Monster Movie of the Week: Tarantula (1955)

TARANTULA (1955)
Directed by Jack Arnold
Genre: Monster on the Loose

THE MOVIE

Along with movies like Them! and The Black Scorpion, Tarantula is a standout in the genre of giant bug movies which became popular in the 1950's. And as far as insects and arachnids go, even normal tarantulas are pretty freaky with their hairy bodies and giant poisonous mandibles, so one that is a hundred times bigger than normal certainly can hold its own among cinema's nastiest monsters.

Tarantula begins with a memorable and mysterious scene in which a deformed man stumbles through the desert and collapses. Like many of the other giant bug movies, Tarantula takes place in the western United States, a land of open spaces and secret experimentation. We soon meet a scientist at a remote lab in which he is developing a super nutrient which he hopes will fight the hunger that he thinks will overtake the world as the population grows in the coming decades.

In one scene, the old man looks ahead to the future predicting population growth in the far future of 1975 and 2000. As someone who was actually alive in both of those years, it felt a bit disconcerting being called out in a movie from 1955. It made me feel like kind of a backward-looking voyeur, watching this movie in 2011 with technology that had not yet even been dreamed up in 1955.


The practical effect of this super nutrient is that is causes animals to develop quickly and grow to enormous sizes. In his lab, we see oversized rats and other animals, including a very large tarantula. Why he would need to test on a tarantula is for smarter people than me to figure out.

When the scientist's former partner returns to the lab, having fallen victim to the effects of the nutrient, the two engage in a struggle which destroys part of the lab and frees the tarantula which escapes into the desert and grows to an enormous size.

Much as in the later movie, Sssssss!, the shady scientist has to replace his mysteriously missing assistant. Only this time, the replacement is an attractive young female grad student, who also catches the eye of the doctor from the nearby town. The doctor and his new friend begin to piece together the suspicious activity centered around the lab, including horses that have been totally stripped of their flesh and huge pools of arachnid venom. The giant spider soon reveals itself in the open and goes on a rampage. It is only defeated by jets which fire napalm projectiles and are piloted by young Clint Eastwoods.

You've gotta ask yourself one question spider, do I feel lucky?

MONSTERS/EFFECTS

The giant tarantula is brought to life through a mix of puppetry and trick photography using a real tarantula composited onto a live action plate. This was a well-worn technique in old movies and many an unfortunate lizard has been dolled up to look like a ferocious dinosaur. It works surprisingly well, partially because the spider is so dark but also because a large puppet wouldn't have been able to capture the creepy way that a tarantula moves.

The two scientists also undergo a kind of inexplicable transformation after having been exposed to the experimental nutrient. While the other animals suffer from gigantism, the two scientists morph into deformed snub-nosed creatures that look a bit like the pig-people from the classic Twilight Zone episode "The Eye of the Beholder." That whole subplot seems a little unnecessary for a movie that has enough going on with a hundred foot spider running around.



MOST MEMORABLE MOMENT

The brief view of the twisted flaming tarantula corpse at the end of the movie.

HOME VIDEO AVAILABILITY

Available on DVD in a double feature with The Mole People.

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Patrick Garone
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Author of City of the Gods: The Return of Quetzalcoatl

Monster Movie of the Week: The Mist (2007)

THE MIST (2007)
Directed by Frank Darabont
Genre: Horror/Survival


THE MOVIE

For a long time, the idea of a good Stephen King adaptation was laughable. After a strong starts with Carrie. The Dead Zone, and (arguably) The Shining, Hollywood became saturated with rushed and crappy King adaptations in the 1980's. His reputation was rehabilitated with strong adaptations of some of his less overtly horrific works like Stand By Me and Misery, movies which often did not advertise their Stephen King origins. When The Shawshank Redemption was released in 1994, it was universally acclaimed and is widely considered on of the best films of its decade. Many were surprised that it was in fact based on a novella from King, as it lacks most of the traditional genre elements that audience expects from the author.

The movie was adapted and directed by Frank Darabont, who also had previously been known for his genre work, writing films like A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, The Fly II, and The Blob. He went on to become a prolific adapter of Stephen King's work, with The Green Mile and, most recently, 2007's The Mist. The Mist gives us full-on horror Stephen King, in which a group of desperate survivors are holed up in a grocery store surrounded by a creepy mist which conceals all manner of horrible Lovecraftian monsters.

The best thing about The Mist is that it has a kind of elegant simplicity to it. It is a pure horror story about a group of people surviving an onslaught of monstrous foes and how they react as a group to survive. The movie smartly never definitively tells you where the mist and the monsters are from, you are with the survivors and only know as much as they do. Some of them speculate that some experiments at the near-by military base have gone awry and opened a gateway to "another dimension" but no one really knows and, to be honest, it really doesn't matter.




The Mist is also a commentary on human nature and we witness many of the survivors begin to break off into different factions and turn on each other. This works early in the movie as the film does a good job of giving us a broad spectrum of people and nicely underscores their differences in gender, race and social class. We see the societal bonds begin to unravel as the situation becomes more stressful but the movie really over-reaches in its second half. It goes a bit off the rails when the characters start actually openly discussing this theme. Also, the town's local religious nut, Ms. Carmody begins accumulating followers among the survivors. I don't think the movie really earns where it goes to with this character and this story arc seems to be go a bit too fast and is missing a few connections.



Darabont fans will see a lot of familiar faces in The Mist. Character actor William Sadler returns from playing a prisoner in Shawshank. You may remember Laurie Holden from her brief stint on The X-Files as recurring character Marita Covarubbias (The Unblonde) and she goes on to do Darabont's The Walking Dead. Jeffrey DeMunn has them all beat having appeared in Shawshank, The Majestic, and The Walking Dead.

Perhaps the most memorable part of the movie is its controversial and monumentally downbeat ending. I won't spoil it but will say that it aims to be very big and Dramatic. Perhaps too much so because it aims for big Tragedy, which doesn't play that well in a movie. Imagine the biggest and most tragic version of a Homer Simpson "D'oh!" and you'd be pretty close.




MONSTER/EFFECTS

There are a lot of nasty creatures in The Mist but we don't get a good look at many of them. Our first creature encounter is with a full fledged Tentacle Monster, which reaches in under a big loading dock door. We first see some fat tentacles, but we then see that they unfold into spiky appendages capable of ripping bloody chunks of flesh out of a man. In keeping with the movie's style of not giving us too much, we never actually see the rest of this creature.

We next see some large flying insects, which look like large mosquitos. The insects are pursued by some very interesting pterodactyl-like animals which have four membranous wings. Also in the mix are some very large and mean skull-faced spiders which breed inside human corpses and are able to spin webs which violently burn people's skin.

In the mist is also what appears to be a large mantis-like creature. Sadly we only see it as a hazy shadow and we never get a good look at it. The movie's best creature shows up at the end, when our small group of survivors are attempting to drive out of town, it is a truly unearthly creature like a giant dinosaur/insect hybrid with dozens of writhing tentacles. It may even be the original tentacle monster from the loading dock scene.



MOST MEMORABLE MOMENT

See above. I really like that the horror comes to a halt in this scene and the characters take a moment to experience a kind of awe in this scene. I love that there is room for a small moment of amazement. It really is a beautiful and unearthly creature.

HOME VIDEO AVAILABILITY

Widely available on DVD and Bluray. The deluxe DVD even features a black and white version of the movie.

TRAILER







Patrick Garone
Follow Me On Twitter
Author of City of the Gods: The Return of Quetzalcoatl