BY TIM MCGLYNN
“It’s
the desert. It gives people wonderful
ideas.†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.