3. The Tarantula Trap - Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade
One of the more memorable sequences in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade has the eminent hero of the movie's title trying to make his way through a series of booby traps in order to reach the Holy Grail and rescue his father before it's too late! In the final cut of the film, the second trap in this series has Indy having to spell the word "Jehova" by stepping on the right letters laid out across the ground. When he makes a mistake ("...in the Latin alphabet, 'Jehova' starts with an I..."), a panel breaks and he almost falls to certain doom into the depths of a bottomless pit housed below. But this wasn't always how things were going to go down; originally, it was Steven Spielberg's plan to have Indy facing up against tarantulas whenever he stepped on the wrong tile, as proven by the image above - the only glimpse we have of the scene. This was later changed when the director realised it didn't really create the impact that he wanted, and also because Indy had already gone down the tarantula route in Raiders Of The Lost Ark during the iconic opening sequence. Out with the spiders, in with the pit...
Sam Hill is an ardent cinephile and has been writing about film professionally since 2008. He harbours a particular fondness for western and sci-fi movies.
