Word: hitchcocked
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Director Frank Marshall's debut effort betrays his debt to the work of his mentor and fellow executive producer, Steven Spielberg, and in turn, Alfred Hitchcock. The basic premises of Arachnophobia invoke themes featured prominantly in many of Spielberg and Hitchcock's films...
...core, Arachnophobia is a film about the effects of an extraordinary phenomenon on a small American town. The theme is clearly reminiscent of Spielberg's Jaws, Close Encounters of a Third Kind, E.T., and even further back, of Hitchcock's The Birds. Like all those films, Arachnophobia tells this story primarily through the trials and tribulations of a single male character; Roy Schnieder in Jaws, Richard Dreyfuss in Close Encounters, and Rod Taylor in The Birds. Here that role is filled by Jeff Daniel, who plays Ross Jennings, an Ivy League-educated doctor who moves his family to little Canaima...
Arachnophobia is given extra dimension by borrowing yet another technique made famous by Hitchcock. In Psycho and Rebecca, Hitchcock explored the results of placing psychologically-burdened characters under severe stress, forcing them to confront their worst fears. Jennings' extreme fear of spiders effectively establishes the link with the audience which makes the ensuing action tenable. Jennings' fear is believeble because, thanks to Marshall's careful direction, the character himself is so wholely believeable...
...Paul Verhoeven film starring Arnold Schwarzenegger.) You want it to boast elaborate sets and gadgety special effects. (TR created a Martian colony on a Mexican soundstage.) You want it to blend science fiction, action adventure and suspense. (TR filches blithely from Star Wars and Blade Runner, from RoboCop and Hitchcock films.) You want it to have plenty of cartoon mayhem for the ^ blood brigade. (TR meets its kill quota in the mid-hundreds.) Oh, and if it's not too much trouble, you'd like the movie to be fast, witty, glamorous, with thrill piling on giggle atop gasp...
...Every Hitchcock film has an unexpected twist. But last week the master of suspense's Rear Window was the subject of a legal surprise. In a 6-to-3 decision, the Supreme Court ruled that the 1983 rerelease of the 1954 classic infringed the copyright of the Cornell Woolrich story, It Had to Be Murder, on which the movie was based. After Woolrich's death, his estate renewed the story's copyright. In the majority opinion, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote that the film could not be shown without permission from the current holder of the copyright, even though...