Another classic from my childhood that didn't help my spider fear. This movie gets the balance just right and anyone with a fear will hate/love this. It loses its way towards the end but it still holds up.

Arachnophobia - for those unfamiliar with the term - is the fear of spiders. So, yeah, you might have guessed it: this film is about spiders.

Spiders. You either hate them, or you loathe them. Sorry, but I can't wrap my head around the thought of 'loving' them. Way too many legs and eyes! I love creepy crawly movies, as they somehow tend to get under your skin. 'Arachnophobia' takes a lighter approach to a rather serious film - a perfect blend of both worlds. Never too serious and never comical, substituting gore for suspense. The suspense is cleverly set up, taking advantage of every opportunity. The equally clever camera work maximizes every effort at creating suspense.

'Arachnophobia' boasts a very good script, very well executed. Great cinematography, very good photography, good performances, and utilizing an age old fear of spiders to maximum effect. Using over 300 real spiders for the film, the suspense and realism of the film is grounded, and its even creepier than it ought to be. The characters are also nicely fleshed out so we care about every one of them. I so enjoyed John Goodman as comic relief exterminator Delbert.

I guarantee you'd want to squash every spider you see after watching this. You might even get an uneasy feeling by simply sitting on your couch! Oh, and check your popcorn...

'Arachnophobia' is a real treat, and scores high on an entertainment level. If you do have arachnophobia, though, you might want to give this one a skip. This film is so well made, it still holds well by today's standards, and is hard to believe it was made over three decades ago!

Man, Frank Marshall picks some wild movies to direct. There's the cannibal-themed Alive, the apes with lasers Congo, the Disney film Eight Below and The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend A Broken Heart.

If you ever wanted to walk around your house in bare feet again, you should probably skip this movie, which has spiders crawl into people's ears via a football helmet and even live inside a dead nature photographer as his body is shipped back to America in a coffin.

It's up to Dr. Ross Jennings (Jeff Daniels), a new doctor in town with the titular phobia, who has to protect his new town of Canaima, California for an invasion of the spawn of prehistoric spiders mixed with old fashioned American creepy crawlers.

John Goodman shines as Delbert McClintock, an exterminator, and Julian Sands is as mean as ever as the villainous Dr. James Atherton. The small spiders used in the film were Avondale spiders, a harmless species from New Zealand, while the giant spiders were bird-eating tarantulas with eight-inch legspans. They were all handled by entomologist Steven R. Kutcher, who also was in charge of the locusts in Exorcist II: The Heretic, the bugs in Prince of Darkness and the mosquitos of Jurassic Park amongst many other films. As for the monstrous general spider, it was one of the first props made by Jamie Hyneman, who could go on to star on MythBusters.

This was written by Don Jakoby (Lifeforce, Double Team, Invaders from Mars), Al Williams and Wesley Strick (Cape Fear, The Saint, Doom). It was made under the Hollywood Pictures name instead of Disney, as it's a pretty frightening film in moments.