Event schedule
5 p.m. — Doors open 6 p.m. — Announcements of art contest winners 7 p.m. — Film introductions begin 7:15 to 8:05 p.m. — Steve Kutcher insect/arthropod horror film showcase 8:05 to 8:20 p.m. — Steve Kutcher Q&A 8:20 to 8:30 p.m. — 10-minute break 8:30 p.m. — “Arachnophobia” intro 8:45 to 10:30 p.m. — “Arachnophobia”
The annual Insect Fear Film Festival has become almost as much a feature of February as Groundhog Day.
This year, the 42nd annual festival takes place on Feb. 22 in the University of Illinois Foellinger Auditorium, hosted by the Entomology Graduate Students Association (EGSA) and the UIUC Department of Entomology.
Every so often, the festival expands its purview to include other arthropods.
In the past, they’ve featured spiders, crabs, scorpions and even lesser-known spineless creatures.
This year, the emphasis falls on tarantulas, the big hairy spiders that filmmakers love because of their looks, size and unduly bad reputation.
(You see one of them crawling across the hero’s bed while he’s dozing, and you know right away he’s in big trouble.)
The festival uses entertaining films along with exhibits and activities to educate audiences and demonstrate how interesting insects and other arthropods can be.
The films have usually been low-budget sci-fi, horror and disaster movies with less than stellar scripts, acting or production values and even worse biology and physics on display.
This year’s main film, “Arachnophobia,” deals with spiders and stars various species of tarantulas and had a relatively high budget for 1990.
It was the first feature film directed by Frank Marshall, a longtime producing associate of Steven Spielberg (who shared executive producer credit with Marshall on this film) and so had the Spielberg movie-making machine behind it in terms of acting and production values (though still lacking in biological realism).
Arachnologist Dr. James Anderson (Julian Sands) leads an expedition into the Venezuelan jungle to collect specimens in his drive to discover new species. An unknown and unusually deadly spider, however, bites and kills his photographer.
Then it stows away in the photographer’s coffin and winds up in the same small town as equally new arrival Dr. Ross Jennings (Jeff Daniels), who is looking for a change from city life.
After mating with a local spider, the Venezuelan tarantula sends its offspring out to attack the townspeople.
Ironically, considering Jennings has a severe fear of spiders (arachnophobia), the spider king and queen have set up their nest in his barn.
After several deaths, Anderson shows up to identify the spider and capture it.
Since he’s not the main character in the film, you can guess how that works out.
Listed in the credits as supervising entomologist is Steven Kutcher, generally informally referred to as a “bug wrangler.”
If a Hollywood film calls for a live arthropod to behave in a particular way for a shot, Steve is the man they’re most likely to call.
He is also the special guest of the festival this year and will discuss his career, show a “sizzle reel” of clips from some of the films on which he’s worked, and answer questions from the audience.
Professor May Berenbaum, head of the UIUC Entomology Department and founder of the festival, will be on hand to emcee the stage events, introduce the film(s) and point out what they get wrong about tarantulas.
Festival live events in the auditorium lobby will include an insect petting zoo (also including friendly tarantulas), exotic pinned museum-quality specimens and close-up views of various arthropods via the Bugscope scanning electron microscope.
Also on view in the lobby will be a gallery of the annual IFFF art contest entries — insect-themed images created by local students from kindergarten to 12th grade.
Awards for the winners in all categories (selected by EGSA judges) will be presented by Professor Berenbaum on stage before the films.
On the second floor of the lobby, younger patrons can also enjoy face-painting, balloon-twisting and paper-folding into insect shapes and ventriloquist Hannah Leskosky interacting with a talking (and very friendly) tarantula.
Festival T-shirts for this festival (and a few from past festivals) will also be on sale in the lobby.
Admission to the festival is free and open to all.
In the interest of journalistic transparency, I will note that Professor Berenbaum is my spouse, and Hannah Leskosky is our daughter.
