A-KNACK-FOR-PHOBIAS

ARACHNOPHOBIA (1990)
dir: Frank Marshall

A-KNACK-FOR-PHOBIAS
MAD #301, March 1991
w: Dick DeBartolo
a: Paul Coker, Jr.

Paul Coker, Jr. didn't do many movie parodies. Even though there were likenesses in many of the holiday specials he designed for Rankin-Bass, he wasn't known for his caricatures. He didn't even try here. It's possible he was assigned this because most of the stars were not that well-known.

The first half-hour, in which the killer spiders of the movie are introduced and discovered by Dr. Atherton (Julian Sands), make up the first few panels of the strip. The spider bites the photographer on assignment and kills him, and his body is shipped back to his hometown of Cannibal. His coffin unknowingly brings one of the spiders back with him, which escapes into the town.

In the splash, we meet the main characters of the film. The patriarch is a city doctor named Ross (Jeff Daniels) and his family has just moved to the town. They don't realize the one of the spiders (who think here) has just killed a crow and has anchored itself to the new house.

Dr. Ross was supposed to take over for Dr. Metcalf (Henry Jones) who has just decided he doesn't want to retire. The spiders have just started to reproduce, and are killing all the citizens of Cannibal, and only Ross knows that it's the spiders.

He orders autopsies anyway, even though the regular doctor thinks it's only natural causes.

Ross has been hired to do physicals on the football team. Their star player dies afterwards. An elderly couple later examined by the doctor also dies. He knows it's from the spiders, but everyone else, especially the sheriff, is suspicious. Dr. Ross seeks the aid of Dr. Atherton (was called Dr. Aspirin, but now he's called Dr. Advil), the world's foremost spider expert, to come to town to find the problem. He is skeptical but sends his assistant.

They all investigate the home of Mrs. Collins, where the first murder occurred, because they think it's where the spiders may have come from. The sheriff, lazing around, finds a dead spider in a cereal box.

Delbert, the local exterminator (John Goodman), comes to solve the problem after the local coach's daughter has almost been bitten by a spider in the shower.

Atherton has come to the town, now understanding the problem and is helping them deal with it. When Moss and his family realize the queen spider is in their house, they leave immediately.

Like in The Amityville Horror, that I covered a few days ago, the father is the last to be trapped and in the basement. This movie has a big climactic scene of him fighting off the spiders in his basement which is also his wine cellar, but here it's condensed into one panel.


They move back to the city, where they no longer have to deal with spiders. But because it's San Francisco, now they have to deal with earthquakes.

But because it's Mad, there's a slightly different ending. It's still a “here we go again” ending, but instead the problem is malpractice insurance.

I think I learned much about the medical establishment-- malpractice insurance, late payments, Blue Cross, house calls, how mothers are pleased when their daughters marry doctors-- from MAD.

There were spiders loose throughout the issue, a re-hash of a joke they had done years earlier of bugs breaking out of an article.

The German edition of MAD put the movie on their cover.

ARACHNOMANIA
Cracked #260, January 1991
w & a: Michael Ricigliano

Cracked didn't do a direct parody of the movie but a series of short gags based on it.