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Review by E.C.McMullen Jr. |
 TARANTULA - 1955USA Release: (limited) Nov. 4, 1955 (wide) Dec. 14, 1955 Universal Pictures Rated: USA: N/A |
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The fifties and atomic anything. Like our modern era where any ding bat will make a scifi movie and use DNA gone wild or Nanobots gone mad to explain fantastic creatures, the 1950s had radiation gone goofy create giant versions of shoe squashable pests.
If atomic bombs weren't waking up long sleeping leviathans like GOJIRA or GAMERA or THE BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS, then radiation was making people little like THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN, or giants like THE AMAZING COLOSSAL MAN, and the same applied to octopus like IT CAME FROM BENEATH THE SEA, insects like THEM there ants or, for that matter, arachnids like TARANTULA.
Just add radiation, kids, and watch them Grow!
In this case, we begin with a misshapen person stumbling through the desert. Is it a person with acromegaly (you know, like the Elephant Man)? Is this unfortunate the victim of mad medical experiments? Is it an alien, perchance?
Person moans in agony, falls down and dies.
On an unrelated note, Doctor Matt Hastings (John Agar: REVENGE OF THE CREATURE, THE MOLE PEOPLE, DAUGHTER OF DR. JEKYLL, THE BRAIN FROM PLANET AROUS, ATTACK OF THE PUPPET PEOPLE, INVISIBLE INVADERS, DESTINATION SPACE, JOURNEY TO THE SEVENTH PLANET, HAND OF DEATH, WOMEN OF THE PREHISTORIC PLANET, NIGHT FRIGHT, ZONTAR: THE THING FROM VENUS, CURSE OF THE SWAMP CREATURE, KING KONG [1976], NIGHTBREED, FEAR [1990]) flies his prop plane into Desert Rock, Arizona and doesn't even have time to get to his office before he gets a phone call from the Sheriff. They found this grossly mishapen body in the desert and they need the doc to come figure out what's going on.
Dr. Hastings does and is surprised by what he sees, which is a corpse with an advanced stage of acromegaly. But despite the deformity, they also have his fingerprints. The body belongs to Eric Jacobs, who Hastings saw only a few days before in healthy condition. Agromegaly this advanced takes years, not days.
Eric's employer, Professor Gerald Deemer (Leo G. Carroll: A CHRISTMAS CAROL [1938], CITY IN DARKNESS, CHARLIE CHAN'S MURDER CRUISE, SUSPICION, SPELLBOUND, STRANGERS ON A TRAIN, NORTH BY NORTHWEST, THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. [TV], THE GIRL FROM U.N.C.L.E. [TV]) is called in and he confirms that Eric died of acromegaly, which Hastings finds impossible, but local Sheriff Jack Andrews (Nestor Pavia: FEAR [1946], MIGHTY JOE YOUNG [1949], KILLER APE, CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON, THE MOLE PEOPLE, THE MADMEN OF MANDORAS, LET'S KILL UNCLE, THE SPIRIT IS WILLING) takes Deemer's side if, for no other reason, than to rub Hastings nose in it.
Heh! You young people and your education!
Despite his strenuous doubts, Hastings is courteous and polite, but he wants to perform an autopsy. As Eric's only living friend and associate in the area, Professor Deemer refuses and as far as the Sheriff is concerned, that's that.
Deemer returns to his lab where he keeps cages of giant bunnies, guinea pig, and a huge tarantula. Since the movie poster made it clear that this movie, called TARANTULA, features a giant tarantula, that varmint is gonna escape somehow.
Sure enough, Deemer's other assistant, Paul Lund, suddenly appears, his face and body also messed up, and in a short battle the much older Professor Deemer is knocked unconscious. That's when Lund injects Deemer with his own medicine and goes on a rampage in the lab. The result of which is one dead Lund and an escaped tarantula about the size of a large dog.
TRIVIA I know Leo G. Carroll, was over a barrel when TARANTULA! took to the hills. Starting at the age of 32 until the year he died, Eddie Parker played nearly 800 roles as actor and stunt man, and all of them uncredited! Standouts include THE MYSTERIOUS DOCTOR SATAN, WEREWOLF OF LONDON, FLASH GORDON (1936), THE MONSTER AND THE APE, HORROR ISLAND, THE GHOST OF FRANKENSTEIN, THE MUMMY'S TOMB, FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLFMAN, THE BATMAN (1943), THE PHANTOM SPEAKS, MIGHTY JOE YOUNG, THE STRANGE DOOR, REAR WINDOW, 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA, CURSE OF THE UNDEAD, MONSTER ON CAMPUS. He also played in the following movies, none of which were porn. |
When Deemer comes to, his lab is on fire and he has no idea he's been injected with his experimental "nutrient", which we now realize made a mess of Eric and Paul (both played by Eddie Parker). Saving what he can of his research, Deemer puts out the fire and secretly buries Paul's body.
Fortunately for Professor Deemer, Eric Jacobs advertised for another assistant (before he died, yes. Not after. It's not that kind of Horror movie) and Dr. Stephanie Clayton (Mara Corday: THE GIANT CLAW, THE BLACK SCORPION) arrives on the bus the next day. She winds up trying to use the phone at the business plaza / hotel where Dr. Matt Hastings rents his office, the two meet, and when Matt discovers that Dr. Clayton is Professor Deemer's new assistant, it gives him an excuse to give her a ride and check her out the professor's place.
When Deemer sees Matt, he's at first upset, but soon calms down and explains his version of events. The destruction of his lab was a mere accident and all of his lab experiments burned up in the fire. He even goes so far as to allow Dr. Hastings to do an autopsy on the still unburied body of Eric Jacobs (who has to be getting smelly at this point, since the town is too small to have its own morgue).
Meanwhile, ranch livestock in the area are almost disappearing at an alarming rate. I say almost because their bloody skeletons are left behind. Also left behind are puddles of some white substance that Dr. Hastings can't figure out.
So under the guiding hand of original writer and director, Jack Arnold (IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE, CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON, REVENGE OF THE CREATURE, THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN, THE SPACE CHILDREN) we've got ourselves a Big Horror movie!
We've also got ourselves a,
!!!SCIENCE MOMENT!!!:
We've addressed the square cube law and how it would apply to tiny varmints growing to whale size before.
But there's a whole lot more than just the square cube law and square root law going on here.
Check out my Big Horror Science Moment!
As cool as it is to watch stop motion animation, and Ray Harryhausen was a master, it only goes so far in suspending disbelief. Director Ishiro Honda understood that which is why he wanted his GOJIRA to be a man in as realistic a rubber suit as they could make. He had the budget to have Tokyo rebuilt to small scale to make a man appear giant.
TARANTULA! didn't have that budget. However, it DID have a stellar team of special effects artists, featuring the combined talents of Eddie Case (THE MUMMY'S CURSE, ABBOT AND COSTELLO MEET THE MUMMY, THE DEADLY MANTIS),
Wah Chang (KRONOS, THE BLACK SCORPION, MONSTER FROM GREEN HELL, DINOSAURUS!, JOURNEY TO THE SEVENTH PLANET, STAR TREK [TV], PLANET OF THE APES [1968], THE POWER),
Clifford Stine (KING KONG, SON OF KONG, IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE, ABBOT AND COSTELLO MEET THE MUMMY, THIS ISLAND EARTH, THE MOLE PEOPLE, THE CREATURE WALKS AMONG US, FRANCIS IN THE HAUNTED HOUSE, THE DEADLY MANTIS, THE LAND UNKNOWN, MAN OF A THOUSAND FACES, THE MONOLITH MONSTERS, THE THING THAT COULDN'T DIE, STEP DOWN TO TERROR, MONSTER ON CAMPUS, THE CREEPING TERROR) and
David S. Horsely (THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN, THE INVISIBLE MAN RETURNS, THE INVISIBLE WOMAN, INVISIBLE AGENT, ABBOT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN, BUD ABBOT AND LOU COSTELLO MEET THE KILLER BORIS KARLOFF, ABBOT AND COSTELLO MEET DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE, THIS ISLAND EARTH).
So the creature we get with TARANTULA! is an actual living tarantula. Creating the best techniques they could come up with in 1954, shots of a tarantula are walking around, not with simple still photos in the background, but over shots of actual rocks, rocky outcrops, houses, and high tension wires. When the tarantula is in daylight, it casts a shadow on the ground and that shadow basically, basically, conforms to the terrain beneath it.
Compared to the herky-jerky stop motion and poor puppet movies of its era, the effect must have been convincing and astounding, making TARANTULA! the blockbuster hit it became. Nearly 70 years later, of course, the effect has aged, no longer quite suspending disbelief, but its only in the last 20 or so years that cgi has surpassed it.
John Agar is solid as always. Whether he was Hero, Villain, or coward, John never mocked the material no matter how preposterous it was, and John made his living off of studio shit-kickers and preposterous scifi movies.
Mara Corday played off of John and kept the realism of people being attacked by an unbelievable giant spider going.
Actor Ross Elliot (THE BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS, THE INDESTRUCTABLE MAN, THE CRAWLING HAND) played wise-cracking reporter, Joe Burch, who doesn't buy the story of a giant spider skedaddling around the desert any more than the rest of us would.
Raymond Bailey (BLACK FRIDAY [1940], MYSTERY OF MARIE ROGET, THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN, VERTIGO, THE SPACE CHILDREN) plays exposition doctor Townsend.
Leo G. Carroll played serious though befuddled character and everyone else fills their role of hokey small town folks nicely.
Which makes TARANTULA! still entertaining after all this time.
Three Shriek Girls!
This review copyright 2022 E.C.McMullen Jr.
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