After moving from San Francisco to a small-town barnhouse, an arachnophobic doctor (Jeff Daniels) gets a house call from a deadly spider that spawns in his wine cellar, turning his Shiraz rack into a Shelob shack.

Produced by Steven Spielberg and Kathleen Kennedy (and directed by her husband Frank Marshall), this 1990 creature feature is spun from the same silk as ’80s critter classics Gremlins and Ghostbusters, rather than the naff ’90s nastiness of Anaconda or Species. This Spielbergian sensibility brings family-friendly horror and light satirical bite to its affable comedy, cleverly sending up the garden-variety big city vs small town trope that plagued Hollywood at the time (and Hallmark to this day).

The approach is also refreshingly small scale for a genre so prone to making its monsters as massive as possible, keeping the spider attacks to hair-raising domestic situations (always remember to check inside your slippers), and letting the likability of the characters raise the stakes. And while Arachnophobia is wilfully cheesy, its self-awareness is evident in its rib-tickling jokes (the kind missing from last year’s copycat Sting), and visual homages to Hitchcock’s Psycho and The Birds.

Boasting a classic adventure score and skittish spider effects, Arachnophobia is a fun barn yarn that’s sure to make you sleep with a broom under your pillow.