Tarantula

 Year:  1955

Director:  Jack Arnold

Screenplay:  Robert M. Fresco and Martin Berkeley, from a story by Jack Arnold and Robert M. Fresco, based on the television episode "No Food for Thought" written by Robert M. Fresco from Science Fiction Theatre 

Starring:  John Agar, Mara Corday, Leo G. Carroll

Running Time:  80 minutes

Genre:  Science-fiction, horror

When a strangely deformed man is found dead in the Arizona desert, Dr. Matt Hastings (Agar) investigates the laboratory of the respected Professor Gerald Deemer (Carroll), who has been working on a new nutrient to help feed the world's rapidly growing population, however, in it's unperfected state it causes rapid, uncontrolled growth, and exposure to it was somehow responsible for the deformity and death of the man found in the desert.  Things go from bad to worse when a tarantula Deemer had been experimenting on breaks out and goes on the rampage, as it keeps getting bigger and bigger, and hungrier and hungrier.

This is one of the better examples of the giant bug movies that were crawling all over American screens in the 1950s.  Science and particularly scientists were often depicted quite ambiguously in American film in the 1950s.  While science promised the brave new world of numerous gaudily printed science-fiction magazines, it also unleashed the horrors of the atomic bomb.  Even when the scientists were essentially benevolent and well-meaning, as in Tarantula, when the eggheads inevitably make a complete mess of things it is time for them to step aside and let the US Air Force blow everything to kingdom come. The film used quite advanced and complex special effects for the time, with blown up images of real animals used to depict the giant animals.  Most of the sequences of the tarantula itself use a real tarantula superimposed on to the footage, with model effects used for close-ups of it's fangs, and for the film's climax.  They may look unconvincing today, but the special effects were deemed convincing for the 1950s.  Also a lot of people are terrified of tarantulas anyway.  Jack Arnold was one of the great directors of B-movies, and has a solid cast of veterans, including Leo G. Carroll, who appeared in several Alfred Hitchcock films, as the avuncular professor who is unwittingly responsible for the whole mess.  John Agar, who appeared in a number of John Ford Westerns, plays the square jawed hero, and Mara Corday, who really doesn't have much to do as Carroll's assistant and Agar's love interest.  The film has an interesting script, adapted from a 1955 episode of the TV anthology series Science Fiction Theatre.  Tarantula's lasting legacy in popular culture is probably being name checked in the lyrics to "Science Fiction, Double Feature" the opening song for The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975): "And Leo G. Carroll/ was over a barrel/ when tarantula took to the hills."  You may also recognise the Air Force pilot at the end of the film as it is a very early, uncredited appearance by Clint Eastwood.

Tarantula