Tarantula (film)
Encyclopedia
Tarantula is a 1955 science fiction film
Science fiction film
Science fiction film is a film genre that uses science fiction: speculative, science-based depictions of phenomena that are not necessarily accepted by mainstream science, such as extraterrestrial life forms, alien worlds, extrasensory perception, and time travel, often along with futuristic...

 directed by Jack Arnold, and starring Leo G. Carroll
Leo G. Carroll
Leo Gratten Carroll was an English-born actor. He was best known for his roles in several Hitchcock films and The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and Topper.-Early life:...

, John Agar
John Agar
John George Agar was an American actor. He starred alongside John Wayne in the films Sands of Iwo Jima, Fort Apache and She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, but was later relegated to B movies, such as Tarantula, The Mole People, The Brain from Planet Arous, Flesh and the Spur, and Hand of Death...

, and Mara Corday
Mara Corday
Mara Corday is a showgirl, model, actress, Playboy Playmate and a 1950s cult figure....

. Among other things, the film is notable for the appearance of a 25-year-old Clint Eastwood
Clint Eastwood
Clinton "Clint" Eastwood, Jr. is an American film actor, director, producer, composer and politician. Eastwood first came to prominence as a supporting cast member in the TV series Rawhide...

 in an uncredited role as a jet pilot at the end of the film.

Plot summary

The plot concerns a biological researcher, Professor Gerald Deemer, who is trying to prevent the food shortages which will result from the world's expanding population. With the help of atomic science, he invents a special nutrient on which animals can live exclusively, but which causes them to grow to many times their normal size. In his laboratory, he houses several oversized rodents and, inexplicably, a Mexican red rumped tarantula
Brachypelma vagans
Brachypelma vagans is a species of tarantula known commonly as the Mexican red rump or Mexican black velvet. It ranges predominantly in Mexico, but can be found as far south as Belize, El Salvador, Guatemala and Florida. They are terrestrial, burrowing spiders. The reason for the name red rump is...

.

When his researchers try the nutrient, they develop runaway acromegaly
Acromegaly
Acromegaly is a syndrome that results when the anterior pituitary gland produces excess growth hormone after epiphyseal plate closure at puberty...

. One of them is driven mad, half destroys the lab (freeing the animals), and attacks Deemer, injecting him with the solution. The tarantula is one of the creatures freed. As a result, Deemer gradually becomes more and more deformed while the now-gigantic tarantula ravages the countryside. A sympathetic doctor, Matt Hastings, and Deemer's female assistant, Stephanie Clayton, investigate the mystery of the clean-picked animal bones and eight-foot pools of arachnid venom, which the spider leaves behind: it also wrecks the Deemer lab. The spider is eventually destroyed, after several failed attempts, by a napalm
Napalm
Napalm is a thickening/gelling agent generally mixed with gasoline or a similar fuel for use in an incendiary device, primarily as an anti-personnel weapon...

 attack launched from a jet fighter squadron.

The film's poster, featuring a spider with two eyes instead of the normal eight, and carrying a woman in its fangs, does not represent any actual scene in the film.

Cast

  • Leo G. Carroll
    Leo G. Carroll
    Leo Gratten Carroll was an English-born actor. He was best known for his roles in several Hitchcock films and The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and Topper.-Early life:...

     as Prof. Gerald Deemer
  • John Agar
    John Agar
    John George Agar was an American actor. He starred alongside John Wayne in the films Sands of Iwo Jima, Fort Apache and She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, but was later relegated to B movies, such as Tarantula, The Mole People, The Brain from Planet Arous, Flesh and the Spur, and Hand of Death...

     as Dr. Matt Hastings
  • Mara Corday
    Mara Corday
    Mara Corday is a showgirl, model, actress, Playboy Playmate and a 1950s cult figure....

     as Stephanie Clayton
  • Nestor Paiva
    Nestor Paiva
    Nestor Paiva was an American actor of Portuguese descent who portrayed the innkeeper on Walt Disney's live-action television series Zorro by ABC and its feature film The Sign of Zorro which was shot in Burbank's Walt Disney Studios.-Career:Nestor appeared in motion pictures and television shows...

     as Sheriff Jack Andrews
  • Ross Elliott
    Ross Elliott
    Ross Elliott was an American television and film character actor. He began his acting career with Orson Welles in Mercury Theatre, where he performed in Welles' famed radio program The War of the Worlds....

     as Joe Burch
  • Edwin Rand as Lt. John Nolan
  • Raymond Bailey
    Raymond Bailey
    Raymond Thomas Bailey was an American actor on the Broadway stage, movies, and television. He is best known for his role as wealthy banker, Milburn Drysdale, in the television series The Beverly Hillbillies....

     as Townsend
  • Hank Patterson
    Hank Patterson
    Hank Patterson was an American actor and musician. He is most known for playing stableman Hank Miller on Gunsmoke and Fred Ziffel on Petticoat Junction and Green Acres....

     as Josh
  • Bert Holland as Barney Russell
  • Steve Darrell as Andy Andersen
  • Clint Eastwood
    Clint Eastwood
    Clinton "Clint" Eastwood, Jr. is an American film actor, director, producer, composer and politician. Eastwood first came to prominence as a supporting cast member in the TV series Rawhide...

     as Jet Squadron Leader (uncredited)

Production

The special effects for both the giant animals and the unfortunate scientist's deformity are fairly advanced for the time, with real animals (including a rabbit and a guinea pig in Professor Deemer's lab) being used to represent the giant creatures. A real spider was also used for shots where the whole monster was shown, with models reserved for close-ups (and its skyscraper-sized version), resulting in a rather more convincing monster than the giant ants in the earlier big-bug film Them!
Them! (1954 film)
Them! is a 1954 American black and white science fiction film about man's encounter with a nest of gigantic irradiated ants. It is based on an original story treatment by George Worthing Yates. It was developed into a screenplay by Ted Sherdeman and Russell Hughes for Warner Bros. Pictures Inc.,...

(1954).

The movie was filmed in and around the rock formations of "Dead Man's Point" in Lucerne Valley California, a frequently used movie location for many early western films. It takes place in the fictional town of Desert Rock, Arizona.

Like Them!, Tarantula makes atmospheric use of its desert locations; and although a radioactive isotope does make an appearance, it differs from most big-bug films in having the mutation caused by the peaceful research of a well-intentioned scientist rather than nuclear weapons and/or a mad genius. Director Jack Arnold was to use matte
Matte (filmmaking)
Mattes are used in photography and special effects filmmaking to combine two or more image elements into a single, final image. Usually, mattes are used to combine a foreground image with a background image . In this case, the matte is the background painting...

 effects again two years later to show miniaturisation rather than gigantism in The Incredible Shrinking Man
The Incredible Shrinking Man
The Incredible Shrinking Man is a 1957 science fiction film directed by Jack Arnold and adapted for the screen by Richard Matheson from his novel The Shrinking Man ....

, which also featured an encounter with a spider.

External links

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