Following the success of Creature from the Black Lagoon and Revenge of the Creature, Jack Arnold issued Tarantula, a film which, much like his previous films, retains a Universal Monster sensibility yet, in creating a cautionary tale involving scientifically-created gargantuan animals, not only continued to forge ahead into the new era of horror, but also posited, half a century before its time, a concern for genetically-altered food.
Twenty miles outside of Desert Rock, Arizona, Gerald Deemer (Leo Carroll) is conducting, to a high degree of success, experiments upon animals using synthetic chemicals in an attempt to cure impending world hunger. However, his two assistants, Paul Lund and Eric Jacobs (both played by Eddie Parker) inject themselves with the serum to fatal ends (by way of rapidly-developing Acromegalia), but not before the former enacts his revenge by infusing Deemer with the chemical. During the debacle, one of Deemer’s test subjects, a tarantula already well beyond its natural growth, escapes.
Aside from Arnold’s titular monster representing, much like the notorious slasher would thirty years later, the consequences of society’s ills before they have an opportunity to mature, the director retains the fondness he expressed in his Creature features by bringing back the Golden Age mad scientist. However, in what would become the tradition of the time, Arnold posits Deemer as a doctor of benevolent intent as the director nonetheless thoroughly and convincingly conveys a symbolic and literal apprehension for the rapidly-expanding field of science.
Not only does the Arnold successfully evoke fear in his viewer, he does so by eschewing the predicable plot involving men-turned-into-monsters by presenting his audience with a logical extension of his premise: hostile, overgrown livestock, the consequence of–not the prototypical radiation as was standard for the period–but rather well-meaning science gone awry. Instead of didactically granting his audience the (inadvertently comical) enraged cow, chicken, or pig, he shifts his ethical and aesthetic purpose to a more anxiety-inducing antagonist: a giant tarantula. Yet the film’s message nonetheless retains its horrific integrity as we witness the effects of synthetic chemicals intended for our food as Jacobs and Lund appear in the last stages of Acromegalia before Deemer slowly transforms before our eyes, the figure coming to resemble a latter-day Quasimoto by the climax of the feature. Such malformations are succinctly symbolic of what forward thinkers of the day anticipated artificial ingredients might result in long before it was revealed that McDonald’s was not only bad for your health as America’s obese (i.e. vastly overgrown), cancer-laden (i.e. abnormal) culture readily attests, but also creates mental and emotional instability in its consumer.
Amid all of the mayhem, Arnold cleverly fleshes out his production by creating likeable, albeit somewhat trite by modern standards, characters. For example, Deemer’s new assistant, Stephanie Clayton (Mara Corday), or “Steve” by her friends, is second only to the figure of a journalist named Joe Burch (Ross Elliott), who quips that the monster houses “insect venom in the large economy size” in a fittingly Mencken-esque manner by way of Gene Kelly’s portrayal of the reporter in Stanley Kramer’s Inherit the Wind (which would premier five years later).
However, even though Clint Eastwood appears during the film’s climax and, true to his yet-to-be-established character, saves yet another day, a false sense of ominous foreshadowing is lent during a scene involving a documentary upon the tarantula (which includes a segment on the arachnid’s natural enemies) before the last, vastly underlit, third of the feature unfolds. Also, and interestingly enough, the overgrown spider is anthropomorphized with two eyes instead of the anatomically, and more fear-inducing, eight.
Now more timely than ever, Jack Arnold’s implicit plea for organics stands as one of the more competent enormous insect films of the period. While avoiding the trademark “Us verses Them” motif popular during the time, the director nonetheless presents his audience with a substantive premise which still retains its power to frighten.
-Egregious Gurnow
- Interview with J.R. Bookwalter - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Andrew J. Rausch - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Rick Popko and Dan West - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Director Stevan Mena (Malevolence) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Screenwriter Jeffery Reddick (Day of the Dead 2007) - January 22, 2015
- Teleconference interview with Mick Garris (Masters of Horror) - January 22, 2015
- A Day at the Morgue with Corri English (Unrest) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Writer/Director Nacho Cerda (The Abandoned, Aftermath) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actress Thora Birch (Dark Corners, The Hole, American Beauty) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actor Jason Behr, Plus Skinwalkers Press Coverage - January 22, 2015
