A movie that’s a proven favorite with those deathly afraid of our eight-legged friends the arachnids, Arachnophobia is a creepy, crawly comedy best watched with a can of bug spray at the ready. When a giant Venezuelan spider discovered by entomologist Dr. James Atherton (Julian Sands) finds its way to a rural California town, it draws the residents into a web of hair-raising horror. The new town doctor, Ross Jennings (Jeff Daniels), deathly afraid of spiders, is the lucky host to the foreign arachnid, who takes up residence in the good doctor’s barn and mates with a local female spider. And when their offspring hatch…

Harley Jane Kozak, Brian McNamara, Stuart Pankin, and an uncredited John Goodman (as the ineffective exterminator Delbert McClintock) costar.

Amblin Entertainment producer Frank Marshall, who helped wrangle the many insects, snakes, rats and other animal thespians throughout the Indiana Jones series, made his directorial debut on Arachnophobia, from a screenplay by Don Jakoby and Wesley Strick (based on a story by Jakoby and Al Williams). The film was produced by Amblin's Kathleen Kennedy, along with Richard Vane, with cinematography by Mikael Salomon (Always) and editing by Steven Spielberg’s longtime editor Michael Kahn.

Arachnophobia was the first theatrical release for Hollywood Pictures, an offshoot of the Walt Disney Company, in partnership with Amblin Entertainment.