“Holy Spider” is based on the true story of Saeed Hanaei, a serial killer who murdered women in Iran that he deemed immoral, targeting sex workers. In order to portray the lives of the sex workers with some accuracy, Abbasi included a scene in the film where a trucker is recieving oral sex, but that proved to be a real challenge to coordinate in sexually conservative Jordan. Abbasi’s Jordanian producer had to figure out a way to shoot the scene without getting arrested, which included devising a way to get a prosthetic penis for the scene, because it couldn’t be sourced locally. The director told THR:
“Our German producer had to fly with the prosthetic penis to Jordan. And him being German, he goes to the customs and says, ‘Hey, we want to make a film. I have a prosthetic penis.’ And they’re like, ‘You come with us.’ So they confiscated the prosthetic penis, and we had a crisis meeting about this with me and with the actor, Alice [Rahimi], she’s French-Afghani, a fantastic actor. She was like, ‘You know, if everything goes bad, I’ll do it.’ I was like, ‘No, you’re not doing anything real. We’re not going to go there. I have enough troubles.'”
Rahimi sounds like a real one for being willing to take one for the team and be an international schlong smuggler, but they ended up having a slightly better plan that didn’t endanger a member of the cast. If only the German producer hadn’t been so forthcoming in the first place…