Tarantula

The archetypal '50s big bug movie, Tarantula sees a rapidly growing spider—the result of an experiment involving nutrients and radioactive isotopes—escaping from a laboratory to crawl around the countryside devouring cattle and the occasional rancher. Eventually, the eight-legged horror reaches such massive proportions that the air-force is called in to prevent it from trashing the town of Desert Rock.

John Agar plays town doctor Matt Hastings, the first to suspect that it is an over-sized arachnid that is causing the trouble; Mara Corday is Hastings' love interest, beautiful lab assistant Stephanie 'Steve' Clayton; Leo G. Carroll is over a barrel as Professor Gerald Deemer, who winds up hideously disfigured by his own experiment; and Clint Eastwood saves the day as a plucky U.S. fighter pilot, his face mostly hidden behind a breathing mask, although his squint is unmistakable.

Matters get very silly at times, especially with the humongous, hairy spider somehow managing to wander around the desert unseen (at one point, it peers into Mara's bedroom, the woman blissfully unaware of the huge eyes and mandibles at her window), but the hokey nature of the plot only adds to the overall enjoyment. Excellent special effects (for the day) and solid performances also go to qualify Tarantula as a must-see sci-fi/horror classic.

I enjoyed this film, which was one of the best of the "giant, mutated one-thing-or-another" movies. Two of my favorites of the 1950 B-movies, John Agar and Nestor Paiva starred with Mara Corday(who is very beautiful). Hank Patterson was great as Josh the hotel clerk, who provided comic relief. Clint Eastwood has a small part at the end of the film as the fighter squadron leader. The effects by Clifford Stine are classic and Jack Arnold again proves his worth as director(before moving on to the "Brady Bunch" in the 1960s). Leo Carroll is superb as Professor Deemer, who develops a formula for a growth serum. It is this serum(with uses an atomic isotope)that produces rapid growth in all the lab animals,including the Tarantula. The acting is very good, the movie has a nice pace and the effects for their time are top-notch. This is one 1950s sci-fi film to see!

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 the story of a giant spider, told with the craft so often seen in older movies.

We have the "mad" scientist, who is quite a three dimensional character, who causes gigantic mutations in animals. A fire destroys all but one, a tarantula that grows to immense size.

People are prey to this arachnid. There are many scary scenes. Two men camping out are assailed, and there is the famous scene with the jeep. When the military fail to stop the spider, the commander leaves two men behind in a jeep which won't start. Apparently, it was serviced by a Louisville mechanic.

Clint Eastwood makes an appearance at the end, as a pilot.

But Agar, Carroll, and a stunningly beautiful Corday are the stars of this show.

There are thrills, logical sequences of events, and identifiable characters which makes this greatly entertaining. It is action packed, mixed in with good drama.

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.