The best and worst spiders from film

In terms of quality spider-focused horror flicks, “Arachnophobia” tops the charts. It has spiders of all kinds! Big, small, poisonous, nasty, you name it. However, “Arachnophobia” is actually something of a horror-comedy, so it’s not too creepy.

Not every spider is up to no good. Charlotte, be it in the E.B. White novel or this iconic animated adaptation, dedicates much of her life to trying to help out Wilbur. She manages to keep a certain pig from being turned into food, right to the (spoiler!) end of her life.

“Sharknado” became a hit thing for SyFy, and they drove it into the ground. Call it a hot take if you will, but the “Sharknado” movies are overrated. Personally, we prefer “Lavalantula,” another SyFy original that was born out of the success of “Sharknado.” Yeah, it’s about giant spiders that spit lava. The Steve Guttenberg-led project is pretty meta, and manages to land the silly tone that “Sharknado” tried so hard to hit.

Alas, not every attempt at a goofy, over-the-top spider-centric horror movie succeeds. Of course, the fact David Arquette stars in “Eight Legged Freaks” maybe should have tipped us off. What if “Tremors,” but bad? That’s “Eight Legged Freaks” in a nutshell.

Bad spider-based horror films were not a rarity on “Mystery Science Theater 3000.” Look, giant bugs are a staple of monster movies, and a lot of B-movies were cheap and poorly thought out! “Horrors of Spider island” is the worst of the bunch, though. Apparently a German film, it’s about a nightclub manager and his new team of dancing girls crashing on an island with, um, sort of a giant spider? It’s mostly scantily-clad women incoherently cooing their lines. As you can tell from this lobby card, sometimes the film was repackaged to, let's say, highlight certain elements.

If we’re talking bad spider movies that aired on “MST3K,” we have to honor schlockmaster Bert I. Gordon. The man never met a bug or animal he couldn’t rear project onto a screen to make it look big (and obviously fake). This is his foray into the giant spider world. It’s a Bert I. Gordon movie, which is, to say, bad.

The kaiju world in Japan had all sorts of large versions of creatures. “Destroy All Monsters” brings them all together. One of those giant monsters is Kumonga, who is a spider. If you like Godzilla movies, “Destroy All Monsters” is worth a watch, even if the spider is only part of the ensemble.

Famously, the story goes that gonzo film producer Jon Peters (now of Bradley Cooper in “Licorice Pizza” fame) was obsessed with getting a giant spider into a movie. He finally made it happen, steampunk style, in “Wild Wild West.” On a surely unrelated note, “Wild Wild West” was Will Smith's first flop after he rose to superstardom.

“Big Aşs Spider!” does what “Eight Legged Freaks” wanted to do. There’s a giant spider. It’s attacking Los Angeles. Lloyd Kaufman plays himself. You know what’s up. Enjoy!

Director Jack Arnold was a bigwig in the monster movie/B picture world. He helmed “Creature from the Black Lagoon,” “The Incredible Shrinking Man,” and “Tarantula.” “Tarantula” is pretty derivative of “Them!,” the giant ants movie. It’s not as good, but solid enough as these things go.

Snakes? Indiana Jones wants nothing to do with them. Other creepy crawlies, though, he can handle with steely cool. In the iconic first set piece of “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” his guide played by a young Alfred Molina is freaked out by the litany of giant spiders around (and on) him. Indy? He handles them no problem.

In his quest to destroy the one ring, Frodo deals with all sorts of monsters and evils. The one that comes the closest to doing him in, though, is Shelob. Gollum, obsessed with getting his “precious,” leads Frodo into Shelob’s lair, where the giant, spidery (whether or not she is a spider proper is debatable) baddie almost does the young Baggins in. Spoiler alert: The protagonist of the trilogy gets away.

Hey, he does whatever a spider can. Why not include Spider-Man on this list? Some were skeptical about Spidey overload when it was announced another Spider-Man was going to be brought into the world. However, Holland’s Peter Parker turned out to be a breath of fresh air. It helps that he could plausibly play a teenager for his trilogy, all quality films.

On the flip side of Holland (and also below Tobey Maguire), there’s the Garfield movies. There’s a reason why he only got two films of his own. To be fair, it’s not Garfield’s fault. He’s fine as Peter Parker and Spider-Man. The films were just ill-conceived and decidedly mediocre.

“Goodfellas,” possibly Martin Scorsese’s best film, is full of moments where Henry Hill has a stark moment of realization vis-à-vis the life of a gangster he always wanted. Part of the problem is his palling around with Tommy, played by Joe Pesci in an Oscar-winning role. Even by the standards of the mob, Tommy is unhinged and violent. For example, when the gofer for the mob guys at their private club stands up to Tommy after one too many barbs, Tommy decides to shoot him in cold blood. That gofer? His name is Spider.

Back to the MCU! Natasha doesn’t really have any spider-themed skills, per se. She gets her name from the Black Widow program operated by the Soviet Union back in the day. It becomes a moniker she uses, though, before destroying the remnants of the program in her solo film. “Black Widow” hit theaters at a rough time, and it was a little spotty in moments, but a pretty good movie in the end.

Stop-motion king Henry Selick brought the fantastical story of James and a certain peach of unusual size to the big screen. Along the way, James befriends some anthropomorphic insects. One of those is Miss Spider, as voiced by Susan Sarandon.

Don Bluth’s “An American Tail” is about a Jewish family of mice emigrating from Russia to the United States, getting separated, and uniting. It’s the immigrant experience distilled into fantastical animation. The sequel is, um, about what if Fievel became a sheriff’s deputy in the Old West. The villain of the piece, an aristocratic cat (but NOT an Aristocat) named Cat R. Waul has a henchman to do his dirty work named T.R. Chula. Indeed, Chula is a tarantula, and a pretty nasty one at that.

One more person named Spider for you! James Cameron bet big on himself by insisting he was going to make sequel after sequel for “Avatar.” We waited years and years, and snickering ensued, but in the end Big Jim delivered, and then some. “The Way of Water” not only hit theaters, but made $2.32 billion worldwide. Not adjusted for inflation, it’s the third-highest-grossing movie of all-time. By the way, three of the top four are Cameron movies. Oh, right, the Spider part. In the sequel, Spider is a 16-year-old born at the human base in Pandora who is devoted to Jake Sully and his family. 

What is the most-iconic weapon from “Home Alone?” The blowtorch? The iron to the face? The nail. Ugh, the nail! We’d say that it’s Buzz’s tarantula, which Kevin employs as a weapon in his battle against the Wet Bandits. Sure, it’s not as painful an iron hitting you in the face at terminal velocity, but it’s certainly memorable.