In the film, the venomous spiders come from outside of the country, but it is vital to note that America is home to deadly spiders, too. A study of American spider bites between 1934 and 2014 concluded that two such species were to blame for nearly all spider-related human injury or death. These are Loxosceles reclusa (brown recluse) and Latrodectus mactans (black widow). “A brown recluse bite can take up to six weeks to heal, and in serious cases, patients can take months to recover from necrotic ulcers, fever and general malaise.” In the case of black widows:
Symptoms may include tender lymph nodes, muscle pain, nausea and abdominal rigidity with no tenderness. The degree of envenomation depends on several factors, including the amount of venom injected, size and species of spider, time of year, size and age of the victim and location of the bite. In patients with other underlying health issues, cardiovascular issues and even death may occur.6
Director Frank Marshall wrangled two real, non-American spider species to be used in the production. The spider who takes a ride in the casket from the Amazon needed to be as huge as possible, so a bird-eating tarantula was “cast” in the role. “Big Bob,” named after fellow director Robert Zemeckis, had a chest prosthetic attached as well as purple stripes painted to his back in order to appear even more exotic and menacing. The plot calls for this hitchhiking spider to mate with a domestic spider, which meant Arachnophobia needed an army of spiders to terrify both Dr. Jennings and the moviegoers. After a series of tests, including speed trials and a sort of “spider olympics” Marshall and his team chose three hundred Delena spiders to make their feature film debut. Delena spiders, or “Delena cancerides, the flat huntsman spider or social huntsman spider, is a large, brown huntsman spider native to Australia. It has been introduced to New Zealand, where it is sometimes known as the Avondale spider as they are commonly found in the suburb of Avondale, Auckland.”7 These thankfully harmless spiders were chosen because of their size, quick movements, and sinister look. Spiders of the same species were also employed by director Sam Raimi for the 2002 Spider-Man film starring Tobey Maguire.
How can a director possibly control three hundred spiders on a film shoot? It became clear that Marshall, or any Hollywood director, hires experts for such a monumental task. In the case of Arachnophobia, bug-wrangler Steven Kutcher was brought in to make certain filming went smoothly. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Kutcher shared several of his clever techniques to ensure that the temperamental eight-legged actors took their cues:
Arachnids are phobic about Lemon Pledge (it gums up their feet). Kutcher was able to control some of their movements by spraying blotches of the stuff on the sets’ floors and walls. Also, spiders don’t like heat, so hair dryers blown through pinholes were effective prods. For more exact choreography, minuscule leashes were attached to their abdomens with wax. And in some extreme instances, tiny metal plates, controlled by electromagnets, were glued to their tummies. A technique, Kutcher assures, which causes them no harm.8
Although real spiders were used in the majority of the shots, rubber spiders had to be used when the script called for a spider’s death (no spiders were killed in the making of Arachnophobia). During the climax when Ross Jennings must defeat the vicious “Big Bob,” a mechanical fifteen-inch double had to be made. “He has to stalk Jeff Daniels; he has to stay in the right light, and if we waited for him to do that, we’d be here three or four months longer,” Marshall told the New York Times. “The main character had to become a creature, and no spider out there could give us the vicious, evil close-ups the script called for,” added visual effects supervisor David Sosalla. “The evilest ones, with real ugly looking faces, were too tiny.”9 This suggestion that the spider needs to become a creature and more, display humanistic traits of evil, is important to note. Is attributing negative human characteristics to animals what ultimately makes for an effective movie monster?
The tendency for us to typify animals as having similarly human emotions is one rooted in our childhoods. “Children are frequently exposed to anthropomorphic depictions of animals. The impact of anthropomorphism on children’s development of factual and biological knowledge about real animals has consequences for how we engage children in early learning about the natural world.”10 This is often in a positive light (especially in our view of household pets) and even in the depiction of the pleasant spider Charlotte in E. B. White’s novel Charlotte’s Web (1952). Charlotte is the heroine of the story, which is later adapted in animation (1973) and live action (2006) films. She is kind, patient, and saves Wilbur from slaughter. And her death is one of the more poignant deaths in children’s literature. If Charlotte’s cleverness and helpfulness can transform a simple barn spider into a heroine, then it stands to reason that the makers of Arachnophobia, and so many killer-spider films of its ilk, must portray spiders as having malevolent intentions. The spiders’ “legginess” might be what makes us cringe, but it is their sinister machinations of death and destruction that make a movie. Cujo, too, is anthropomorphized. Rather than characterized as an animal who is confused, unlucky, or a victim, he is seen as innocent. And at the turn of a bite, he is at once evil.
An important aspect of Arachnophobia is revealed in the title itself. Main character Dr. Ross Jennings is afflicted with arachnophobia. A fact known to his wife and children, as his wife, Molly (Harley Jane Kozak), usurps gender norms by being the spouse who dispatches a spider in their home. Ross explains that this phobia began in childhood when he was terrorized by a spider in his crib and was unable to move out of fear. This paralysis returns at the climax of the film when Ross is struck motionless as “Big Bob” walks on his body. In true movie fashion, Ross overcomes the paralysis and ultimately kills the creature and restores his family and town back to spider-less normalcy. This film, and the trope of deadly animals in general, got us thinking about phobias. How do they manifest physically? And is Ross Jennings’s temporary paralysis a realistic depiction of a phobic’s response?