Of course, horror movies wouldn't be horror movies without spiders. Every hokey sci fi flick from "Cat Women from the Moon" (1954) to its clone, "Missile to the Moon" (1959) featured a thrilling fight with a phony giant spider (in matter of fact the SAME giant spider). Even the Three Stooges fought with a giant spider that shot flames from under its leg in the parody of "Cat Women from the Moon," "Have Rocket, Will Travel" (1959). But for real creepy crawly thrills, it was Jack Arnold's "Tarantula" (1955) that had audiences jumping in their seats and hiding behind their popcorn boxes. In this one a mad scientist, Leo G. Carol, is experimenting with size drugs when a dispute with a co-worker results in the escape of his drug-injected experimental spider. It hangs out in the desert for a while, getting bigger from eating cattle and the occasional rancher before coming back to eat Carol's house. Once again the army is called, but nothing can stop it. Makes you wonder when the U.S. Army is going to figure out that a soldier with an M1 carbine just isn't very effective against a monster the size of an office building. All I can say is thank God for the Air Force and napalm; otherwise we'd all be stuck in a web.

But obviously Arnold wasn't done with giant spiders, because he came back with the king of the drive-in bug blasts, "The Incredible Shrinking Man" (1957). In this film version of Richard Matheson's riveting novel, Grant Williams is exposed to a radioactive cloud that causes him to shrink down to practically nothing. Chased by a house cat he falls into the basement where he is forced to fight for survival against the only other resident, a big, hungry, hairy spider. Even though Arnold used a tarantula in the film rather than the black widow described in the novel, it's still one of the scariest confrontations between bug and man ever filmed in the 50s.

With very few exceptions such as "Mysterious Island" (1961) the Ray Harryhausen flick were giant crabs, giant bees, giant chickens and giant just about everything else plague a group of prisoners who escape in a balloon from a civil war camp and chance to land on an island where Captain Nemo has been running experiments in size, or "The Lost World" (1960) where giant blue-screen spiders join lizards posing as dinosaurs on a South American plateau, bug flicks sort of scattered under the floorboards in the 1960s. But they made a big come back in the late 70s in such ecological terrors as "Squirm" (1976) about an invasion of giant worms; "Empire of the Ants" (1977) with Joan Collins vying for the role of queen of a colony of intelligent, (unlike the film) giant ants; "Kingdom of the Spiders" (1977) with William Shatner marking time until the first "Star Trek" film was due to be shot; and "The Swarm," an annoying slap on the neck about a swarm of (what else?) killer bees. Likewise, the venerable bug was represented during the 80s in films like the 1982 George Romero/Stephen King collaboration, "Creepshow" (the only film in history to list a roach wrangler in its credits), and the 1988 Disney film "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids," a "Shrinking Man" parody featuring not only a flight on the back of a giant bee, but a giant ant that tries to save a group of tiny, shrunken teens from a really nasty giant scorpion (leave it to Disney to try and make an ant CUTE). Even though it was short of thrills and filled with a bit too much humor, Disney did make a stab at a serious creepy, crawly creature feature with "Arachnophobia" in the mid 1990s, and who could forget that a giant cockroach DID wind up being the heavy at the end of the late 90s sci fi comedy hit, "Men in Black."

But it wasn't until last year that the giant bug - and in particular, the giant spider - made a real comeback. Using state-of-the-arts special computer effects, director Ellory Elkayem crafted a film worthy of the 50s drive in classics with "Eight-Legged Freaks" (2002). The plot is similar to "Tarantula," in that a whole range of species of spiders affected by toxic waste (rather than radiation) turn on a scientist and are loosened on a unwitting small town. Directing with tongue firmly planted in cheek, Elkayem leads the townsfolk to a final stand at a local mall in a scene reminiscent to "Dawn of the Dead." A similar freak out came in November with the release of "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets." Director Christopher Columbus' interpretation of J.K. Rowling's blockbuster novel, particularly in dealing with the giant spiders in the dark forest, had everyone cringing in their seats. The spiders are gigantic. The spiders are determined. The spiders are unrelenting. And despite their size, they're as numerous as the ants in "The Naked Jungle," skittering over the ground and out of the trees in an inescapable, overwhelming swarm.

Which was the exact image I was getting of the Australian landscape as my friend kept going on about White Tips that will melt your flesh with a single tiny bite and Red Tails, which are so poisonous they make Black Widows look like pets.

Since the spider is one of the most identifiable symbols of Halloween, and Australia is apparently the literal kingdom of the spiders, it occurred to me that the Aussies ought to stop dismissing the holiday and embrace it instead.

I mean, American holiday or not, where else could you throw a Halloween party and have the decorations crawl to you?