Are We Still Cowards?: Arachnophobia (1990)

Gathered together from the cosmic reaches of the universe, here in this great screening room with comfortable recliners, are the most powerful forces of good ever assembled.

Keith! Or, uh, as a lot of people know him, uh, Dr. Fantasy.

Terry!

Such a long time period, but man, they were all so— such— had such a vibe.

Derek!

Kathleen Kennedy's husband made a movie, and Kathleen Kennedy put women in Star Wars. Quick!

And the power twins, Zap and Jordan, with their magical lemur snort dedicated Welcome back to Fumbling Their Way Through Movies, one forgotten gem at a time.

This week we survive the creepy crawlies with 1990's Arachnophobia.

This is Fumbling Through Film.

I got some great shots in the barn today.

Oh yeah?

Yeah, my camera picks up the web with half the detail my eyes did.

The web?

Yeah, our little spider made himself a hell of a home. I think even you would appreciate it.

Molly, how can I make this more clear? I have a—

Terrible fear of spiders. I'm aware. I've seen what happens. Which is exactly why I think you should force yourself to come with me and look at the web.

Look at the web?

Yes, and see it for the extraordinary and beautiful thing it is. Therapy, Ross. Come on, we live in the country now. It's time to work through this. Irrational, paralyzing terror.

It's not irrational.

I know, the incident.

It's like it happened yesterday.

Russ, nobody remembers anything from when they were 2.

It's my first memory.

Hello and welcome to another one-of-a-kind, genre-defining, brand new episode of Fumbling Through Film, the only show that Dares, dares to bring together three dudes to talk about movies. These gentle listener aren't just any movie.

Nope, not at all.

Yes, we are. What was that?

It was clearly you, Keith.

Sounds like the ghosts of movies. I don't know.

These are the ones that we've missed, overlooked, or feel are simply worth revisiting. now would be the time to do it.

That's it. That's all we get this time.

That is an A movie, goddamn it. That is the definition of an A movie. These are A movies.

What was that? Oh my God, it was me.

There's 2 ghosts now.

It was me. I said that.

Oh, thank God.

You guys are too easily fooled.

You're— I just saw a Phantom VHS tape float before my eyes.

You did not. What about me? Oh, I do.

Okay, we have a VHS player in my house. It's sitting upstairs, and there's a VHS tape sitting with it. My wife pulled it out of storage this weekend.

But we don't have one in the Fumble Dome, Keith.

No, we don't. But

I think there's more investigation needed before we can decide if this place is haunted.

Don't be mad at me because we don't have a VHS player and the haunted VHS tape stayed. Anyway, my name is Derek, and I am a fumbler. I cannot speak. Maybe I'm possessed.

Could be. You're speaking in tongues.

I'm speaking in something. Sometimes it's tongues. Uh, I'm a fumbler. Joining me here in the Fumbledome is the spooky haunted one himself. Yeah, I'm trying to think what that voice was, Keith. It was almost like the Haunted Mansion from Disney. It's the Prime Minister of Fumbling and Film, Keith.

Hey, what's up everybody? Fumbler extraordinaire. Um, and I, I like to go get fireflies more than blow up bullfrogs.

Okay.

No, just a personal preference. Personal preference.

Yeah, if you're a bullfrog blower-upper, you're like a psychopath.

Agreed.

Catching fireflies, I mean, it's torturous as well, but it's a lighthearted torture.

You know, you put them in a little jar for a little while, but then like before the night's out, you let them all back out again.

Oh, okay. Yeah, if we put you in a jar for a little while, Keith, and shove it around, how would you feel?

It's not what this podcast is.

Yeah, feels like it. That other one that's been a jar, uh, is Prime Minister— or no, it's not the Prime Minister, it's the doctor of Kansas, Terry.

Yep, it's me. I've always been in a jar. Um, I don't want to leave. I like it in here.

Oh, you haven't seen So I Married an Axe Murderer, right? Isn't that where the I'm in a nutshell joke?

Keith? Uh, I'm blanking on that one, but I've seen that movie a bunch of times. That's a really good movie.

It's me. This is me in a nutshell. I've been in a nutshell.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

That could be me too.

That could be you. It's crap. That's the only thing I remember.

We weren't looking for—

But overall, yeah, you weren't looking for bad impressions. Um, overall, that's a really good movie, Terry. You should watch it sometime. It's a fun movie.

Well, who knows? Maybe it'll come up in one of our categories someday.

Yeah. You know what may come up in one of our categories someday?

Podcasts.

This podcast.

Yeah. That would be weird.

That'll be a category.

Ouroboros. Yeah, we'd be snake swallowing on its own tail here.

We'd actually have a lot of options if it had to be related to the podcast. We'd probably have a lot of options.

Uh-huh. Probably.

Well, I mean, technically we do. It's any movie. We've always got lots of options. If we did it just based on movies from the podcast, we may actually be limiting ourselves way more.

People are like, what the hell's that mean? So I better tell them what it is we do here. Yeah,

don't want to confuse them.

Every week we watch movies, but not just any movie. Nope, nope, nope. Every month one of us chooses a theme, a genre, a guiding light, some sort of pulsating egg sac.

Oh,

and we all— then we choose movies that adhere to that pulsating egg sac.

And we wait for them to pop out of the pulsating egg sac. Yeah,

no, no, only DVDs pop out though. No VHS.

No VHS tapes. VHS and tape, the 2 words together is really giving me problems. Anywho, and then on the 4th week, we truly fumble. We watch a movie that's given to us by a wheel. But this is DTF, Down to Fumble. Y2, year 2. M11.

M?

The M stands for month.

Wow.

And it's a Keith month. It's a brand new month. It's the October month too. This is spooky season month. So Keith, let us know what it is we're in for this month.

Well, I, uh, I had a bunch of different ideas and I, but I said, you know what, I think want to know more about the Fumblers. I think they want to know more, a little bit more about our background.

And

so I said, let's each pick maybe a movie from when we were, you know, younger, and something that maybe scared us when we were younger. And does it still scare us today? Were we fools back then?

No, of course not.

I have, I have a handful of movies that I've rewatched over the years where I was like, that was not Why was I ever scared of that movie? Sure. Uh, and, uh, you were

a child. That'd be the reason.

Yeah, mostly. Yeah, I was way younger than I should have ever been watching.

I was like, dumb fucking kid. Jesus Christ, man, that's not scary.

I

was

a coward back then.

Um, and yeah, so I thought it'd be good to, you know, I got a couple— I have a couple movies that I haven't seen in a while that I'm like, man, those I remember scared me. Or, uh, once we get around to what this week's movie is, I actually tried watching this like a few months ago and I paused it because I was like, I was getting some anxiety from it. So,

oh,

okay.

Yeah.

And that movie is?

Oh, Arachnophobia.

Arachnophobia.

From 1990. I would have been, uh, what, 15?

That sounds about right to me. Yeah, 1990, 15 years old. Sure. I know we kind of touched on it earlier about movies That are from this podcast. But if we did themes that were other themes that Keith had considered but left on the wayside to choose something else, it would be enormous. Like every month, every time it's a Keith month, it's like, listen, I had like 10 ideas. I said, nah, let's do this one.

Well, no, this was one of the, this is one of the several ideas.

I know. I believe you. You always do.

I, I really, I I got— I thought about doing a PowerPoint thing like Terry did last year, but then I was like, man, that was a really high bar he set, and I don't know if I can get over it.

It's all

right,

that's fine. We're doing movies that scared us in our youths.

Yeah,

because we're goddamn cowards.

Yeah, a bunch of cowards.

Are they— are we still cowards, or were they truly scary?

The real test. Yeah.

It is the real test. And we're starting off with Arachnophobia from 1990. Now, before we talk about our viewing of Arachnophobia from 1990, before we do a deep dive into Arachnophobia from 1990, did any of us have any previous knowledge, history, and/or experience with Arachnophobia from 1990?

Or in general? I guess,

or in general?

No, not really. I've heard of it. I was like, you know, I've always been casually curious about it but never watched it.

Yeah, I mean, obviously I saw it in my youth. Um, not as— not a child child, 15, but I—

Did you see it at 15 in theaters? Yeah,

yeah, we're a big movie-going family, but I'm also like, especially where we live here, it We get lots of spiders, uh, especially out in the yard and stuff. And I, especially in the fall, we get the orb weavers.

Mm-hmm.

Um, and these other ones called gyro spiders that they're not poisonous, but they look creepy as shit. And they like to leave webs like in areas where I have to walk.

Oh yeah.

And I, I will walk into a web all the time and just, I'm freaked out by it every time.

Do any of those spiders hiss?

No, no. I'm, I'm, I think I'm lucky they're, they're not hissing at me. But, uh, I did have one that was right outside our front door. Um, it's a Jiro spider, which I think they're supposed to be an invasive species around here, but I don't know what you do about— you just report that you've seen one in the area every now and

then.

And then report them to the authorities?

They had a website to like tell if you had seen one. I'm like, yeah, there's like 10 in my backyard. I don't know.

Did they come stop them?

They came and just like napalmed your backyard?

Well, they didn't leave enough to do anything with. They're just, you know, they're not, they're not poisonous or anything. They're just there.

Who are you reporting? Why are you reporting them though? Like, what's the purpose of it if nobody comes to do anything?

Look, I don't know.

They just put like pins on, on a map, right? There's like the Giro Spider Track Center. It's just a closet with a map of the county. They stick little pins where they—

There's like one man who's working in like the, the, the government office, like in a closet. Like he's the Giro Spider guy.

There's no light bulb in there. He's got like light a lighter. Yeah, burns his hand because he holds it too long. It's like, ah, God.

His budget's $5 a month.

It puts a bunch of pins like just around my house.

Mm-hmm.

It's the only one who's supporting me.

There's this one that's got to be the mortuary in the middle, but it's not. It's a home.

Yeah. I, uh,

oh no.

I, I named it Jerome, the one that was outside our door.

Okay.

Uh, I do believe Jerome ended up being a female. There were 2 other, 2 others that showed up eventually. That was Junior and Luanne. I let them stay there as long as they did not put a web that was right in front of me when I had to take the dogs out.

Well, it's spiders' nature. Of course they're gonna do it.

Spiders are looking to catch a big meal. If they—

all last fall, there was one. It would

come

through, it would put a web. I would have to knock it down every time I went out, and every night it was right back there again.

That's what they do.

I hate it now. Like, there's a couple times I have come back in the house and quickly taken my shirt off and like shook it out and everything like that because I'm worried that there's a spider on me somewhere.

Yeah, I don't like that feeling.

I might not have the worst case of arachnophobia, but I still get freaked out by these things. I don't like them.

Well, if we're talking spiders in general, I have heard of them and I have some experience with them.

Yeah, my most recent—

I'll go ahead and share my most recent spider story. I go to the gym in the mornings at like 5:00 AM. It's super early. I'm hardly awake when I get there. Um, and you know, I say hi to the front desk lady. She checks me in and I just walk on past. Well, this was probably a month ago. She stops me and she goes, hey, can I ask you a favor? And I'm like, huh? Uh, yeah, what's up? And she's like, can you kill a spider for me? And I'm like, huh? I'm really groggy. I'm like, uh, yeah, sure, whatever. So she's like, okay, it's just right behind this desk. I was like, okay. I started walking behind the desk and I get halfway there and she goes, Oh, and by the way, it's, it is, it's pretty big. And I'm like, I kind of just stop and I'm like, oh, okay. I get behind that desk and I'm not kidding you, it's huge. Like, it's big enough that I'm like, I don't wanna step on this because of like the, the crunch. You know what I mean? Like, I don't wanna hear that or feel that on my foot. And she gives me a broom and she's like, here, just use this. And I'm like, uh, okay. So I start smacking at the spider with the broom and it just starts scurrying, of course, deeper and deeper into the desk.

Yes.

And let's just say I failed my job and it— I couldn't get it. And so—

And change fitness centers.

She told me, she's like, no, it's fine.

They revoked your membership.

Yeah, she kicked me out. She's like, no, it's fine. I said, okay. And so I came back in and when I was leaving, I looked at the desk and she's like sitting there with her chairs totally pivoted, staring at that spot. And she's just watching it. I'm like, did we see it? She's like, nope, but I'm gonna keep watching it. Okay. Yeah, I really failed on that one. I felt bad, but I should have just thrown my shoe at it. That's what I wanted to do, take my shoe off and just smack it. But she told me to use the broom. I shouldn't— I should, I should have followed my guts.

Yeah, follow your guts when it comes to spiders. That's what I always say. I'd never seen this movie. I knew of it. I didn't really have a whole lot of interest in it when I was younger. Not because the spiders, I don't care. There's something about it, I just didn't care about it. And then as far as the bug, the insect, they're not insects, the arachnids go. I don't have a— I'm the de facto spider getter ridder of a guy here at the house. My youngest is absolutely just terrified of bugs in general. Insects, bugs, creepy crawly things. She freaks the fuck out in a very guest on The Maury Show way. Like, yeah, are you— oh, you're afraid of bugs? Bring them out! And they bring out like a million bugs to these poor people, right? That's my daughter. She is like— Oh, man. The other day, she's got off the bus, and the bus drops her off like right by the driveway. She gets in the driveway, she's at the foot of our driveway screaming. I can't come up the driveway. Wife's like, what's wrong? We have roaches. She's screaming. There's stink bugs. It's stink bug season in Wisconsin. If you don't know what a stink bug is, they're these crappy, like, bugs that if you squish them, they kind of smell funky, but they're very harmless. They're big-ish, right? And they're annoying.

Yeah.

And there was like one in the driveway, and our driveway is huge. Just like walk around it.

You don't have to interact.

Yeah, you don't have to interact with this bug. She's at the base of our driveway. We have roaches!

Just yelling out in the streets. Yes.

The neighbors are like, what?

We don't have roaches. Jesus

Christ.

We get, um, the house centipedes, like, oh, water bugs. I mean, they're creepy looking, but They apparently, they are known for like, they will eat the other bugs around.

Eat mosquitoes and stuff, I think too.

Yeah. And so we, they, we get 'em in the house every now and then. I leave them be as long as there's certain areas they're not allowed to show up in. And those ones I like to, you know, I like to have a little personal talk with 'em cuz then I can be like, look, I will let you walk through this house, no problem. Just don't show up in a couple of small places in the house. You're fine.

I will let you live.

Yeah.

Don't you want to live?

No, they wanna, they wanna test boundaries. They know, they're like, oh yeah, I'm sure.

Eat the other bugs and we'll be great.

Oh, I want to live. So I want to live life to the fullest. And I'm sure you do too, Terry. So we should relax because Keith is going to enrich us with information beyond our wildest dreams about Arachnophobia from 1990 in another patent-pending Fumbler's Deep Dive.

Arachnophobia, as you mentioned, 1990. It was actually July 18th, 1990.

Oh, okay.

1990. It's PG-13, 1 hour and 49 minutes. And, um, I'm just gonna tell you right now, wasn't bothered by

it.

Wow. Didn't need to— I wasn't bothered.

By the length or by the spiders?

By the length of the movie.

Okay. What about the length of the spiders?

That bothered me. Okay. Yeah.

Um, what about the girth of the spiders? Did they bother you too?

Oh yes, the one. Yes.

One's girth was a bit too much, I think. Yeah.

I agree.

Yeah. Yeah. Uh, this gets a 92% from critics on Rotten Tomatoes, but only 55% from the audience.

Wow.

A new species of South American killer spider hitches a lift to a California town in a coffin and starts to breed, leaving a trail of deaths that puzzle and terrify a young Dr. Ross Jennings who's newly arrived in town with his family. Taglines: 8 legs, 2 fangs, and an attitude. I think that's, I think that's pretty accurate. It's that, that These spiders seem to have very much an attitude.

They're rude dudes with attitudes. Yeah,

they are.

Yeah, might as well be like smoking cigarettes, like leaning in an alleyway, you know.

They are some spiders. Yeah,

yeah.

Another tagline: the suspense of Alien, the excitement of Jaws, the fun of Back to the Future.

Boy, I don't think a single one of those boxes got checked for me.

That's a lot of promises. Yeah, it's a lot of promises.

Those are Big promises. Yeah, let's

just compare to like three really, really

three of the most beloved movies ever.

Raccoonphobia does all three of those.

The suspense of not even of aliens because that's even better. The excitement of Jaws two. No, that would be no, it wasn't that bad. The fun of Back to the Future two. Now that's you know we can't even do that. No, dude, that.

How about the suspense of Alien 4? That was the one with the weird hybrid xenomorph-human thing.

Yeah, what about the suspense of Alien: Romulus?

No, it has more suspense for sure.

Yeah,

I think 4 is accurate because the tone is very similar.

Yes, I agree to that as well.

The excitement of Jaws: The Revenge? No, there's no Back to the Future 4, so we can't go with the Force either. Anyway,

not yet.

This movie was the first film released under Disney's Hollywood Pictures label, which was also created just so the studio could release more adult-oriented fare such as—

oh, it's very adult.

Uh, this was originally titled Along Came a Spider, but the people at Hollywood Pictures were worried people wouldn't go see it with it being about spiders.

So Arachnophobia is better?

They assume people don't know what arachnophobia means. Is that They assume people were dumb.

I like both titles, but I don't know.

Yeah, the one's a nice working title. The other one's—

what was the one spider movie with Angelina Jolie?

That's Long Came a Spider.

Is that what it was called too?

Yeah, but I don't think that has anything to do with the real—

has nothing to do with spiders. Had to do with the serial killer.

Oh, is that one like the James Patterson novel? Yeah, something like that. Yeah, it wasn't—

it was like post-7, pre-8.

Yeah, pre-8.

Yeah.

The movie Nine at least.

Nine definitely came out much later.

Yes.

Exit Eight.

That's Exit Eight.

There you go. Yeah. So many numbers. That could be a great category.

Magnificent Seven.

Hateful Eight.

Hateful Eight. There we go. Summer between Seven and the Hateful Eight.

Yeah. And Furious Nine.

And Furious came some we were talking about. I don't remember.

Probably this probably has the excitement of Furious Nine.

No, no, let's not do that. No. Anyway, this though did have a budget of, well, estimated $22 million. It made $53.21 million, which adjusted for inflation is about $142.6 million.

Banger.

Yeah. It peaked only at number 3, and that was in its opening weekend. That's the highest it got. Number 1 that weekend, Ghost.

Oh, of course. Patrick Swayze, Keith.

Yeah. You're a big fan of those now, Terry. We know.

Yeah, not as big as you. It's your number

1. No, no, Roadhouse, if that was the case. Um, number 2 was Die Hard 2. This was 3. Number 4 was Navy SEALs.

Wow, that's a great title.

And, uh, number 5 was a re-release of Disney's The Jungle Book. Oh, like 1960-something. One of my all-time favorite Disney movies, but it must have been— it doesn't really match up with like an anniversary release. I guess, but I don't know.

Maybe there was like a big thing about blue bears at the time or something.

Yeah,

yeah, the blue bears were all a trend. Bear in the Big Blue House, was that out at that time?

I don't

know. This movie directed by Frank Marshall, or as a lot of people know him, Dr. Fantasy.

Why do they know him as such?

Well, because Dr. Fantasy is a famous magician's stage name. An alter ego of acclaimed Hollywood producer Frank Marshall. Wow. He's a, uh, passionate amateur magician. He started the character early in his producing career, uh, on a particularly grueling, high-stress shoot to help lift spirits of a tired film crew. He does, uh, famous on-set shows all the time, uh, such as the wrap party at Raiders of the Lost Ark, uh, and a couple other things that he's done. His alter ego is immortalized in an inside joke in Poltergeist, um, where I guess at the Holiday Inn, uh, there's a sign that says, welcome Dr. Fantasy and Friends. And eventually he became DJ Master Frank, uh, where he's a disc jockey instead of just the magician.

Man of many talents.

Uh, so Dr. Fantasy hasn't directed a ton of stuff, but he did start out with directing The Making of Poltergeist.

Okay.

He did The Making of Temple of Doom. Uh, he did a couple shorts, Tummy Trouble and Roller Coaster Rabbit, both from Roger Rabbit.

Yeah, Roger Rabbit.

Now, Arachnophobia was his first full-length feature film to direct. In 1995, Derek, he did one of your all-time favorites. When expedition to the African Congo ends in disaster, a new team assembled to find out what went wrong. It's Congo.

Yes,

I loathe that movie. Yeah, loathe it.

I've never seen it.

2 years prior to Congo though, he did a movie called Alive. After crash landing in the snow-swept Andes, a Uruguayan rugby team has no choice but to turn to desperate measures in order to survive.

Oh no.

Stars Ethan Hawke and a bunch of other people.

It's based on a true story.

It is. It is. I saw that in theaters.

Yeah, I saw it as well.

I know exactly who I saw it with because I think one of the guys with us made a weird cannibal joke after the movie as well.

Okay.

Frank Marshall, I said, hasn't had a lot of directing, but he is a big-time producer. Some things he's produced: The Warriors, Poltergeist, Gremlins, Goonies, The Color Purple, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Cape Fear.

Oh, that's a good one.

The Sixth Sense, all 5 Indiana Jones movies, all 3 Back to the Futures, and many, many more.

Wow.

I mean, you just went down like 30 movies, so.

Yeah. Yeah. This, uh,

and there's more.

I didn't go super deep into every, like, person in this. Just with a handful of things I went into, there's a lot of stuff good for consideration for the wheel. Uh, Frank Marshall also married Kathleen Kennedy.

Oh, really?

Yeah. Runs all the Star Wars stuff. I think she's, she's stepping down from that though soon.

I think she already did. Yeah.

That's probably why this movie has a bad fan score.

Mm-hmm.

They return bombed it. Yeah. Kathleen Kennedy's husband made a movie and Kathleen Kennedy put women in Star Wars. Quick,

quick, we have to get to round 3.

We have to review Bummer Arachnophobia.

Sounds honestly like it could happen.

Sounds pretty fair. A lot of the stormtroopers couldn't be black.

Oh, heaven forbid. No, that doesn't make any sense.

No, even if it's out of context, we can't understand that.

Yep.

Oh man, gotta love those people and hate them too.

You don't have to love anybody that's an asshole. That's just—

I was talking about stormtroopers.

Oh yeah.

Yeah. All right, uh, writers on this movie, uh, first one, Don Jacoby. He wrote Invaders from Mars. Oh, uh, he wrote Double Team with Jean Van Damme and Dennis Rodman.

Dennis Rodman, great.

And he also, uh, was one of the writers on a movie that we talked about just last month, Blue Thunder. Uh, 2 months ago.

No idea what the time—

the time flies by. But Blue Thunder is the helicopter movie that— Oh,

all right.

That the guy who plays, uh, Chief Brody

It's not the sequel to the Tom Cruise thing. It's something else.

No.

Oh, it's not Days of Thunder 2.

Um, oh, by the way, uh, the, uh, Frank Marshall, he did produce Days of Thunder also.

Oh boy, thank goodness.

Ah, the other, uh, guy, the other main person— there's 3 writers. The 3rd writer, the only thing he's written was this. Um, but then, uh, this other person, Wesley Strick, he's written a handful of things. Uh, the most notable he wrote was, uh, Wolf. Jack Nicholson becomes a werewolf. True Believer. He wrote The Saint. But in 1991, he helped out Marty Scorsese by writing Cape Fear.

Yes.

A convict systematically stalks a defense attorney who withheld evidence during his original trial 14 years prior. The lawyer must protect his family from escalating psychological threats while navigating his own moral compromises. Stars Robert De Niro, Nick Nolte, Jessica Lange. Now this movie stars Jeff Daniels. He is best known as Harry in Dumb and Dumber.

That's what he's best known as?

These are a handful of things he's best known as, but Harry in Dumb and Dumber. Um, not sure if this is popular or unpopular opinion, but I do not like that movie.

I have not seen that in a long time.

Yeah, last time I— last time I watched, I was like, eh. Same thing with Something About Mary. I didn't like that one either. I

haven't seen it. You're the rom-com guy, so I would be— I'm shocked.

Well, yeah, I guess it is rom-com. Jeff Daniels is also Harry in the movie Speed.

Oh, yes.

With Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock. We can't let the bus go below 50, otherwise Dennis Hopper's gonna blow it up or something like that.

It's a good movie.

He played Teddy Sanders in The Martian, that Damon poop potato movie. Played Tim O'Hara in My Favorite Martian.

Oh,

movie based off the old

TV show.

Yeah, which had the guy who played Dr. Smith in Lost in Space, I do believe, played the Martian.

They made a movie about that?

Yeah, there was a time where I think they were rolling out all the different movies based on those shows.

Old-ass properties. But they never did the one anybody wanted to see, like Mr. Ed or

The Munsters. Oh, The Munsters.

Yeah, they waited too long and then Rob Zombie did it great. But in 2012, it's a movie that has been sitting on my rewatch list for a while. Maybe I'll get around to it soon. Uh, he played Abe in Rian Johnson's Looper.

Oh yes. I don't remember Abe, but I remember the movie.

I don't remember Abe either. Criminal syndicate uses illegal time travel to send targets into the past to be assassinated by hitmen known as Loopers. So that's Bruce Willis, Joe Scorsese, Emily Blunt, and Paul Dano. And I just remember that the scene where I think they're chopping Paul Dano up in the past.

Yep.

Yep. And stuff happened to him in the future. I found that to be like super duper creepy.

It is. It is. I think he plays Abe Lincoln.

Really?

I don't think he's in that, but maybe he was. Was Abe Lincoln one of the assassins?

Maybe it's Abe Froman.

Oh, probably Abe Froman.

Yeah. Yeah. They want to take out the sausage king of Chicago.

Terry's never seen Ferris Bueller and you're spoiling one of the best—

Have you never seen Ferris Bueller?

We had this conversation 2 weeks ago. Not even 2 weeks ago.

Is season 3 of this show where we just ask him if he's seen something?

No, it's the— well, I guess that could be the— we make a list of all the movies that Keith gets angry that somebody hasn't seen.

That would make him a happy man if we picked that as a list because then we'd finally be watching these films.

That could just— that could be a monthly theme also.

Movies that Keith's pissed off that Derek or Terry hasn't seen.

I'm never pissed about— I'm just shocked.

All

right, well, okay.

Usually shocked. Okay. Yeah. Anyway, and, uh, this movie also stars John Goodman.

Oh yeah. Yep.

The legend. I, I could have listed a lot more stuff here for John Goodman, but I figured I hit a lot— I'm gonna hit a lot of the high notes real quick.

Okay.

Uh, he was Coach Harris in Revenge of the Nerds.

He was?

That's a highlight. I

didn't know he was in there.

He was Sully in Monsters, Inc. and Monsters University.

Yep. Yep.

Does a lot of work with the Coen brothers. I think some of the best things he's known for probably are, uh, Gale in Raising Arizona, obviously Walter Sobchak in The Big Lebowski, and Big Dan Teague in Oh Brother, Where Art

Thou? I really like him in Barton Fink. He's really good in that.

He plays Bill Randa in Kong: Skull Island. Oh,

that's true. Yep, yep, he's good in that too.

Yep. He plays Al Yackey in the movie Always. Now, this movie is the spirit of a recently deceased expert pilot mentors a newer pilot while watching him fall in love with the girlfriend that he left behind.

Oh, that's awkward.

That's a Spielberg movie.

It is. Uh, Richard Dreyfuss, Holly Hunter. Directed by Steven Spielberg, and director Frank Marshall originally wanted John Candy to play the role of Delbert, but executive producer Steven Spielberg insisted on casting John Goodman, all based on his performance in this movie Always. Also, Frank Marshall produced Always, and he was like, "Yeah, sure, why not?

Why not? I

agree." Also, I guess apparently at some point in time during an interview, John Goodman said that while they're filming, there's like a long shot of his character driving the exterminator truck around. I guess Steven Spielberg is. sitting down like the passenger side footwell area out of view of the camera. And apparently like whispered to John Goodman, only we will know that I was here.

Well, that's not true. 'Cause now we know.

Well, yeah, 'cause he let it slip and told people. But other than that, he—

Who let it slip?

John Goodman in an interview.

Oh. Oh, he's—

but until then it was— yeah.

Spielberg's got a hit out on him now.

Oh, he's never worked with him again. No.

Yeah. Yeah. Weird.

He's also Fred Flintstone in the movie The Flintstones.

Oh, yep. Yep, yep.

And I think also for Viva Rock Vegas, the sequel they did.

Yeah, okay, hit them highlights.

I think that's, I think that's Rick Moranis as Barney. I think that's what that is.

Mm-hmm, sounds right. And I believe

Rosie O'Donnell is Betty.

Rosie O'Donnell is Betty.

Yeah.

Wow. Movie that he was in that, that has a bit of a personal note for me. He played Huey P. Long in the 1995 TV movie, uh, The Kingfish. And that's, uh, sticks to me because I had to watch, or I had to read the, the book, The Kingfish, uh, at some point in time. I had, I had to read the book, but I was lazy, so I just watched the movie for class.

Oh, nice.

Okay. Yeah. For a college class, I just watched that instead.

It was for a college class? Oh.

Yeah. And I just watched that instead.

Did it work?

Did you get away with it?

If it's the class I'm thinking of, I think I got away with it for other reasons.

What?

I'm not gonna explain those here.

What?

Uh, okay. Yeah, no, there's, well, there's no way that the person that, that I would be talking about would know all this. I don't remember what it was.

Let it go. Let it go.

Uh, but in 1998, last thing I'm gonna talk about that he does— by the way, there's a ton of other great stuff that John Goodman does, but I thought this one fits in good because we are doing spooky season type stuff.

That's fitting good, man.

He played Jonesy in the movie Fallen. Homicide detective John Hobbs witnesses the execution of serial killer Edgar Reese. Soon after the execution, the killings start again. They're very similar to Reese's style. That stars Denzel Washington. John Goodman, Elias Koteas. If I remember right, I think Jonesy is, uh, Denzel Washington's like partner. He's the cop and he's the partner. The spirit bounces from like person to person.

No,

not spirit, it might actually be the devil or something like that is bouncing from person to person and doing this so they can never really kind of figure out who's doing the killings.

Oh, that devil.

Uh, no, it's really, uh, it's a cool like, um, Kind of again, it's like one of those right around the same time Seven came out and stuff like that.

After Seven, before Hateful Eight.

Yep, yep.

After Seven, before Hateful Eight. That beautiful time period.

It's like two decades worth of film.

It's such a long time period, but man, they were all such had such a vibe.

Yeah. So this movie, Arachnophobia, they really were using a lot of real spiders, and they had to make sure that there was a lot of safety for these spiders. The safety of the spiders was. Paramount throughout the entire production. For example, a scene where John Goodman has to spray the arachnids with the insecticide and then squish it with his boot. The production went to extreme measures to first make sure a dummy spider was sprayed, and then they gave Goodman a special boot that was hollowed out sole for the squish shot so the spider would just curl up inside and then wait for the next take.

Inside his shoe that he's stepping with?

Inside a little hole that they made in the shoe. Yeah.

Oh.

And then they would come and get it back out.

I don't like that.

And they would set it back up.

I'm not stepping on a sh— with a shoe with a hole in it that a spider can climb in.

Yeah. I don't think it climbed all the way through, but there was just like this—

No, it just like rolled the rest of the way. It climbed to a point and then dug its way into it.

If I was a spider and I got in there, I'm just digging.

Yeah. Yeah. I'm laying eggs too.

I'm gonna do everything you fear while I'm in there.

Uh, now Derek, you're gonna really love this one. Okay, when, uh, John Goodman crushes that spider,

uh-huh,

Foley artists were crushing a couple of, uh, potato chips to make that noise.

Just potato chips? Yep. I mean, that's an ingenious solution, but I thought it'd be more. They got the most out of them potato chips, I'll tell you that much.

They snacked on them a bit, then they crushed them, etc., when they needed to. In between takes, they're just munching on them, then they

Yeah,

I wonder.

I bet you they are ruffles because they have ridges.

Oh, maybe.

Yeah, more crunchy that way, I think.

Yeah, make a lot of—

oh, like 6 Pringles crunch.

If you get like 6 on top of each other, yeah, just— yep, once it's like just slightly difficult to, to pull them apart, that's when you get that.

There's, there's one hole where the spider goes into the shoe and then it opens up another thing that lets out a couple of Pringles from a dimension.

It opens up the Pringles dimension.

Yeah. All spiders have the ability to do that at least once in their life.

Have you guys seen the new Pringles commercial where like— No. It says they're like, this guy walks in and he looks over, he's like, he sees his roommate has a, I guess like has a date there or something.

And it's a spider?

No, he's dancing with like a person made out of Pringles.

Oh, I like that.

It's weird.

So he's probably, that guy is from the Pringles dimension then. The guy, the man made out of Pringles.

Oh yeah. That's what made me think of it. That's what reminded me. Yeah. It's the Pringles dimension. Yeah.

I wonder if they ever got romantic after that dance.

Oh boy.

Yeah, I really wonder that too. I wonder how that worked.

It's the next natural step.

You think he has just like a Pringles can down there?

You dance with Pringles? See, I try not to go there, Terry.

Because you have to be really soft and careful too.

And they're probably dusted with some sort of flavoring as well.

Oh yeah, I didn't even think of that. Depending on what flavoring that person—

I get the sour cream and onion. Yes,

I recently bought a can of Mexican street corn Pringles.

Yeah, how are those?

Uh, they were right. Nobody else in the house liked them, and then eventually they went stale, and— but I couldn't bring myself to throw them away, so I would eat like 2 of them a day until they were gone.

That's how I take care of any bad romances with the Pringles people. Just eat a couple pieces off them every day.

2 Pringles a day till they're gone.

Yeah. They'll never know. It's the perfect crime.

That it is. It's like killing somebody with a ham and then cooking the ham and feeding it to the detectives. Yep. Or using a block of ice to break through the window.

Exactly. Like, just kill a Pringles person and like, just—

With a ham? Yes.

Yeah. And then just hand the Pringles to the policeman and have them eat them, and then you're good. Just like, yeah, I spilled some Pringles.

That's what I like to do.

You'll never know. Now, the live spiders in the map, they very much wanted to make sure that they were safe throughout this thing. Uh, they were housed Separately in a temperature-controlled area.

Like a humidor?

I guess spiders can't be trained. I don't know if you guys knew that or not.

You can't train them?

Apparently not. But they had an entomologist on the staff and he devised— they devised other means to guide the spiders. They would vibrate wires, which the spiders wouldn't walk across. Apparently Lemon Pledge furniture wax was something else spiders refused to walk on, so they would just kind of You know, make little pathways for them. Uh, the spider wranglers worked with the actors on how to handle the spiders.

Oh,

uh, and just so they couldn't mishandle or mistreat them as well.

That's good.

Now, uh, the really big, uh, spider that they have in this, uh, they used, uh, a bird-eating tarantula native to the Amazon. Apparently they only had like one of these spiders in the US at the time when they were able to— and they were able to get it for this movie. Uh, Frank Marshall named it Big Bob after, uh, director Robert Zemeckis.

Wow,

what

an honor.

Yeah, so it's just, you know, just this giant one that's there.

Huge inside joke.

Yeah, that only— that doesn't go over with anybody else. Yeah,

unless you're related to the Zemeckises,

who, who, who, who probably— they're like, no, we hate Frank Marshall. Yeah, that's the Big Bob joke.

Naming spiders after me, I'll fucking kill them.

Now apparently Frank Marshall meant for the film to be a lot like Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds.

Oh, now that's a great idea.

So it's— hold on— the suspense of Alien, the, the— what was the second one?

The horror of Jaws.

Oh yeah, the action of Jaws. The adventure of Back to the Future and

the premise of The

Birds, the overall umbrella that brings it all together. The Birds, the modernist, the modern retelling of The Birds.

Yeah, well, his quote was, people like to be scared but laughing, like a roller coaster. No one wants to be terrified.

That's not true.

Yeah,

and I could say that mantra right there Oozes in this movie. Except it does.

It does. Yeah. I think just that it was, again, they were trying to go for that, the fun of Back to the Future.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Um, with it, I guess one of the things that they did, like when Jeff Daniels first came on board, also the film was supposed to be a more serious horror movie, but it seemed very cliché. And so they did, that's when they did some punch-ups and rewrites and stuff. Uh, I guess one of the key changes to this was actually giving Jeff Daniels' character, it was given a fear of spiders. It wasn't like originally included.

Oh,

oh really? That seems like a pretty good addition.

Like a big, a big part that's there. Yeah. The last little note here, which I just found to be like incredibly stupid. That's why I feel it kept it in here. Um, I guess there was an urban legend that the singer Brandy had a small role in the film and that was later debunked. The Brandy credited as playing Brandy Beechwood is the Beechwood family dog, a golden retriever, as opposed to an actual person.

No,

people thought that the dog was the singer.

Yeah, I have— it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.

Holy shit. Goddamn, we got close to that arachnophobia from 1990.

As close as just like a little spider coming down right next to you and you just moving right out of the way right before it.

Oh,

or you don't even notice it, that there's spiders like in your peripheral, but you don't even flinch.

There could be one lowering itself right now behind you and you'd never know.

You would never know unless it hisses at you.

Oh,

or get some free time to make like some gigantic webbing.

I had to Google, do spiders hiss?

And do they?

And apparently some of them do, but not because of lungs and vocal cords. They hiss for some other reason.

It's like releasing steam.

I don't know. I didn't, I didn't click the read more button.

Did you Google, do they actually sound like potato chips when they get stepped on?

No, I didn't. Well, I didn't know they were potato chips. If I'd known that, I would have looked that up for sure. But I just saw the big bolded, yes, some spiders do hiss. I'm like, well, that's all I need to

know. This movie is accurate after all.

Spider accurate. All right. Well, you know what? I think we have got, we have a duty, a duty to shake our booty and to also talk about our viewing of Arachnophobia. Phobia from 1990.

Yes, this is a new duty that we've added to our podcast where we have to shake our booty as we're discussing the films.

Yeah,

and shake your booty, talk about a movie.

Booty movie.

But that's a whole nother, uh, topic month. Yeah, right there.

Yeah, we'll get there.

So that was one of the ones that Keith was going to suggest for this

movie. Yeah, he said that in the back burner for a while.

Yeah, that was more—

I got like 10 ideas for this month. One booty movies.

That was, that was more back like in summertime. Like, that's more summertime thing.

Sun's out, buns out month.

Exactly, exactly. Like a good '80s comedy would always have.

Oh, okay. So let's talk about, let's talk about arachnophobia and our viewing of it. And after Keith mentioned that Frank Marshall doesn't like horror movies but tried to make a horror movie, it makes sense.

It makes a lot of sense. His quote is the quote of someone who doesn't like horror, which is okay, but it's like when he generalizes to like, yeah, nobody likes that. It's like, you're wrong. People like to be scared.

He wants to be scared like fun roller coaster scared and not—

yeah,

not uber creepy.

People like that too. There's room for it all, I guess.

There is. Yeah.

Oh yeah. Yeah. People want, you know, suspense of Alien, the terror of Jaws, and then—

yeah, sure.

Back to the Future, all encompassed within the retelling of The Birds.

Yes, yes. I wish this—

they studied a lot of, uh, some of the other notes I saw, they studied a lot of Alfred Hitchcock stuff when in making this movie.

It does not, does not

come

across.

No, it doesn't. No,

like, I like The Birds because of the, like, why did all the birds want to kill humans now? Like, I would love it if that was the premise of this movie. All spiders for some reason decided the Earth must be— all mankind must die.

Cleansed of humans.

Yes, because wouldn't that be scarier if like you just like all the spiders, you don't think about how many are all around you and all of a sudden they're all coming for you?

Especially after dudes like, there's like 10,000 spiders in everybody's backyard.

Oh, it's like imagine like looking out your window, see the grass rustling and you notice hundreds of spiders are just marching their way to you. Oh, see, that's such a good idea. But

I would love it if, if they did like, uh, those little nanobots in Big Hero 6 and the spiders just formed like giant, like, hands and stuff like that. Pound you into the ground.

The spiders form a human man. He's coming to kill you.

With a knife.

Yeah. And then the deform is the perfect crime.

I mean, with the amount that they have there, it's like a giant kaiju of Spiders.

They kill the man and then they def— but at first they crumble up some Pringles around him and then cook a ham as well and leave.

Yeah, they've learned like a few things about human society, so they know this is all very important to making the perfect crime. So they've done like all this. No, we have to make a ham real quick. Okay, we have to get a big ice cube.

But they don't— yeah, they don't, they don't kill you with spider power like Venom, right? They kill you with Spider power.

Kindness.

A bunch of spiders working together, which is, you know, the ultimate spider power,

which mankind could never do.

No, man can't work together. Spiders can. That's the tagline right there.

Yes, this is a good idea for a film. Let's make Arachnophobia 2, or even just reboot it and do our own thing completely.

I agree, we could. It was definitely— could be like our own separate thing completely, including like at the end You know, like in, um, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, you know, they just show on the map the plane landings and like they show all the stuff expanding. Like when we got to the end, we could show like the spiders like expanding out on the map. Like,

yes,

you know, from like— because he said, you know, oh, it'll just, you know, take over this town, then the next town over, blah blah blah. They'll just keep kind of cruising through.

I would like to see it as like one of those like old-timey war maps and they're just like pushing like the, the spider Token across the map.

Yeah,

I'd love to see— Yeah, see like these old-timey generals pushing these like tanks and suddenly it cuts to like a tank rolling over a bunch of spiders.

But then the tank being overwhelmed by spiders. Yes, because the spiders form their own tank.

They just form a bunch of men, climb in the tank and kill

you.

I feel like spiders would just think mankind's the most deadly weapon because we're the only ones

that

can kill them.

Or like a boot. They form a giant boot and step on everything.

Oh God, can you imagine just getting crunched like a Pringle?

6 Pringles stacked together, crunched like that. I couldn't imagine it.

Oh, I can fight worse than death. Well, it is death. Yeah, hopefully if I get smushed like that, I hope I die.

You wouldn't though. That'd be my luck. My luck is I wouldn't die from the crunch and I'd just be this mangled Almost corpse while all the spiders crawl on me or something.

Yeah, you become some sort of accordion style man. They let you live as some sort of

joke. There's that balance in there.

They like you because you make funny noises. Hmm.

But there's a bunch of them that just follow you all the time. You make one wrong move and they're just gonna swarm you.

Yeah, you have to be careful.

I mean, that's every day with spiders. One wrong move and they swarm you.

Yeah, we're just waiting to do it.

It's an inevitability. You don't know where it'll happen.

There is that— I mean, there is the one part towards the end where like the house is overcome with spiders and it does seem like they're chasing.

Yes,

all the spiders just almost seem like they are chasing people and like they have that—

The spiders have clear intent this entire movie. They're aggressive.

It is kind of like—

it's all based on the one that It— that, that came back in, in the coffin thing that came back over with them, like, it, it was just hanging out in its own little world. Yeah, this like hidden area that people couldn't get to. And the next thing you know, they're like, it's let loose. And it's like, well, that's why it was not supposed to leave.

It was like, that's why they're—

their guide was like, yeah, I don't— we're not going that far.

You know how like movies are like, uh, when they pitch them over. Like, they have to explain, like, what question does this movie answer, right? Does this movie answer the question, you know, like, what would happen if a small town was overrun by poisonous spiders? Or does it answer the question, what if a bunch of science jerks kill a bunch of bugs in a tree?

Yeah, come on. Yeah, because really, that's what

they're doing. They, like, got these buckets and they're just catching all the things that fall out of tree because they kill everything in it. It's like, oh, is that cool?

I mean, the other part is like these ones, they, they catch a few of them, they don't seem to die by the stuff.

No, that spider was out for revenge this time.

Well earned.

I think you almost needed a bit more of, um, the one doctor, you know, the scientist guy who's bringing them all back. Like, you don't see like some parts of like him researching with the spider and not just suddenly being like, oh, the name of that town sounds familiar, let me send my assistant out to go look at it. Meanwhile, I'm feeding one of these crazy spiders we just brought back.

You say that, Keith, and I think it'd been better if the doctor, in his hubris, tried to bring these spiders back alive.

Yes.

And it wasn't like an accident. This— well, I mean, ultimately an accident, but this dude thought he was too smart for the spiders, and then he eventually gets killed and the spiders overrun everything.

Well, he Jurassic Park, right?

He brought back, yeah, 2 alive and 2 dead. Yeah, he said— he says, okay, keep 2 alive, you know, if you can find some, keep 2 alive.

He said that, but then the, like, the one that killed—

Oh, the big, the big giant one. That one just sneaks back.

Yeah, it's like an accident, like, whoops, we accidentally brought this spider back in a coffin.

That guy needed to pay early for what he did.

Yes, I mean, he eventually gets what he deserves, but it's like, I, I wish he would have been overrun by the spider and then

He unleashed this,

unleashed this hell, this spider hell

on

everybody. Yeah,

that'll be the name of our movie. Spider.

Spider Hell.

Not too bad. Yeah.

Unleashing the Spider Hell.

Unleashing Spider Hell.

Across the Spider Hell.

Oh yeah.

Into this, our trilogy, Into, Across, and Beyond.

Yeah.

Beyond Spider Hell. Spider Heaven.

Spider, Spider Purgatory as well. It's good. It'd

be like, oh, we could do like, yeah, the, what is that? The, the, um, The Inferno trilogy.

Yeah, Spider Inferno. Yeah, that is Spider Inferno.

Spider Inferno is a mix of Arachnophobia and Disco Inferno. And then—

oh, I was thinking, I was thinking The Towering Inferno.

Oh, The Tower with O.J. Simpson, but he's dead, so we'd have to get the—

well, that's why there's spiders.

We have to get the modern-day O.J. Simpson, whoever that is. I don't know.

That's why it's Spiders in Hell. I think the main part for, for me, and the whole point of this, uh, in picking this topic and all Yeah, this movie's not super scary at all, um, especially compared to a lot of other stuff, but the spiders still do creep me out a bit.

No, they're spiders. If they creep you out, they creep you out.

Yeah, they do it in ways where like it— especially like when it's just missing people more so than when like the whole thing is overrun. Because, you know, like one spider at a time is taking out people left and right. Also, the house is overrun and none of those people got bit by one.

Yeah, I know. The dude has the world's biggest spider on him.

Yes, he's wrestling it off and, uh, Yeah. You know, trying to get rid of it and stuff like that. They're not super creepy, or it's not like an overly scary movie, but it is creepy movie.

It's creepy. They're all like spiders.

Yeah. I, I, I don't, and again, it's mainly cuz I, I do not like spiders. I don't like snakes. My kids always joke around if we, you know, if I move out and, you know, have my own place, if I get a pet snake, you gonna come over? I'm like, no, I'm not. Well, we just like pet spider. Nope, not coming. It— I just— they, they creep me out enough that the way that they use them in like the first 2/3 of the movie is like perfect for me. Like they're sneaking around, you know, they're just out of reach. You know, the one in the— the one old lady who gets killed, it's going throughout the whole, you know, her whole house and stuff like that. And then finally when she goes like turn the light off, it finally drops down on her. Mm-hmm. Or like the, I think there's one with the 2 little girls in the room and it's coming down like it's gonna, it, it thinks that doll is a real person. Like it's gonna come down and bite that. Uh, but it is like, especially cuz these ones seem to, like most spiders will just like stay away from you unless you're like really, you know, messing around with them. These ones are like, we're, you know, fuck around and find out. You know, they, they get angry.

You don't even have to, they'll just come and get you.

Yeah.

Yeah. Plus webs alone, spiders don't even have to hang out on the web. If I run into a web, I'm freaked out already. And I'm sitting there trying to brush webs off for the rest of the night, even if they're not there anymore. Would it scare me as much as probably when I was younger? No, not at all. But it does have a creep factor for me.

Sure. Yeah, makes sense. I mean, spiders, I don't like them. They creep me out too. And there were a couple moments where I was like, ew. Just the idea of a spider crawling on my skin, I don't like. Um, but I do kind of get tired of the spiders missing almost, you know, like where like it sneaks up on somebody, then, oh, we're just so close. I wish the movie would have escalated a lot faster and gotten a little more crazy, as you know, because at the end when the spiders are crawling everywhere, I wanted more of that. Because like, I feel like it, it needed to build up more than just being that singular spider hunting down, methodically killing everyone in town. I wish it would have like started to like get evolve into like, oh my God, now there's like 20 of them crawling everywhere, you know?

Well, especially, I mean, did they all just go hang out at the house? Because all those, I mean, if they would have all just continued to like spread out, like it seems like you just got like 1 or 2 here through town, you would have gotten like a bunch everywhere throughout town. And when one pops out of the dude's nose, that's creepy as hell though.

I think that was my favorite part of the whole movie, when they get in there and the coroner and his wife are both dead and that spider comes out of his nose.

That was awesome. Yeah.

Yep.

Them eating the spider because it was in the popcorn. Spider's too big for you not to notice.

I would know immediately.

You would know it's in your hand because it'd be squirming around.

Oh, see, that agrees with me.

There's no way you eat the motherfucker. And then if you did eat it, wouldn't you bite into it?

Yeah.

Before it bit into you.

I mean, it might bite you. It might be like a simultaneous bite, right? Like, I mean, if it's biting inside your cheek while you're biting through with your molars, That, like, it was those things that really irked me about— and then we gotta talk about the end because he's laying there and he's got this big fucking spider crawling up his leg. That this spider can bite through pants,

right? Yeah, it's big.

It's big. It's got like long— it's got— they even talk about how it's got super long fangs and extra venom sacs and all this stuff. And it's huge. It's the size of a dog almost. This spider is big.

Maybe it lifts up rubble and like crawls out from it.

Yes, that spider at any moment could have bit into his leg and killed him. Instead, it's like, I'm gonna crawl up— what's it gonna get in his face and like squeeze his cheeks together, be like, I want you to know it was me, and then bite him in the nose? It's like, what the fuck?

Yeah, I think that was a little over the top. It might as well have been, yeah, like having an evil speech as it crawled towards him. Like, I think you thought you could beat me. I've been building this nest for months.

It's a James Bond villain.

Yes.

I was hoping that when he got onto the board and he swung his arm down, the spider would have bit through the board. Oh, and then just like the little tips of his fangs would have like got him in the belly and then we had like the smallest little pinprick spider bites and that would get made like really sick. And then you'd be like, oh no, he's going to die. But then he's not because it wasn't enough venom, right? Like that would have been some stakes because otherwise nothing happens to him. Nothing happens to his family. Nothing happens to his kids. The only people that die in this movie are like tertiary characters that you do not care about.

Nope, don't like him.

What is that doctor that you instantly hate? The small-town stupid doctor.

Oh yeah, I did not like that.

Let's find out why he died. Nah, I guessed. Yeah, I figured it out.

It's already off to a bad start, that guy.

Yeah, yeah.

So I mean, I actually enjoyed watching this movie again. I think my only real problem though is, and especially based on our opening clip where he's explaining he's got this like paralyzing fear of spiders, Mm-hmm. Well, it only happens once where he's like freezes up.

Mm-hmm.

And when he gets like the giant, like super creepy spider, he's no longer like freaked out and like, you know, yep, freezing up. He's suddenly like, I'm swinging a shovel at the thing, which it jumps on the shovel and just stays right there with him. But

yep,

that doesn't actually come back to play. Like you're almost like waiting for him to freeze up and then like the John Goodman character, like swinging in and, you know, stepping in at the last minute.

Nope.

Spider or something like that.

Yeah, he froze up the spiders at the beginning and there's no like rule of 3. It like, it's not like the 3rd time he gets over the fear of spiders. No, after that he's able to run through spiders. It doesn't like it obviously, but doesn't freeze up. Has a dog-sized spider crawling up his crotch.

Yeah, whatever. And it decides it's not gonna bite him anywhere until—

Yeah, exactly.

Super close.

Could have bit him at any point. Probably could have bit through his damn shoe. And didn't do it.

Yeah, no, and this spider probably could just like spit at him with venom or something. It has so much power.

Yeah,

it's

like Super Soaker squirts venom out of his— yes.

Oh, that would have been awesome. John Goodman spraying all spiders and then the queen comes and sprays him. That

would have sprayed John Goodman. Oh God, that'd been awesome.

Or, or jumps at him so like he's like spraying and like scares him and it sprays himself in the face with it.

Oh yeah. Or he goes to step on it and then like he feels resistance and the spider's lifted its arm up and blocked his foot and pushed him aside. That would be cool.

Yeah, I agree.

By the way, when, uh, was John Goodman in there at the end? He goes back in with like the fire extinguisher. He's trying to put some of the stuff out in the basement. I, I would've told him, nope, just let it go. I'm never coming in this house again. Let it, let it burn.

Nope. Yeah, I'm moving after this, I think. Yeah.

I don't care what kind of expensive bottles of wine I have in the basement. It's not happening.

Because who knows if it's even really over? It could happen again.

It could, could.

It could happen to you.

I mean, you— I, I mean,

it could.

Outside of, you know, blowing up the egg stack thing, I mean, Russell's ones that are running around town killing people, like, tell me one didn't like hitch a ride someplace like the other and is like one town over. Like,

yeah, I've hitchhiked out of there. Yeah.

The fact that there's like an Arachnophobia 2 where like they find that like one moved a town over. Similar to the way Jaws 2 is and stuff like where they just keep recycling the whole thing. Yeah. There's no way they caught every single one of them. Not every, not every, not every. Well, and the other problem is, I guess I have with all things, there is a time limit before they all die. So like outside of the, like the big ones in the giant egg sac, all those other like drone ones that are sent out walking around, they all die after like a day or two. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

The guy takes one out of the cereal box.

It doesn't make sense though. Why do they die?

Yeah, they don't ever really explain that. So, uh, yeah, I guess there's a few—

They're too far away from the queen.

Mm-hmm. The hive has been destroyed. They have no purpose. They just roll over and die.

Yeah,

there's definitely a couple flies in the ointment here as far as, uh, how good this movie is. And talking with you guys again, as it works almost every time, and I know, Terry, you've mentioned this before, like Either we've really liked the movie and then back after discussion it's dropped off, or vice versa. I still, I still actually kind of enjoy this movie. I just, I'm now looking at giant plot holes that I wasn't looking at earlier this morning.

Here's— I didn't hate this movie. I thought it was fine. There's just— so when I was watching it, there are things that your deep dive shed light upon my eyes because his list of movies he's produced, like the score to this movie. It's scored like an action-adventure movie.

Yeah,

yeah, it wants to be Indiana Jones or something.

Yeah, well, I mean, he's done basically anything that Spielberg and like Amblin and everything are.

Yeah, and that's what it sounded like. It sounded like a Spielberg movie.

Yep. Yeah, it has that vibe of like— I feel like it has a very '90s vibe where it's kind of got the like early '90s where it's like The Mummy.

As early '90s as you can get. It's July of 1990.

Yes, yes. The— like, it's like that action-adventure with a slice of horror, but it's not really that horrific. I feel like that's exactly like— there's a lot of movies like that. It was just kind of— this is just another one of those, I guess, with a spider twist instead of mummies or sea monsters or whatever, you know?

Yeah. And it's actually— oh wow, that would be great. Let's do the horror film with that. Yeah, that's got to be public domain, right?

Sea monkeys?

Yeah, I think sea monkeys are public domain.

Well, I know little baby shrimps are for sure.

Kriller public domain. We need to, we need to make that movie.

Sea monkeys?

Yeah, Attack of the Sea Monkeys.

Kriller be krilled.

Yeah, there you go.

Yeah, that's the tagline.

Um,

Sea Monkeys the movie, Kriller be krilled.

Yeah, that's the tagline for it.

It'd be great.

That's what we're calling it, Sea Monkeys: The Movie.

But we spell monkeys M-O-N-K-E-E-S, and they're a musical group.

Yeah. Oh

yeah, like, is there like a movie like Night of the Lupus or something like that?

With the bunnies?

Yeah, so we can do Night of the Sea Monkeys.

We can do whatever we want, goddamn it.

We have a lot of, uh, a lot of ideas here, a lot of potential.

A lot of ideas come out today.

That's a good sign usually of a movie when we have a lot of good ideas.

Yeah, it just gets the juices flowing. Flowing.

Now, that— I think my biggest problem with this movie overall though is that I picked it for this topic. Even if I was creeped out as, as a 15-year-old, I— it's probably much better options that I could have chose for this.

Um, yeah, that, that's maybe a part of it too. It's like, you know, this October season I've been watching horror movies and then I watched this thing and it's not quite hitting the same itch as a lot of stuff I've already watched. I mean, it's not— doesn't mean it's like horrible It just, you know, it doesn't— like we were talking about, it's not horror-centric at all.

Yeah,

it's creepy crawly, but it ain't really horror.

It's fine. Yeah. So did we do it, boys? Did we get through Arachnophobia from 1990? Well, what do we keep now? Just roll in. What, what is the consensus or your thought here?

Doesn't still scare me. Had some creepiness to it though, uh, and I— but I enjoyed it overall. I actually still enjoyed watching the movie. Jonathan Goodman's really good in the movie. Um,

I've never heard him called Jonathan Goodman before. I've always heard him called John Goodman.

All right,

well, I assume his mother probably called him Jonathan when he's in trouble or something.

I have the most respect for the man, so full Jonathan there. No, uh, yeah, he's great in this. But, um, yeah, I mean, it misses on a couple things. I can see why— I don't think it's like the Rotten Tomatoes score really high by critics and really low by the audience. It seems a little bit, you know, off ratio-wise there. Like, this— it's not a 50% some movie, so it's higher than that.

Yeah, I thought it was pretty middle of the road for me. I thought the spiders are inherently creepy to me. I don't like spiders, but I feel like the gimmick is kind of not used in the most creative ways most of the time, I guess. And I feel like I wish it escalated a little faster. I wish it had kind of— if it's gonna have this kind of adventure-y feel, I wish it would have just started getting more over the top quicker and like had more crazy, like, fun action set pieces and stuff. Um, but it's not horrible. Like you said, I don't think it's like the worst thing ever. It's not the best thing ever. It's just somewhere in between. It's not— it's not bad, but it's just kind of a kind of bland, I thought.

Sure. All right, I agree. Did I hate the movie? No. Did I love the movie? No. Uh, it was fine, right? Like, I, I wish it was more horror-centric only because that's the premise. I mean, that's what they wanted to do, but they weren't even like, you know, like even if you go back to the '50s or '60s when they were doing like, oh, giant bug attacks town movies. Right? Like ants or something like that, right?

Yes.

Those were horror-centric, right? Like, that was— we're gonna scare you because we got giant fucking bugs. This is like, we, we got the— our volume of bugs is like off the charts. We've got so many spiders, but like, it wasn't scary. No, it's just, it was trying to make you squirm if you don't like spiders.

Yeah, if, if you had arachnophobia, you would hate this movie.

Yeah, we wouldn't watch it to begin with though. It's like immersion therapy.

That's true.

Don't like spiders? Watch Arachnophobia. I'm like, no, I don't want—

now you're cured. Wow,

miracle. No,

I think that's what he even says when he's walking up and looking at the—

yeah, therapy. Therapy? Fuck that shit.

Yeah,

so I just killed the alpha spider.

Yeah, that's my therapy, by killing the The worst of the worst spider.

Yep. The things that torment me and haunt me, I just killed the worst thing possible. That is that.

It's one way to get over it.

It is. Oh boy. Well, we know what we thought. What did the internet have to say? Well, on October 20th, 2017, the Ashton 5 had this to say. Spiders!

Ugh!

Arachnophobia deserves a much higher rating and a lot more attention and fame than it got. Jeff Daniels is fantastic in it, and John Goodman— Jonathan Goodman steals the show as an exterminator who is in way over his head. Julian Sands is also great. It's about super deadly killer spiders who kill a researcher in South America then hitch a ride in his casket back to the United States where they begin a killing spree. This movie is very funny and has a lot of great scares in it.

You know, the only, the only guy who's really scary in this movie is Jonathan Goodman's character. The rest are just, they're either like jerks or they're being serious about their roles.

Yeah, John Goodman brings the humor.

Yeah.

Yeah. And even then, if spiders make you feel icky and/or shiver, Then this is the movie for you. I would argue that it's not.

I agree with that.

The use of real non-CGI spiders and good practical effects make the spiders much more menacing.

Agree with that.

Remember when that spider, he's like looking down, down the vent shaft and he's ready to fire and he's like, where are you, spider? And then he's blasting out. Like, it's like, it was like, A spider baseball thrown at him.

Yes,

he flying out.

Amazing.

Bounced off his face. Much more menacing. Fifty-eight found that helpful. Seven not so much. Ten out of ten.

I like that you stop two words before the review or three words before. Ten out of ten though. That's high praise. I don't know.

It is high praise. And not to be outdone, on October 29th, 2001, your old pal Jim had this to say.

Oh, I love Jim. What does he have to say?

I would love to beat Ross Jennings with a broom handle.

Oh, Jim, come on. Oh

yeah, that's not very nice.

Okay, so this film has some good special effects and has a Oh, he's got some confidence. How can anyone enjoy a movie where the guy who is supposed to be the hero, Ross Jennings, as played by Jeff Daniels, is such a smarmy, revolting creep?

Wow.

If the characters of Ross Jennings and his revolting family are some screenwriter's idea of likable characters, I don't want to know what they would consider unlikable. My biggest disappointment was that they, the Jennings family, didn't get wiped out.

Oh my God.

It also doesn't help by the fact that Jeff Daniels' idea of showing emotion is by exaggerated mugging. This was the first time I ever felt like walking out on a movie. Sorry, for my money, I'll watch Tarantula from 1955 or The Naked Jungle from 1954 next time I want to see a killer bug movie.

Okay.

16 found that helpful, 29 not so much. 1 out of 10.

Amazing. I— his hatred for the Jennings family, the characters in this film, the Jennings family, the pure evil he sees in them. I love that.

Including the one kid who we like see once with the baseball, the son. Like, we see him briefly once. The—

he's scum. They're all scum.

Yeah.

I almost lost it there, Terry. I was taking a swallow of soda, almost came up my nose.

I love his hatred like that. This is so funny. I love that he's just— this character's— or something clicked in his brain that made him hate these people so much that he wants them all to die.

I think what's kind of funny, like, I didn't notice that they weren't unlikable, but the rest of the characters in the movie are not likable at all.

Yeah, there were so many worse characters.

That doctor, the police guy who just keeps staring down Jeff Daniels like he's an idiot. We're like, what do you know about doctoring? There's those people, like Everybody else, like I hated. I just hated in this movie.

Yeah, why are you latching onto the Jennings family? And the funny he kept saying Ross Jennings. Like who's he talking about?

That's why. And it's too.

Then I had to like look on IMDb and go, oh, the main character's name was Ross Jennings.

I thought it was. I thought it was Jeff Daniels Jennings.

Yeah, even I love this classic. Oh, you know what? There are some good effects and there's some good things, but I'm still giving it a one out of ten because I hate. The Jennings family within—

they should have been wiped out.

They should have been wiped out. The whole family line should be destroyed.

But yeah, now in this fictitious world, the Jennings are gonna procreate. And now they're probably got like— it's been 20, 36 years. Those kids probably had kids, and their kids might have kids. So Ross Jennings might be a great-grandfather or a grandfather.

But you know, it's too late to contain it at this point. They're just gonna keep Mm-hmm.

The spiders should have killed them all in this movie.

Maybe that's why they went psycho.

The spiders— the spiders were— spiders were— were right all along.

Your old pal Jim sent the spiders back in time to wipe out the Jennings family.

Yes, he dropped those spiders specifically down that pit in the jungle so that they knew he'd find them, and then Bring him to the Jennings family.

We did it! We got through week one, Dub. What a spooky month of shit that scared us when we were kids because we were cowards.

Yes, yes. So

that means next week is Dub 2, and that's a Terry dub. So Terry—

yeah, yes. Now this is all different.

What's on dick? All different. Your childhood is way different than our childhood.

Mm-hmm.

That's true, guys. It, it came somewhere between the movie Seven and The Hateful Eight, I think. Yeah,

yeah, it's— yeah, my— a portion of my youth was indeed between those times. Um, so I was thinking about this a lot because Keith said movies that scare us as kids that we haven't rewatched.

Yeah, that's tough.

Now is the tough part because I've rewatched a lot of horror films. Um, from when I was a kid. And, you know, Pet Sematary crossed my mind because that was one of the first horror movies I ever watched, and it scared me so bad when I was a little kid. But I've rewatched it, not that bad. Nightmare on Elm Street scared me a lot as a kid, but I haven't rewatched— or I have rewatched that several times since then. So it was tough. I was really racking my brain. I was texting people like, hey, what— think of some movies that scares you as a kid, like my friends, you know, because surely they would have seen similar things to me. And then it clicked. I figured something out. It came to me. This movie that I actually haven't rewatched in a while, but I remember being very creepy as a kid, was The Exorcism of Emily Rose.

I had never seen it.

From 2005.

Yeah.

Yep. I remember it really creeping me out. There's a scene with some bugs in it that I did not like.

Oh, all right. Well, We are on to— we're past the spiders. We're on to possession by spiders.

Oh God, see, that's another great idea. What if a bunch of spiders crawled into you and controlled your brain? Yeah, they have enough of them. They could do that.

They can. The brights are too around. Yeah,

spider too.

Oh, they're just like— they're there in your hair, just pulling.

Spiders in your hair making you do stuff.

Oh,

fate worse than death.

I think spiders in my hair make me do stuff too. And I don't really have a problem with spiders, but if they were in my hair, I'd do things.

You would? You're just willingly?

Yes, I would. I don't know if the spiders will, but I would be doing stuff.

I would do something if I knew there was a bunch of spiders in my hair. I would do something.

Yes,

shave my head.

I got lots of hair now too, so I'd have to shave it all off.

Oh, they would find plenty of spots to like—

Yeah, I might have, I might have an egg sac in my hair right now. I don't even know it.

You probably do, at least 3. Or an egg salad sandwich.

I would not have an egg salad sandwich.

Spider egg salad.

Well, that's different.

That'd be delicious.

Like caviar, right?

Oh,

it's a delicacy in some places.

It is. Wisconsin. Wisconsin. Yeah, the classic Wisconsin spider egg salad.

It's cheap too. Surprisingly, nobody buys that stuff from the store.

No,

you go to the, the grocery store deli and you're just like, how fresh is a spider egg salad?

Usually not.

Just made it this morning. All right, I'll take a pound.

A pound?

I'm not getting the spider egg, the spider egg salad from like The local 7-Eleven though, I'm not doing that.

No, heavens no, you don't want that spider egg. You know how long it's been sitting there in the case? All right, well, since we're here, I guess that leaves us with nothing to do but to end this the way we end everything.

Indeed.

I'm so tired of boys. I need a man. Just build him. Pringle Leo.

Thanks for listening to Fumbling Through Film. New episodes drop every Thursday. Got feedback or questions? Email us at [email protected]. You can see our films, the Fumbling before you tumble into the grave and other musings on Letterboxd at Fumble Through Film. The through is T-H-R-U. You can also follow Keith on Instagram @kg3030lives and on Letterboxd @kg3030. Terry is on Letterboxd at Terry2099. Derek is on Letterboxd at Derek, the number 9, and then the word 9. All original music is done by the Dr. Dre of Kansas, Terry, so hit him up for them bangers. Our new podcast logo was done by the delightful and talented Sanjay Vicky Nayak. You can find her on Instagram @einkstein. That's Einstein with a K in there. We'll see you next week as we keep on fumbling!