Tarantula

This one has a special place in my memories ! I grew up in New Mexico near the desert, and whenever they showed this one on the late night science fiction Saturday night TV thriller show, I was afraid to walk to school and back on Monday! As I have grown up over the last forty years, I have come to appreciate it as a well crafted science fiction near classic! Jack Arnold directed many good sci-fi movies in the 1950's, but there is no doubt this was the creepiest! Next to the superior "THEM", released the year before (at a different studio), this UNIVERSAL STUDIOS chiller was , for my money, the second best of the giant bug movies of that decade! You will never look at the desert the same way again. Actress MARA CORDAY impressed me so much in this one, that I named one of my daughters after her! JOHN AGAR gave a great performance, and this one led to him doing a string of more horror and sci-fi movies for the next decade or two! It helped that they used a real Tarantula (named TOMORROW), instead of a fake one, and Clifford Stine's special effects will convince you that spider is really 100 feet tall! Another plus is Henry Mancini wrote some of the music score! So, I recommend this one to all those that hate creepy crawlers of any kind! Get out the can of RAID! But, you had better make it a really big can !!!

Signed, Baron Beast

Man, with as many creature features like this that I've seen, I gotta say it's one of my favorites. I keep tarantulas as a hobby, and I've seen first hand how ferocious and awful they can be to their prey. The story is a great concept too, science being used for the good of mankind going awry when the movie makes its plot twist. The Spider is indestructible and it plays on the natural fears of mankind. The little clues it leaves behind, such as a puddle of venom in one scene, leads up to the main story perfectly. It leaves scientists in the fill scratching their heads, to make you feel as if it's truly happening. If you're a big fan of Retro science fiction, this film is a must see for you!

This is a top-of-the-line Sci-Fi thriller from the studio that did 'em best in the 1950s - Universal-International. Produced by William Alland (who also produced "Creature From the Black Lagoon" and "It Came From Outer Space", and directed by Jack Arnold (who directed those films) it has an intelligent script and good acting all the way around. Arnold does a great job of building suspense as he cleverly keeps the titular monster mostly off-screen for the first 2/3 of the film until it's simply too big to hide. And then --- watch out, folks! As in many another sci-fi story, the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and if there's a villain of the piece, it's the Nuclear Age - the spider of the title is merely doing it's natural thing: searching for food. Except that, thanks to Leo G. Carroll's well-meaning experiments (to increase the world's supply of food), this is one BIG spider with an equally BIG appetite! Universal's special effects department just about out-did themselves here - the matte work is almost flawless (check out Leo G. Carroll's house after the spider's visit), and the make-up department did excellent work as well. This is one of the best of it's kind, and great fun on a rainy Saturday afternoon.

This is one of those films which starts off with a bang, slows down with a big lull in the middle section, and then finishes strong.

Kudos to the special-effects people to make the giant tarantula scenes look pretty good, even by today's standards some 50 years after this was made. Many times, the huge spider looks real while it's crawling down the road. I would like to have seen one or two more scenes of it in that middle section which would have kept viewers on edge throughout the film. Instead, it got a bit talky in spots.

Anyway, it still entertained and it was fun for me to see Leo G. Carroll, a guy I saw each week growing up watching "Topper" on television. Carroll played, by far, the most interesting character in this movie.

The acting was good in here, too, once again above '50s sci-fi standards. It was one of the better entries in the recently-released Sci-Fi Ultimate DVD set, offered at Best Buy. A pretty good transfer, too.

I watched this movie a hundred times while growing up and I've seen it at least a hundred more times as an adult! Great story. To me it's the greatest big bug movie ever made. Interesting side story of the effects of the nutrient on humans, also. I fell in love with Mara Corday after the first time I saw this as a young child and I still think she was one of the great beauties of the screen. I think the main reason the film holds up today is the special effects are still quite impressive and there is nothing that todays audience would find hokey or cheesy. The only thing that "Bugs" me is the sound effect of the tarantula growling as it attacks. But thats just nit-picking. Its also fun spotting a young Clint Eastwood. Great sci-fi and great entertainment! A film viewing must!