Tarantula

Firefox VS Spider

Tarantula
USA 1955
Directed by Jack Arnold
Universal/101 Films 
Blu Ray Zone B/DVD Region 2

Warning: Small, eight legged spoilers coming your way. 

“I’d say you were the biggest liar since Baron Munchhausen”
quote from Tarantula

Well Tarantula is a film I wasn’t that impressed with when I first saw it, although I absolutely adore 1950s, atomic age B-movies and... revisiting it now on a very good Blu Ray transfer put out by 101 Films as part of a dual edition (yeah, some companies are still putting both the Blu Ray and DVD in the same set combinations)... I’d have to say I’m still not all that swayed over by it. Jack Arnold was an absolute master of these kinds of films with things like the first two Creature From The Black Lagoon films, The Incredible Shrinking Man and, even uncredited work on the classic This Island Earth. This one falls fairly flat though, especially when you compare it to, say, the absolute masterpiece that was THEM! (reviewed by me here). It does have a couple of things going for it though...

One is that some (but not quite all) of the special effects and make up effects in this one are handled pretty well, for the most part. The other thing is that the script does nothing to make light of the ridiculous plot (although the make up in one scene may well make you laugh) and the actors are all very good at projecting a certain amount of gravitas around the story. These actors include monster movie regular John Agar as the perpetually smiley, heroic Dr. Matt Hastings, Leo G. Carrol as the resident mad scientist Prof. Gerald Deemer and the sensuous Mara Corday as the professor’s new work experience student (as we’d express it these days) and love interest for Agar, Stephanie 'Steve' Clayton (who would go on to play a few supporting roles for her friend Clint Eastwood in The Gauntlet, Sudden Impact, Pink Cadillac and The Rookie but, I’m getting ahead of myself... I’ll get to Clint in a little while). 

Also in the cast, as the sherif of the small town of Desert Rock and friend to Agar’s Hastings, is Nestor Paiva. Regular readers may remember Paiva as the boat captain in both Creature From The Black Lagoon (reviewed here) and Revenge Of The Creature (reviewed here)... and also for his role in The Falcon In Mexico (reviewed here). I almost didn’t recognise him at first because, although he was born in California, I always associate him with playing roles with a strong, sometimes Mexican accent and, also, his almost bald head here is prominently displayed, rather than covered with a hat. Hearing him speak perfect American English was a bit of a shock, to be honest. 

The film opens quite starkly and effectively. A camera pans around the bleak desert landscape until it fixes on a man wandering through and then collapsing. He dies but by then we can see he has deformed features. This is because, as we later find out, the serum Professor Deemer is working on to make animals grow to giant sizes in order to solve the world’s food shortage problems, causes an unnaturally quick manifestation of the rare disease acromegaly when injected into a human. Acromegaly, is of course, the famous rare condition contracted by famous character actor Rondo Hatton, which pushes the bones and muscles around the face to give everything a warped look (something which gave him good work in various villainous roles in his short, painful life... the Rondo Awards are named after him).  

Anyway, the professor buries another of his initially willing human victims, after being attacked by him and... the laboratory is partially burned down. What he doesn’t realise is that, while he was rendered unconscious in the fight, the dying human lab rat injected him with the formula as well... not to mention the fact that the professor’s already unnaturally huge tarantula has escaped and, of course, it roams the desert killing cattle, horses and humans until everybody can put two and two together... mostly as a not bad special effect superimposition of a real tarantula interacting with miniature sets and being projected against real life actors in some sequences. I think there’s probably some puppet work here too but, in regards to the big spider’s many on screen appearances, the puppetry is kept to a minimum.

So that’s the set up and, it’s not a terrible film to be sure (fourth biggest box office hit of the year) but, I have to say, the storyline and lack of any real twists and turns leaves me a little cold when compared to other movies like this. However, some of the make up effects, such as when Leo G. Carrol first shows signs of acromegaly, are put together extremely well. Alas, on the last time you see him, just before he is injected with venom by the tarantula so it can eat him, the make up is so over the top that he appears to have one eyeball that has melted all the way down the side of his face. If this sounds silly, it is.

What also sounds silly but, really isn’t, is the way the live footage of a real tarantula is scaled up and inserted into the shots. This kind of approach rarely looks good but, in Tarantula, Jack Arnold just about gets away with it... it looks quite acceptable and decent. I say almost because, on one tell tale shot where the big guy is one again clambering over a small mountain, some of its legs disappear behind the sky so, you can definitely see where the live action and the miniature were badly lined up, in that instance. 

And, big spoiler here, the Tarantula is finally put down in the final reel by a jet fighter pilot firing rockets or napalm or some such. The close up shots of the pilots eyes (pretty much the only thing visible of his face) combined with his voice, made me sit up straight. I looked it up and this is, indeed, the second uncredited screen role in a Jack Arnold film for a young Clint Eastwood, seen here piloting a jet long before his stint in Firefox. And, of course, this film’s leading lady would, as I said earlier, play a supporting part in four of Clint’s movies too. I wonder if this film is the first time they met... or even if they did meet as, I don’t think Clint shares a screen with anyone in this film... just sits in the cockpit, talking into his radio. 

And that’s me pretty much done with the quite entertaining but, really not great, Tarantula. The score is a mix of original and old rerecorded and tracked in pieces, from the sound of it... the opening Universal logo was the tip off for me on that front, which begins with the same opening bars as Creature From The Black Lagoon. It’s all quite effective though and very much of its time. Let’s face it, though, while Tarantula may not have the thrills and spills of certain other, more thoughtful atomic age monster movies, it’s still quite watchable and, if you have a hankering for spending time with this kind of thing (and who doesn’t?), then you’ll certainly want to be adding Tarantula to your list, if you’ve not seen it before.