Despite their fierce appearance, this spider is a docile member of the crab-spider family and is, in fact, harmless to humans. They were not allowed back in New Zealand for quarantine reasons. The giant "spider" used in the film was a species of a bird-eating tarantula, which can attain a legspan of eight inches or more.
Those types of tarantulas are not easy to handle and can give a nasty bite. The spiders in the film were managed and handled by famed entomologist Steven R. Frank Marshall meant for the film to be like Alfred Hitchcock 's The Birds , and added, "People like to be scared but laughing, like a roller coaster. No one wants to be terrified. The sound of a spider being crushed by John Goodman was made by the foley artists crushing a couple of potato chips.
The production required two species of spiders: the first--the arachnid that hitches a ride from South America to California--needed to measure about one foot across. The filmmakers found their star in a bird-eating tarantula native to the Amazon; there was only one such spider in the US. Frank Marshall named the spider "Big Bob" after director Robert Zemeckis ; the production team painted purple stripes on the back of Big Bob and added a prosthetic abdomen "to give him greater bulk".
The first film released under Disney's Hollywood Pictures label, which was also created so the studio could release more adult-oriented fare. The production reached out to a Hollywood prop shop to build The General, a inch mechanical Big Bob double; it was created by none other than future MythBuster Jamie Hyneman. When dead spiders were needed, the filmmakers used bodies of arachnids that had died of natural causes.
When Jeff Daniels came on board to play Dr. Ross Jennings, the film was a serious horror movie, one that Daniels told Philadelphia's "Daily News" was pretty formulaic" "You could tell that the lines were kind of written by computer," he said. He and Frank Marshall were hoping for a more ironic tone, so the script went through several revisions, and the filmmakers studied Alfred Hitchcock films and Jaws to get the tone right.
One key change: Daniels' character was given a fear of spiders. The live spiders were housed separately in a temperature-controlled area. Since spiders can't be trained, an entomologist devised other means to guide the spiders such as vibrating wires they wouldn't cross over them , and Lemon Pledge Furniture Wax which the spiders refused to walk on. The spider wranglers worked with the actors on how to handle the spiders so as not to mishandle or mistreat them.
Canaima is the name of the avenging spirit of the Guyana Indians. It's also the name of the area in Venezuela where the beginning of the movie was filmed and home to the world's tallest waterfall, Angel Falls.
During an interview with "GQ", John Goodman let slip that while filming a long shot of his character driving the exterminator truck, producer Steven Spielberg sat in the passenger-side footwell out of view of the camera, and quipped to Goodman "Only we will know that I was here.
One of Steven Speilberg's conditions for agreeing to executive-produce the film was that the role of Delbert the exterminator be played by John Goodman. Spielberg directed Goodman in Always released seven months before this movie. Frank Marshall. In several scenes where a spider is stepped on or a book falls on a spider, a hole cushioned with foam rubber was carved in the shoe or book allowing space to protect the spider. The scenes were then shot in cuts and edited. When the exterminator sprays insecticide, it is just plain water being sprayed.
That scene and the scene in the shower were shot in cuts taking great care not to get the spiders too wet. When the spider goes down the drain, it is a fake drain and the spider is quickly removed from the water. Of course, the giant spider was mechanical and it's the mechanical and fake spiders that are electrocuted and burned. Shot in Cambria, CA.
All the school scenes were filmed at Coast Union High School. As terrifying as Big Bob was, he still wasn't scary enough for Arachnophobia. In the movie, Big Bob arrives in California and promptly mates with a house spider, creating super deadly offspring.
But sometimes, more extreme measures were needed. According to The New York Times ,. To keep spiders in a relatively contained area, they are put to sleep with carbon dioxide, and tiny monofilament ''leashes'' are attached by wax to their abdomens. And for really complicated shots, minuscule steel plates are glued to the spiders with wax; electromagnets behind a wall then move them to the places where the script calls for them to be. The wranglers would also sometimes chase the arachnids with hair dryers to get them to go where the camera needed them.
They're picked up first in the morning, they're first in the chair at makeup, they take lunch first. And they've also got the biggest trailer. Twenty-one takes is the longest we've gone. The safety of the spiders was paramount throughout the entire production, so for one scene where Goodman had to spray an arachnid with insecticide, then squash it with his boot, the production went to extreme measures: First, a dummy spider was sprayed.
Then Goodman donned special boots with a hollowed out sole for the squash shot. So the production reached out to a Hollywood prop shop to build The General, a inch mechanical Big Bob double—and it was created by none other than future MythBuster Jamie Hyneman. Now, Jeff, let's go The Jennings' house is suddenly infested by an army of lethal spiders at the climax of the film.
The spiders are the offspring of a common house-spider and a lethal South American spider nicknamed 'the General' due to its method of sending out drone units to exterminate all life in the immediate surroundings of the place it claims as its breeding nest much like a general dispatches troops to pacify an area.
With the area cleansed of all other life, the General will mate again with its 'Queen', a much larger spider produced during the first generation of half-breeds formed from the spider it had originally bred with, to produce a new generation of Generals. While Mrs. Jennings and the kids escape outside and the local bug exterminator keeps the drones at bay, Ross is trapped inside and is attacked from the balcony overlooking the living room.
In the struggle, he falls from the balcony and crashes through the floorboards they had been in need of replacement due to termite problems. Ross finds that the drones have not followed him into the basement, and in fact seem to be avoiding the place. Remembering what he was told earlier about spiders, that a nest would be kept in a dark, dank place and offspring would be driven away immediately to prevent them from eating each other, Ross is soon searching for the egg sac the Queen has prepared.
The Queen attempts a surprise attack on him but is knocked into the circuit breaker for her efforts and fried.
Ross then makes his way to the egg sac, and throws some wine on it so he can set it ablaze with a candle-lighter and cookie spray, only to be ambushed by the General himself, who has been lying in wait, causing him to fall from the wine racks he climbed up.
The General, who is used to being on the top of the food chain where he's from is more then ready to take Ross in a fight to make sure his future offspring are born. Ross then sets his wine racks ablaze, attempting to flush out the spider. The General, however, showing some truly incredible intelligence for a spider, cleverly fakes him out and taunts Ross by staying just out of range of the fire, before ducking into an air pipe.
Ross listens carefully to the sound of the spider crawling around in the pipes, and follows the sounds to an opening, where he proceeds to set another blast of flame in. The General was ready for him, this time, though.
As soon as Ross ceases fire, the General charges out and jumps on Ross's neck, terrifying him so that he crashes into a wine rack, and lands flat on his back, covered with some debris.
The General, who seems almost amused at this point, slowly approaches Ross's leg as he lays helplessly on the ground, and Ross finds himself re-enacting the very incident that scarred him as a child and made him so terrified of spiders to begin with. But this time, Ross notices that there is a small wooden plank on his leg, erected sideways like a seesaw.
Ross waits till the General crawls onto it and immediately sits up, slamming his elbow onto the upraised end and sending the General flying into one of the fires Ross had made earlier in his fight. Before Ross can get a chance to take a breath of relief, he notices the egg sac has begun to pulse as new spiders are being born.
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