While it's a good movie in its own right, I'll have to admit that I checked out Arachnophobia (only many years after its release) because it's technically the first time Brandy appeared on the big screen.  (She was about ten.)

The first three times I saw Arachnophobia (on different occasions), I could have sworn that the only Brandy in this movie was in the bottles the protagonist ends up throwing at an angry arachnid.  Yet, sure enough, there she was in the credits, incidentally already on a first-name basis.

This inspired my fourth time through, this time nothing more than a slow-motion-aided exercise in “Where's Waldo...er...Brandy?”  Finally, I think I found her; the reason I hadn't found her before was that we don't actually see her face.  Were there more black folk in Canaima, this would have been an exercise in futility.

Arachnophobia is a comedic thriller that plays off one of the most common phobias: the fear of spiders.

When a scientist (Julian Sands) working in Venezuela inadvertently introduces a newly discovered spider species to a quiet American country town, all hell breaks loose.

Big-city doctor Ross Jennings (Jeff Daniels), who has been petrified of spiders since infancy, suspects his little archenemies to be the culprit of a series of troubling medical events.  However, the geriatric town doctor Sam Metcalf (Henry Jones), feeling threatened by the new doctor's arrival, is out to make Dr. Jennings look incompetent and irresponsible.  But that soon becomes the least of Jennings' worries.

The film's appeal is derived from an effective combination of action and suspense, countered by humour such as the antics of the quirky town exterminator, Delbert McClintock (John Goodman).  The plot is relatively simple, but it works well within the genre.

The special effects in Arachnophobia are fitting, and the cinematography is quite good.  Stephen Spielberg was executive producer, not surprisingly.

The DVD version includes a short featurette, which mainly focuses on how films such as Arachnophobia play off emotional contrasts.  The limited fidelity of the old analog tape format used to record the featurette is quite apparent; call it nostalgic effect.  (The feature itself, having been shot on movie film, does not suffer from this.)

The DVD also provides English subtitles.  One flaw of the DVD is that there aren't many chapter marks - probably a common issue in titles predating the DVD format.

Arachnophobia makes for good light entertainment.