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

It Came from Outer Space

Year:  1953

Director:  Jack Arnold

Screenplay:  Harry Essex, from a story by Ray Bradbury

Starring:  Richard Carlson, Barbara Rush

Running Time:  80 minutes

Genre:  Science-fiction

Writer and amateur astronomer Frank Putnam (Carlson) and his schoolteacher girlfriend Ellen Fields (Rush) witness what seems to be a meteor crashing in the Arizona desert.  When they discover, they discover that it is, in fact, a large spacecraft.  Of course, nobody believes them, but then local people begin acting very strangely.

This is one of the finest moments of the 1950s science-fiction craze.  To modern audiences the alien creature may be more likely to provoke giggles than screams, and the film's low budget is very obvious in places, however under celebrated science-fiction director Jack Arnold, it still conjures up some memorable images, and the desert landscapes are evocative.  Based on an original screen treatment by legendary science-fiction writer Ray Bradbury, and scripted by Harry Essex, the film is well written with intelligent dialogue.  Unusually the film's shape-shifting aliens are not malevolent, all they want is to repair their ship and leave.  Richard Carlson gives a strong performance as the increasingly stressed astronomer, even if Barbara Rush is a little underused as his loyal girlfriend.  Charles Drake plays the town's aggressive sheriff who is also Putnam's rival for Ellen's affections.  The film was originally shown in 3D which is why so many objects are thrust at the camera.  

It Came from Outer Space

Creature from the Black Lagoon

Year: 1954
Director: Jack Arnold
Screenplay: Harry Essex and Arthur A. Ross, from a story by Maurice Zimm
Starring: Richard Carlson, Julia Adams, Richard Denning, Antonio Moreno
Running Time: 79 minutes
Genre: Horror, science-fiction, monster movie

Summary: A geology expedition in the Amazon rainforest discover a fossilized humanoid hand with webbed fingers. The expedition leader, Doctor Carl Maia (Moreno), believes that hand represents a hitherto undiscovered link in the development of sea animals to land animals and contacts his friend, Doctor David Reed (Carlson), an icthyologist working for a marine biology institute, to join him on an expedition into the Amazon to find the remainder of the skeleton.
Reed persuades the institute's publicity hungry financial backer, Doctor Mark Williams (Denning), to fund the expedition. Travelling on a ramshackle tramp steamer called the Rita, captained by the crusty Lucas (Nestor Paiva), the expedition heads down the Amazon. In addition to Maia, Reed and Williams, the expedition consists of Reed's girlfriend Kay Lawrence (Adams) and another scientist, Doctor Thompson (Whit Bissell).
Arriving at Maia's expedition's camp, they find that the members of his team have been savagely killed. Lucas suggests that a jaguar was responsible, however the others are unsure. After an unsuccessful excavation of the site where the fossilised hand was discovered, Maia suggests that the skeleton may have been washed downriver. Lucas tells them about a secluded lagoon, known as the "Black Lagoon", which is described as a paradise on Earth, although no-one has ever returned from it.
They travel to the lagoon, where they soon discover that one of the species that the fossilised hand came from is still very much alive, an amphibious humanoid "Gill-man", which has no intention of allowing the expedition to return alive.

Opinions: This was one of the last of the classic "Universal Monsters" movies, and one of the few which was not based on a classic novel or story. In fact the origin of the film is reputed to go back to when producer and actor William Alland attended a dinner party at Orson Welles' house in 1941 while he was shooting Citizen Kane, in which Alland had an acting role, and a fellow guest told him about a legendary race of half-fish, half-human creatures dwelling in the Amazon.
The creature of the title, the "Gill-man" (who was played by Ben Chapman on land, and by Ricou Browning in the underwater scenes), has become a horror movie icon and despite being very obviously a man in a suit, the design is still striking. Unusually, the creature is largely sympathetic. It rarely attacks unless provoked and of course the humans are invading it's territory, not the other way around.
The film's production design is impressive, and the action moves at a brisk pace. The film features a sequence which has become iconic, where Julia Adams is swimming in the lagoon and below her, the Gill-man swims, mirroring her movements, in a sequence which is almost like a seduction, and is really about as suggestive as movies got in 1954. Even today, the scene has a kind of eerie sexyness.
The acting is kind of bland and the characters tend to be stock figures, also the story-line is a fairly conventional monster movie, however the pluses far outweigh the minuses and this is a classic of it's genre.
The film was originally released in 3D and was followed by two sequels: Revenge of the Creature (1955), which is only notable for featuring Clint Eastwood in his first screen role, and The Creature Walks Among Us (1956).
The inevitable remake has been planned and rumoured since the early 1980s and is currently planned to swim onto our screens in 2013.

"I can tell you something about this place. The boys around here call it "The Black Lagoon"; a paradise. Only they say nobody has ever come back to prove it."
- Lucas (Nestor Paiva) in Creature from the Black Lagoon



The Gill-man surfaces in Creature from the Black Lagoon