ARACHNOPHOBIA. Directed by Frank Marshall; written by Don Jakoby and Wesley Strich; produced by Kathleen Kennedy and Richard Vane for Hollywood Pictures. Starring Jeff Daniels, John Goodman and Julian Sands. Rated PG-13.
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There are two kinds of roller-coasters, just like there are two kinds of scary movies.
Some roller-coasters yank out your stomach, throw it into the next county, then send you after it at 100 miles an hour, leaving you gibbering and quivering for hours afterward. Some horror movies do that, too.
Then there are the gentler coasters, the ones that send you smoothly over inclines steep enough and around corners sharp enough to force a squeal or two from you, but which don't torture you with any lasting after-effects. Arachnophobia is that kind of roller-coaster ... er, scary movie.
The story is clever and capably told, with a good cast and believeable special effects. The effects, in fact, probably account for its PG-13 rating, although I would have given it more like a PG-7 or -8. I can't imagine a 12-year-old with any movie-going experience being very much bothered by the sight of a supposedly dessicated corpse, or another character wrapped in the beginnings of a spider-web shroud.
One element that helps to make Arachnophobia less scary and more entertaining is its humor. Although most of it is predictably black, it lightens the mood considerably. Taking the prize for spider humor is Goodman, who plays an exterminator of few words but high professional standards.
Daniels plays an arachnophobic doctor as an appealing character who gets to have an exciting showdown with the head spider in the movie's climax. Sands is appropriately creepy and ambiguous as the scientist partly responsible for the evil events of the story, but also necessary for explanations of spider behavior, reproductive physiology, and so on.
Fans of stronger horror movie fare might not be satisfied with this one, but they've got plenty of the gut-wrenching stuff to satisfy them in other movies. Kinder, gentler scary movies are considerably more rare.
Although we watched Arachnophobia with our feet in the seats and holding hands, there have been no spider nightmares in our family since seeing it, and no unusual reluctance to put on shoes. For my money, that's a perfect horror movie.
August 1, 1990