:59:00] It's just to make you feel sick, but the mortician that eats around dead bodies and is not bothered by it is such a cliché. Oh, such a cliché. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this movie is completely laden with clichés. I would say the shower scene is pretty much a cliché. Like, every horror movie's got to have a shower scene at some point. Another cliché, the solution is to kill the queen or the nest. Yes.

[00:59:29] It's always the solution. With any sort of creature feature or anything, like a lot of natural horrors will have that where it's always the queen and the nest, and then everything will be solved. Oh, that's convenient. That's very convenient. Best special effect. It's not really a special effect, but the use of a lot of real spiders. I loved that. Yeah, it just made it way more scary. Yeah, absolutely.

[00:59:56] They use them in really creative ways. Like I like in the first scene where it's sneaking into the photographer's tent, Dr. Manley. They're using shadow play to try and make a fairly... Well, I mean, I say small. I think it's like eight inches across or something, but smaller than... It's supposed to be spider appear larger. Yeah. Through shadow play. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it's good. It's good. And yeah, that scene where it jumps from the curtains.

[01:00:26] Oh, God. It gave me a big fright as well. Yeah, that's not nice. Yeah. What a special effect for you, Conrad? So for me, it's a notable special effects shot. It's where the family have escaped the house. I think Ross is still in the cellar and they're looking back at the house and the house is just swarming with spiders. Yeah, yeah. All along the outside. And it's notable because it's CGI. Is it? Oh. Yes. Wow. One of the very early shots.

[01:00:54] And it's never mentioned in any book that I have about the development of CGI at Industrial Light and Magic. That shot in arachnophobia does not come up, but it is CGI. Is it? Favourite sound effect. I have to mention spiders make hissing noises in this movie. And I'm pretty sure spiders make no noise. They don't go every time they attack people.

[01:01:21] But, I mean, they have to put a sort of sonic signature to the spider. Yeah. Otherwise, they have to. It's just a visual thing. Otherwise, you need that sonic fright sound. Yeah, you do. But maybe we're wrong. Maybe they hiss on a regular basis. I don't know. I've never heard a spider hiss. Have you, Conrad? No. No. Well, no. But we've got pretty tame spiders here. Yeah.

[01:01:48] So my favourite sound, and I wanted to give it a shout out, is the sound of the nail gun right at the end of the movie. Again, Chekhov's nail gun. Yeah. Although I didn't see it coming when I watched the first movie, that nail gun. Yeah. To deliver the fatal blow. And when he does deliver the fatal blow, it is accompanied by the sound effect of a Magnum 44, specifically Dirty Harry's gun. Oh, wow.

[01:02:16] Fired by Clint Eastwood in that classic movie. And that sound effect was recorded by William Randall on the 20th of April, 1971. Wow. For Dirty Harry. Ah. It appeared in the film the same year. And it's appeared in lots and lots of films since then. Batman and even films we've done, Starman, Explorers, Wolf. Wow. It's in The Terminator. Cool. Most funniest moment.

[01:02:44] So, funniest line in this movie goes to Molly. And I'm so pleased because she doesn't get a lot to do in this movie, but she does have the funniest line. And it is after Ross receives the phone call that Dr. Metcalf has had a seizure. And this is after lots of people have died, directly after her husband, Ross, has treated them. Yeah. Oh, God, you didn't examine him this morning.

[01:03:17] I thought, go Molly. That's great. Wow. That's great. That is great. Funniest moment for me is, so Ross wakes up and he sees a giant spider on the wall. And he goes to kill it with a rolled up magazine. As he gets closer, he realizes it's just a coat hook that's got hinges. So, you can swivel it. I don't know why.

[01:03:45] It's amazing because it really does look like a spider on the wall. Like, I thought, yeah, that's a spider. Of course, it's a spider. Yeah. I think there are two different light sources on it. So, it's projecting two shadows. Yeah. So, there's lots of legs coming off it. But, no, it's just a coat hook. It's great. And I just laughed out loud because I was, I guess, relieved that it wasn't a spider. I don't know. Yeah. I thought it was very funny. Yeah, it's very funny. And that's all Mooblies. Yes.

[01:04:17] Hi, my name is Serge Bernardchuk of Cold Crash Pictures and you're listening to Movie Oubliette. Final verdicts. Should arachnophobia be released from its damp, dark, wet prison into the world and be celebrated? Or should it be set on fire, shot with a nail gun and tossed back into the Oubliette? I've forgotten once more. Conrad.

[01:04:44] Revisiting erechnophobia, does it still stand up? I think it does, you know. Because I think, although it is very middle of the road. It is very cliched.

[01:04:54] It is very cliched.

[01:05:26] It's very nice. I think it's very nice. And I think it's very nice. It's very nice. It's very nice. Sort of definitive spider horror movie.

[01:05:55] I think this is the one. Like, if you think of shark movies, you think of Jaws. If you think of spider movies, you have to watch arachnophobia. For me, it was very surprisingly good. I think for the most part, it's because of the comedy and the characters. Like, the characters are so lovable. And the humor is great. It's not like dumb one-liners. There's a lot of thought and sarcasm going into the dialogue and the script writing.

[01:06:25] It's great. It's really great. And yeah, a lot of spiders creeps the fuck out of me. And they're real spiders. And that makes it even more creepy. Like, it's very well done. The ending, for me, was the weakest part. But for the most part, it's a very enjoyable horror movie. It's not too gruesome. But I think it still works on the horror level. I think it still is quite scary. Yeah.

[01:06:53] Well, maybe it needed your perspective coming out at afresh to really test that. Because for me, I know where all the jumps are. I know where all the scares are. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's probably lost any ability to surprise me on that front. So if you say it works still coming out at afresh, then yeah, it's an easy film to recommend. Yeah. I would highly recommend this movie. Yes. Mm. Yes. But what did our patrons think, Dan? Yes, yes. Hello, Gary. What now?

[01:07:22] Time for the patrons vote, please. They set it free. Oh. Of course. Yeah. Eddie Coulter says, Let the spiders run rampant. Arachnophobia is a fun horror comedy with just the right mix of both. And great performances from Jeff Daniels, John Goodman and the late Julian Sands. Nick Hardy says, Set arachnophobia free.

[01:07:48] In my opinion, the best spider film of all time and probably the reason not many have been made since. Good cast. Yeah. Decent effects. And the right mix of humour and scares. I watched Sting recently, which was decent enough. Could be a suggestion for a Minnesota. Oh. And I think we might take you up on that. Yeah, we might. I think so. But it wasn't unanimous. Oh, yes. Matt Swofford, previous guest.

[01:08:18] Ah. And he says, Not since the roaring, water-walking great white shark endures the revenge, or the serial killer gargantuan snake in Anaconda, has a creature been so poorly represented on camera. Arachnophobia isn't a bad movie, as it's well acted and competently shot, but it kind of exists on its own plane. It's not funny enough to be a comedy, nor is it scary enough to be taken as serious horror.

[01:08:48] Unless you actually suffer from arachnophobia, which would more than likely keep you from ever watching it in the first place. Right, yes. I also have a personal dog in this fight, as I've been a pest control professional for almost 30 years, and we are always unfairly depicted as unhinged weirdos in most media. Yeah. That's true. That's kind of true. That really is true. It's true. Yeah.

[01:09:14] All this film does is misinform people about what spiders actually do. I say spray this one down with permethrin and call it a day. Oh, okay. So that's an expert opinion there, Dan. Yes. Oh, coming from a professional. Yes. Yeah. So we respect that, Matt, but the vote... Yes. ...is to set it free. All right. Be free. Off you go, arachnophobia.

[01:09:46] All right, Conrad. What is coming up in our next episode? Well, Dan, we're returning to my favourite decade, the 1980s, and Home Soil 2, the 1985 British science fiction horror film, Life Force. Oh, okay. Yes, I have seen this. All I remember is a naked woman for most of the movie.

[01:10:15] Well, you're a straight man, Dan, so that's all you will remember about this movie. Yeah. Naked Space Vampires, directed by Tobey Hooper, with a screenplay by Aliens, Dan O'Bannon, and Don Jacoby, again. So there's a link to arachnophobia. Oh, okay. Yeah. So, Naked Space Vampires Ahoy, and we'll have a guest with us to take us through this one. Yeah. Well, okay.

[01:10:44] I can't wait to revisit it and maybe pick out any semblance of story. Yes. See if you can amongst the nipples. Yeah. All right, listeners, if you do want to keep up to date with our episodes, you can follow us as Movie Oobly at Everywhere, and you can email us directly at movie.oobly at gmail.com.

[01:11:10] Yes, and if you want to keep the show going, then please head on over to Patreon, where there's a whole range of different tiers and lots of rewards, like bonus features, the ability to vote and so on. Yes. So, yeah, we really appreciate it. It keeps us going. Yes, yes. We've got an upcoming Minnesota on Sting, hopefully. Yes. We do. We've got merchandise at Redbubble and a YouTube channel, which we haven't updated in a while.

[01:11:39] Also, please rate and review us if you haven't already. It does help us out and spread the word. Yeah. Tell a friend. Yes, yes, yes. Okay, listeners, thanks again for joining us on this journey through a buttload of spiders. Until next time. Goodbye. Bye. Next time it's a buttload of breasts. Oh, yes. Or a buttload of butts.

[01:12:09] We only review the films others tend to forget. Come with us and don't run up the movie you need yet. Napotism, huh? Actually, we're Baptists.