Factual error: Jerry Manley's corpse wouldn't have been returned to his home town as depicted. He died in a foreign country outside the U.S. from what was thought to have been a fever, his corpse would have been quarantined for possible contamination and autopsied which would have quickly determined his real cause of death from the spider.
Continuity mistake: When the General jumps out of the flames, one of his legs breaks off after he hits the ground. All eight legs are intact after he is blasted by the nail gun and crashes into his nest.
Revealing mistake: When the flaming "general" spider is killed, there's several mistakes. When it leaps, it suddenly "freezes" in mid-air for a second before the nail hits it. Then, when we see the nail hit it, you can see a wire attached to it, plain as day, to yank it back. Then, when it hits the egg-sack, you can see several fake spiders attached to it, which don't move at all. Then the egg sack catches on fire, but the flames come from behind the sack, even though the general hit the front.
Revealing mistake: When Atherton is using his fog machine to spray up into the tree look to his left, you can see another spray of the fog being added to the tree by an unseen stagehand.
Other mistake: When Dr Atherton injects the mouse with venom, the syringe is pointing up. But as the plunger is pulled nearly all the way back and the syringe is too large to be filled with venom, he would have injected the mouse with air. (01:17:00)
Revealing mistake: Near the end it is way obvious that the king spider is animatronic as it goes for the doctor, considering it's tech string is quite visible in the closeup. And it "hisses" as it's lowered.
Other mistake: When the exterminator steps on the little spider it makes a loud dramatic 'crunch' and then when he lifts his boot the bottom is overcovered in fake brown goo.
Revealing mistake: Two very different types of spiders are used in most of the shots. In the closeups they are larger, with bulbous legs, defined hairs, and big eyes.
Answer: It definitely wasn't one of the offspring, as you can see when it jumped out at him that it was a very large spider, likely the general since they mentioned the queen would be guarding the egg sac in the wine cellar to defend it from other spiders.
Phaneron ★