- A new species of South American killer spider hitches a lift to a California town in a coffin and starts to breed, leaving a trail of deaths that puzzle and terrify young Dr. Ross Jennings, who is newly arrived in town with his family.
- In the jungle of the Venezuelan Amazonas, the specialist in spiders, Doctor James Atherton, is researching an unknown species of spider recently discovered. His photographer Jerry Manley is bitten by one spider and his body is sent to his hometown Canaima with one spider hidden in the coffin. She escapes and hides in a barn of a house. Dr. Ross Jennings moves with his family from San Francisco to the small town Canaima seeking for a peaceful place to raise his son and his daughter. He has had a trauma with spiders since he was two years old. However, the spider built a nest in his barn and his basement and has reproduced. The town is infested of the mortal species of spider from Venezuela, and Dr. Ross, together with Doctor James Atherton, his assistant Chris Collins and the exterminator Delbert McClintock try to find the nest to destroy the queen and end the menace.—Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
- A large spider from the jungles of South America is accidentally transported in a crate with a dead body to America where it mates with a local spider. Soon after, the residents of a small California town disappear as the result of spider bites from the deadly spider offspring. It's up to a couple of doctors aided by an insect exterminator to annihilate these eight-legged freaks before they take over the entire town.—Shaun Ouimette <[email protected]>
- A group of researchers is on a research expedition to Venezuela. Upon a routine trapping of insects, the researchers find two stunned spiders in their traps, and they study these insects that are unlike any spiders they have ever seen. One spider escapes and kills a researcher, then hitches a ride back to the researchers' hometown, Canaima, California. Dr. Ross Jennings has just moved in there and is deathly afraid of spiders. Now, the Venezuelan spider has reached the U.S., and has begun to dominate the town. Soon, people who appear completely healthy start to die suddenly. Only after the death of the town's only other doctor does Jennings realize that a spider might be causing the deaths. He sends his assistant to Canaima, only verifying that the Venezuelan spider was involved. He informs them that the Venezuelan spider plans to take over its new area by creating reproductive offspring with a domestic house spider. Now, it's a race against time before the Venezuelan spider manifests the town, and eventually the entire country.—brenleyman
- A strange spider from the depths of a jungle is accidentally transported back to the good old USA. Through numerous coincidences and accidents, it finds a home in the barn of a doctor's new home. After it mates with a local spider, thousands of little spiders run riot in the small town. This wouldn't be too much of a problem, except that these "aren't ordinary spiders"; they're killers. The local pest exterminator has a go, but... So it's up to the Doc to save the town.—Rob Hartill
- A photographer named Jerry Manley arrives in Venezuela to be part of an expedition party led by Doctor James Atherton (Julian Sands). Jerry is instructed to take photographs of the animals and environments. The party travels into the rainforest by helicopter and by mule, eventually arriving at the floor of a giant sinkhole. The environment of the sinkhole has been undisturbed for millions of years and Atherton, an arachnologist, is eager to find new species of spiders.
Eventually, the group come across a series of strange webs, and several unknown spiders. Atherton uses smoke collect insect species. One giant specimen that appears to be dead shocks Jerry when it leaps onto his camera and, panic-stricken, he crushes it. Atherton chastises Jerry for killing it, but they still have some other specimens of the new species to take back. Unseen by the men, a larger spider, the local alpha male, hides on their gear.
Back near their base camp, Atherton examines the specimens, noting that they seem to be 'drones,' as no sexual organs can be found on them, leading him to believe the spiders they've found are part of a 'hive,' with a leader. During this time, Jerry goes to rest, still suffering from a cold he had before he arrived. During his rest, the alpha male bits him. The alpha's venom is very potent and Jerry dies agonizingly in a matter of seconds.
When Atherton and his men find out, they assume he must have succumbed to his cold, and a crude wooden casket is constructed to send Jerry back to his home in Canaima in northern California. Unseen by the men, the alpha male stows away in the box.
Once the box arrives in Canaima, the coroners find Jerry's body appears to have shriveled up. The coroner assumes that the remote Venezuelan people lacked the proper equipment and technique to embalm Jerry's body properly. He places a call to the funeral home requesting they speak to Jerry's family and have a closed casket. Meanwhile, the alpha male, having drained Jerry's body during transport, sneaks outside where it is quickly picked up by a crow. After a few moments, the spider bites the crow in midair and both plummet to the ground near an old barn near a farm house.
The house just happens to be the new home of transposed San Franciscan residents, the Jennings. While moving things into the home, Ross Jennings (Jeff Daniels) is asked by his son Tommy to kill a spider. Ross' arachnophobia keeps him from doing so and his wife Molly ends up carrying off the spider. At their daughter Shelley's insistence, they take it to the barn... where it promptly meets and mates with the Venezuelan alpha.
Ross has moved his family from San Francisco, when it was announced that the town's physician Sam Metcalf (Henry Jones) was planning to retire. However, Ross' plans come to a screeching halt when the stubborn Metcalf tells Ross he has reconsidered. Without a secondary job to fall back on, Ross gets some consolation when his nearby neighbor Margaret Collins (Mary Carver) welcomes him, and requests he examine her. She also stops the local sheriff, Lloyd Parsons, from coldly writing him a parking ticket as he leaves Metcalf's office. After finding her in good health, Ross has her stop taking blood pressure medication that Metcalf prescribed her claiming it's unnecessary.
Meanwhile, indulging her artistic talent for photography, Molly begins shooting pictures with her camera. Her search leads her to the barn, where she finds a number of unusually large and elaborate webs. She attempts to show them to Ross, who has to fight his phobia just to take a look. He falls off the later to the loft when a dead rodent plummets from the web. He and Molly end up laughing over the incident.
Some time afterward, Margaret hosts a party for the Jennings, and a number of the townspeople get to meet them. The party does get a little off-kilter when Jerry's mother, Henrietta Manley (Lois De Banzie) has too much to drink, wailing about her son who passed away a few months prior.
The next day, Molly calls Margaret to thank her for the party, but gets no answer. Since she lives next door, Ross goes over to check on her, only to find her collapsed on the floor. Dr Metcalf proposes that it was a heart attack, but Ross suspects it could be something else, given that the body was contorted as if she suffered a seizure. When Ross also argues with Metcalf about taking Margaret off the medication he prescribed her, Metcalf accuses Ross, saying his actions could have been the cause of Margaret's death and he may report him to an ethics board for alleged malpractice. Ross wishes to perform an an autopsy, but is denied by Metcalf here too.
In the wake of Margaret's death, Ross is unsure what to do, when he is asked by the local school's coach to perform physicals on the school football team. Afterward, Ross watches the team practice for a game, when one of the students suddenly freezes mid-play and is simultaneously hit by three of his teammates. Unseen by the others, a spider had crawled into his helmet, and quickly scurried away when one of the teammates removed it from the collapsed player. The incident soon causes Ross to gain the unfriendly moniker of "Dr Death" by several of the townspeople.
Ross attempts to focus on other things, and tries to finish a wine cellar in the basement, only to find that the beams are rotted. Suspecting termites, they call an exterminator named Delbert McClintock (John Goodman). After looking over the basement, he confirms that it's just the fact that they have "bad wood" in their house, and that they should replace it.
Dr Metcalf is still of the persuasion that Ross is trouble, but is injured when a spider crawls into his slipper and bites his toe. In his final moments, Metcalf has his wife call Ross, but the old man dies before Ross can get to him. It is thought that since Metcalf was exercising moments before his death, that he'd overexerted himself, but Ross and the coroner note a bite mark on Metcalf's big toe, along with his wife telling that her husband claimed he had been bitten by something. Ross then requests the coroner run a toxicology report on Metcalf to properly determine cause of death.
Ross takes on the role of town physician and soon has a full patient load. The coroner soon after calls with the results of Metcalf's findings, noting a small amount of an unidentified poison was found in his bloodstream. Ross then requests that the football player and Margaret's bodies be exhumed to be checked as well, and the coroner complies.
Returning home, Ross finds his daughter going to spend the evening at a friend's home. However, Ross warns the girls to run if they see any spiders, prompting them to giggle at his "silliness."
Later that evening at the Briggs' place (where Ross' daughter is staying), the eldest daughter encounters a spider in the shower, and the father is almost bitten by one. They then after call Delbert out to check the home, but he finds nothing inside. Out on the porch, he sees a spider, and attempts to spray it with one of his special chemical treatments but it has little effect. Frustrated, Delbert simply steps on it.
Meanwhile, given that Ross suspects spiders to be the culprit behind these deaths, he searches for an authority on them, and finds Dr Atherton. Though hoping Atherton will come himself to help, the Doctor claims he's too busy, and sends an assistant named Chris Collins (Brian McNamara) in his place. Chris examines the exhumed corpses and on each one a small bite mark is found, proving Ross' theory.
Eventually, Chris finds the situation dire enough to call in Atherton, who arrives just as the men have found a live specimen. Much like the spiders in Venezuela, the Canaima spiders have no sexual organs, but do have several poison pouches. Testing it on a lab mouse, it dies in a matter of seconds from a very small dosage. It is soon surmised that one of the spiders from Venezuela has mated with the local spiders, and has started its own colony in the town. However, unlike the confined sinkhole in Venezuela where the spiders originated, the open area of Canaima presents no natural features to keep them contained.
They then attempt to get hold of the coroner, but find his phone off the hook. Going to his house, they find that he and his wife have died due to spider bites -- one had found its way into their bowl of popcorn and attacked them while they watched TV.
After the incident, the search is on to locate the nest. Using a map, the group finds out that the attacks have happened in a radiating pattern. At the center of the pattern is Ross' house. As Delbert rushes them to Ross' house, Chris tells them that the alpha male & female will be guarding an egg sac in a place that's warm and devoid of even their drones. Ross immediately thinks of his barn but Delbert counters, saying that the barn would be too cold and drafty. Ross realizes with horror that the spiders have settled into his home.
Atherton also notes Molly's strange webbing photos in Ross' office and has the Sheriff take him to the family's barn. In the barn he finds the webs, along with a number of dead small animals. Atherton attempts to lure out and capture the alpha male, but instead it lunges out and kills him.
Ross and the others have gone to his house where they attempt to get his family out. Sending Delbert to the barn, Ross and Chris go into his house, only to find a number of spiders coming out of the woodwork, to attack them. The family manages to get out, all except Ross, who ends up plummeting over the stairs, and through the rotted wood of the first floor into the cellar.
It is here that he finds the nest with its egg sac. The queen attempts to kill Ross, but he ends up flipping it into the electrical box, where it dies. However, the alpha has appeared, and attempts to kill Ross. The spider even survives being burned, and takes a flying leap at Ross, who impales it with a shot from a nail gun, sending the flaming spider into the nest, destroying it and its offspring. As he lays amid the smoldering wreckage of the basement, Delbert suddenly appears and drags him out.
In the end, we see Ross and his family having returned to San Francisco, and willing to return to the rat race of humanity, where they are sure nothing as crazy as their country adventure will happen... that is, until a few earthquake tremors rattle their apartment.
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