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