“It’s
the desert.It gives people wonderful
ideas.â€John Agar, as town doctor Matt
Hastings in Desert Rock, AZ, makes this remark after returning from delivering
twin babies at the home of one of his patients.Another one of those wonderful ideas results in a 100-foot tall spider
that terrorizes the small community.
Scream
Factory, the horror arm of Shout Factory, has released the 1955 Universal
science fiction classic Tarantula on Blu-ray for the first time.Universal, the leading producer of monster
classics such as Dracula and Frankenstein, turned to atomic age terror during
the 1950s with a multitude of creatures and humans adversely affected by radiation.Along with Warner Bros’ Them, Tarantula was
one of the best giant bug features of this era.While not directly a result of atomic bomb testing, the spider running
loose in Desert Rock was no less horrifying.What made this movie work, aside from strong direction and a good
script, was the fact that just about everyone could relate to a fear of normal,
everyday spiders.A giant arachnid the
size of a house might be too much for many audience members to endure.
Leo
G. Carroll, playing Dr. Gerald Deemer, has the best of intentions when attempting
to increase the world’s food supply by developing growth hormones.He has hopes of raising crops and cattle in a
matter of days rather than months.After
his assistant is found dead in the desert, Dr. Hastings determines the cause of
death as a rare disease that normally takes years to advance.This affliction turns out to be a side effect
of the growth formula.After a fire at
Dr. Deemer’s lab allows a tarantula injected with the experimental serum to
escape, people and livestock start turning up dead with only their skeletons
remaining.Dr. Hastings and Deemer’s
pretty new assistant Stevie, played by Mara Corday, soon determine that a
humongous spider is the cause and that everyone in town is in danger.
Leo
G. Carroll was well known for his portrayal of Topper in the American sitcom,
but the kids from my era identified him as Mr. Waverly, the head of the secret
spy organization U.N.C.L.E. in the popular NBC series The Man from U.N.C.L.E. with
Robert Vaughn and David McCallum.Carroll even gets a mention in the Science Fiction Double Feature song
from The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
Director
Jack Arnold, Universal’s go-to director for science fiction, keeps the tension
high by not giving the audience many glimpses of the tarantula until the latter
part of the film. The first half is more
of police procedural as clues are gathered as to the cause of all the
killings.When the spider finally
appears, there are no miniatures, puppets or stop motion models.Special effects technician Clifford Stein
makes use of a real spider, matte photography and forced perspective to create
the monster.While a couple of errors
with the matte effects are visible, this technique is quite effective.A mechanical claw is used in two scenes
featuring close-up attacks and a large model spider was used for the final
scenes.
Nestor
Paiva, Ross Elliott and Raymond Bailey round out a serviceable cast and, of
course, there is the well-documented casting of Clint Eastwood as a jet pilot
doing battle with the monster spider at the conclusion. Mara Corday later on appeared in several of
Eastwood’s movies including as the diner waitress who pours too much sugar into
Detective Callahan’s coffee in Sudden Impact, setting up the famous “Make my
day†scene.
As
a youngster growing up in the pre-VCR era, I was a collector of 8mm editions of
favorite films for viewing in our basement on a Bell & Howell home movie
projector.These condensed versions of
popular titles managed to summarize the entire story in about 12 minutes making
sure to include all of the action sequences.Castle Films provided home versions of the Universal catalog, which
included the popular monster and horror titles.Two of my favorite purchases were Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein
and Tarantula.My friends and I would
watch these movies over and over until we knew every detail of every scene.
Scream
Factory’s edition of Tarantula is quite an upgrade from the Super 8 edition I
bought in the early 70s.While filmed in
full screen 35mm, it was projected in theaters in a masked wide screen
format.In watching the DVD version in
1.33 it is easy to see the empty space above the actors’ heads in nearly every
shot.On the new Blu-ray edition
Tarantula is presented in anamorphic 1.85 allowing the action to look more
condensed and focused.The tarantula
neatly fills the wide screen in several scenes and appears even more
menacing.The sound is 1.0 mono and
dialogue is clear at all times.A
commentary track provided by David Schechter is at both humorous and
informative as it details both pre-production stories and the 12-day shooting
schedule.Schechter includes anecdotes
concerning Jack Arnold and his battles with screenwriter Robert Fresco.Arnold had already created It Came from Outer
Space and would go on to direct The Incredible Shrinking Man, which also made
use of a hostile tarantula.
The
commentary track also provides an interesting story of the music that was used
in Tarantula.It was not a specific
score but rather a collection of various cues by contract composers including a
young Henry Mancini.There is no
composer listed onscreen except for a supervision credit for Joseph Gershenson,
head of the music department at Universal.Another funny bit is Schechter’s remarks about a scene where Dr.
Hastings tastes the spider’s venom.The
other extra on this disc is the original trailer presented in 1.33 so it is
easy to compare the framing to the widescreen feature.
1989’s
Back to the Future III has many Clint Eastwood references and Tarantula, one of
his early efforts, is included.When Doc
Brown is at the drive-in preparing to send Marty McFly back to 1885, a poster
for Tarantula is clearly visible in the background of several shots.
Scream
Factory gives us a solid edition of this science fiction classic with an excellent
transfer, the original widescreen version and an enjoyable commentary
track.It is well worth adding to your
collection and I hope that Shout will release other titles from Universal’s
monster and sci-fi back catalog.