In 1990, Walt Disney launched a new feature film division called Hollywood Pictures which, like their other unit Touchstone – would release more mature, PG-13/R-rated fare. To launch the studio, they released Frank Marshall‘s Arachnophobia (1990). Produced by Steven Spielberg’s Amblin’ Entertainment, the film is a Gremlins-style horror/comedy about killer spiders let loose in a small California community. Jeff Daniels starred as the town’s doctor, who suffers the titular “arachnophobia” (fear of spiders) but is forced to become an unlikely hero when they start to kill off the town’s population.
Marshall, of course, was one of Spielberg’s most-trusted colleagues, having produced Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Color Purple, and many more. However, this new film would mark his first time in the director’s chair, while his wife, Kathleen Kennedy, who would soon become one of the most influential producers in Hollywood, would produce.
Co-starring John Goodman and Julian Sands, the film has been more or less forgotten by time. It grossed about $53 million – meaning it was a solid money-maker, but it doesn’t rank with the bigger, generation-defining Amblin’ hits. Marshall went on to a promising career in the director’s chair, helming the well-received Alive a few years later and the less well-received Congo, but he’d be better known as a powerhouse producer – a role he maintains to this day with movies like Jurassic World: Dominion. Still, Arachnophobia stands as an entertaining horror thriller that exploits a widespread fear – SPIDERS. After watching this movie as a kid, I developed MASSIVE Arachnophobia myself, and to this day, I never use a toilet or dip my hand into a bowl of popcorn without checking for spiders first. So if you have kids you’d like to introduce to horror movies, 1990’s Arachnophobia might be the ticket! It’s a hidden gem in the Amblin filmography.