Tarantula! (

1955

) ½

When it comes to crafting sympathetic freaks, monsters and aliens, there were few filmmakers in 1950s Hollywood who could top Jake Arnold. Just look at The Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954), whose titular monster inspires such adoration from the audience that a few decades down the road they were willing to accept it as the lead in the tragic romance (The Shape of Water (2017)). This is a pattern that spans across all of Arnold's better-known sci-fi from the period. In It Came from Outer Space (1953), the alien visitors are benevolent and hapless, and only wish to avoid being found out by the earthlings for long enough to fix their ship. In The Space Children (1958), the gelatinous brain monster is a savior that has come to earth to save mankind from its own destructive tendencies. In The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957), the hero's freakishness is his plight, as he continues to diminish in stature until he's stuck living in a dollhouse and fighting spiders with a sewing needle. However, today's film neutralizes Arnold's greatest asset. How the hell do you make a knock-off of Them! (1954) and have the monsters feel sympathetic? Giant bugs do not make sympathetic monsters, as the motivations of such a creature are too alien for normal human beings to wrap their minds around. What's more, if the monster is at all realistic looking, then it will disgust the viewer to such an extent that they will be reflexively reaching for a rolled-up newspaper. Hell, even the way that bugs move around will put off the audience, as their movements have a doll-like mechanical quality to them that makes them seem more like grotesque wind-up toys than living creatures. Unless you are making a movie exclusively for E.O. Wilson, these are going to be some serious hurdles to clear. All this is not to say that a sympathetic giant bug movie is impossible to make, after all Mothra (1964) exists, only that Tarantula fails to play to Arnold's strengths. Indeed, Arnold makes no attempt whatsoever to make us feel for the plight of giant bug, opting instead to focus on the mad scientists who created it. But even this effort feels halfhearted, more the work of a contractual obligation than an artistic vision. Tarantula has little of the charm that defined the rest of Arnold's sci-fi/horror oeuvre, leaving only the filmmaker's technical competence.

The film opens with a mystery: We see a deformed figure stumbling through the desert, dressed in nothing besides a set pajamas and a pair of dress shoes. He collapses into the sand and the title drops. Some of the mystery is cleared up in short order, we quickly learn that the man is Eric Jacobs, a biological researcher who was holed up in the desert with his colleague Professor Deemer working on some undisclosed experiment. As for the man's apparent deformity, the story that is quickly answered by the Doctor Matt Hastings, who is called in by the local sheriff Jack Andrews, to examine the body. It appears that Jacobs was suffering from Acromegaly, a real-life hormonal disorder that really does cause distortions of the face and hands not unlike what we see onscreen. The only problem is, Acromegaly normally takes years to manifest, and Jacobs seems to have developed it sometime in the last month. Hastings' professional curiosity is aroused by the situation, as well as his professional vanity when Professor Deemer tells the young doctor that despite all appearances Jacobs really did die from the disorder.

Now, when a couple of world-class researchers set up a laboratory in the middle of a vast wasteland, you can be sure they're on just working on their tans. In the case of Deemer and Jacobs, they were working on a radioactive super-nutrient that causes anything they feed it to grow at supernatural speeds. When we get to peek inside Deemer's lab we see guinea pigs the size of capybaras, massive rabbits, and most disconcerting: A spider the size of a mountain lion. We know that the material they're using as a nutrient is dangerous because Deemer manipulates it inside a lead-lined box using a pair of gloves. Apparently, he forgot how dangerous it was though because as soon as he's loaded it into a syringe he's squirting away the excess fluid all over his lab! Deemer doesn't get far in his experiments before he's attacked by another deformed figure, this one a man named Paul Lund who previously worked as his lab assistant. As it turns out both Paul and Erik stupidly injected themselves with the radioactive nutrient, despite the fact that they knew it occasionally killed their animal test subjects. As a consequence, they both quickly developed symptoms, not unlike Acromegaly except they manifested much faster. For some reason, Paul blames Deemer for the whole mess, despite the fact that Deemer told the two idiots he was working with that the nutrient wasn't ready for human consumption. Undeterred, Paul knocks Deemer out cold, sets fire to his laboratory, and injects the old man with the radioactive serum. It looks like this is Paul's last gasp at life because shortly afterwards he dies from the same symptoms as Jacobs. When Deemer comes to, he calmly brushes himself off, puts out the fire and buries Paul's body (I wish that I could be half as cool under pressure as this one loony old man). With the lab in ruins, Deemer assumes that he's lost all progress on his experiments and that all the various test animals are now just so much ash and cinder. Unbeknownst to him though, the gargantuan spider he was raising escaped the conflagration and made its way into the desert.

Deemer probably only has a week to go before he dies like Jacobs and Paul, but he doesn't waste any time getting his lab back up and running. Talk about work ethic! To be fair, he has a bit of help from Stephanie Clayton, a graduate student who was hired by Jacobs to help with the experiments. Since no 1950s monster movie is complete without an obligatory romantic subplot, Matt Hastings immediately starts to court her. This romance is neither as blasé nor as tedious as such affairs normally are, which is damningly faint praise if I've ever heard it. Maybe because, Tarantula only has a brief runtime to play with, and maybe because wherever the couple goes the giant bug is usually lurking somewhere in the background like a deranged stalker. Seriously, these two must be less perceptive than Helen Keller, the way they always manage to overlook the two-story-tall bug no more than 100 yards away from them.

Now that the creature isn't getting regular injections of the radioactive nutrient it has to eat something. So, even if the principal cast can't see it, they can see the remains of the cattle that the tarantula devours. This being a sleepy Western town in the middle of nowhere, the sheriff's department is called in to investigate the disappearance of a bunch of cows, and if the sheriff is stuck poking around cow-pies and tumbleweeds, he's going to drag Matt Hastings along for the ride. Hastings discovers a pool of some strange goo around the remains of a cow and takes it back to his lab to be analyzed. When it turns out to be insectoid in origin, Hastings is left scratching his head as to what the hell is going on. He decides to take a sample off to a specialist at a nearby university in hopes of learning more. The professor there informs him that he has a vial full of tarantula venom and openly wonders where Hastings managed to get such a large sample. The professor responds with horror when Hastings tells him that he found pools of this stuff large enough to lose a cow in. Following the playbook laid out by Them! (1954), he quickly shows the doctor some stock footage of tarantulas and invites him to imagine the damage that could be wrought by a giant specimen.

On a technical level, Tarantula is a marvel. Like Bert I. Gordon, Jake Arnold favors the use of live footage of the bugs layered over the rest of the film in such a way as to make the bugs appear massive. Unlike Mr. B.I.G. though, Arnold actually has the budget to make this work without looking ridiculous. The tarantula blends seamlessly into the desert landscape, at times ever trailing after the principal characters. There are several well-done sequences where the bug gives every impression of actually interacting with its human co-stars in a way that is as impressive as it is horrifying. Indeed, the bug is so well done it's a shame that it's so inconsequential to the plot, barely turning up at all in the film until the very end. I understand that Arnold has more sympathy for the human mad scientists who accidentally unleashed the bug, but the monster is so technically impressive that it seems a shame to waste it in a mere supporting role. He should have taken a lesson from King Kong (1933) and let the monster have the starring role.

Focusing on the scientists also makes it painfully obvious that the actions of Erik Jacobs and his assistant Paul Lund make absolutely no sense. Since this drives the rest of the plot, it is an especially galling oversight. Now, mad scientists idiotically using themselves as the human trial for their experiments are common enough in sci-fi from this era. Just look at The Fly (1958), Fiend Without a Face (1958), and Donovan's Brain (1953), for examples of this sloppy scientific methodology. The real problem is that even if the radioactive serum worked exactly as it was supposed to they would still have problems. Nobody wants to grow to be 100 feet tall; the logistical hurdles alone are more than enough to dissuade. Moreover, they don't even need to conduct human trials to accomplish their stated goal. Jacobs, Lund and Deemer and trying to prevent a global famine brought about by overpopulation (though now their numbers for what the world's population will be in 2000 seem laughably low) which is a noble cause in-and-of-itself. But if that is really their goal, then why don't they just inject the serum into cows and pigs and reap a bumper crop of meat. It's safer, easier, and doesn't require redesigning every building to accommodate a person the size of King Kong. The only reason I can see for Jacobs and Lund injecting themselves with the nutrient is if they're real goal is to get accepted into the NBA.

Unlike a lot of its contemporaries, Tarantula feels like it takes place in a real place, not just some generic every-town USA. Part of it is all the southwestern scenery looming in the background, long expanses of desert, lonely roads stretching off into the distances, and the occasional desolate pile of rocks looming a ways off. But the film also captures the feel of a sleepy South Western town in smaller ways. The extras clad in cowboy hats and modern suits are a nice touch, as is the big iron proudly displayed on the sheriff's hip. It goes some way to setting Tarantula apart from its competitors that either span the nation like Them! (1954) or take place in more universal/generic settings like Beginning of the End (1957). It also reminds the audience subtly of the atomic tests that took place in the real world. Indeed, the whole set up of a group of scientists operating a clandestine research program recalls the Manhattan Project, even though unlike Them! (1954) the plot of Tarantula has nothing to do with the atomic tests of the previous decade.