Jack Arnold’s Tarantula is one of those films you really want to like more than you do. When it’s focused on its eponymous over-sized arachnid, it’s a lot of fun but all too often its attention wanders off to more mundane matters that never quite grip you as much as the rampaging monster scenes. It’s widely been held up as a classic of the 50s American science fiction boom, but although it’s frequently fun, it’s just a bit too dull at times for its own good.
The setting is Arnold’s favoured desert small town, in this case Desert Rock, Arizona which comes with its very own slightly dubious scientist, Professor Gerald Deemer (Leo G. Carroll). Deemer isn’t exactly mad, but he’s not quite right, feeding experimental growth nutrients to his small menagerie of animals. But against orders, his assistant Eric Jacobs (an uncredited appearance from stuntman Eddie Parker) has been testing the substances on himself and in the opening scene we find him staggering around the desert, his body horribly deformed (thanks to effects make-up by Bud Westmore) before he collapses and dies. Local doctor Matthew Hastings (genre regular John Agar), who’s doing well enough for himself that he can afford his own light aircraft, and Deemer’s new assistant Stephanie ‘Steve’ Clayton (Mara Corday) investigate and decide that Jacobs died from the side effects of ‘acromegalia’ – they use the Spanish pronunciation of acromegaly throughout for no good reason – but arrive at their conclusion far too late (the audience is way ahead of them) to prevent another deformed victim of the growth nutrient destroying Deemer’s lab and accidentally freeing an already over-sized tarantula that subsequently grows to enormous size.
Tarantula‘s biggest problem is that Arnold and Robert M. Fresco’s script, based loosely on the No Food for Thought episode of Science Fiction Theatre that Arnold had directed earlier in 1955, is far more interested in the dogged but not entirely thrilling investigation into Jacobs’ death than it is in the monster, meaning that the spider escapes from Deemer’s burning house and disappears from the plot until it’s needed for the admittedly rather good finale. The final moments are a great showcase for Clifford Stine and an uncredited David S. Horsley’s excellent special effects, featuring the their optically enlarged tarantula taking on the US Air Force who have ordered an air strike led by an uncredited Clint Eastwood.
Tarantula is crying out for a lot more monster action, and a lot less of the unconvincing romance developing between Hastings and Clayton. In fact, apart from attacking a few cows and scaring some horses, most of the spider’s rampages are fairly low key and mostly take place off screen. It’s directed with Arnold’s customary efficiency but it lacks the spark that puts the fire under most of his other, far superior genre films (It Came from Outer Space (1953), The Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954), Revenge of the Creature (1955), The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957), The Mouse That Roared (1959) – we’ll draw a discreet veil over the likes of Monster on the Campus (1958) and The Space Children (1958))
Full marks for not taking the very obvious nuclear radiation route like almost every other monster movies of the 50s and top marks to for the technical credits, particularly George Robinson’s moody black and white photography. It never quite makes the desert setting as eerie as it was in the film’s obvious inspiration, Gordon Douglas’ Them! (1954), but he and Arnold do pull off some great shots that just make you wish the rest of the film had been that good. The spider seen moving across distant landscapes or popping up over towering outcrops of rock is an impressive and very creepy sight for example, though less impressive is the ridiculous moment in which Clayton mooches about in her room, oblivious to the gargantuan tarantula peering at her through a window.
Tarantula is not without its charms and its a very long way from the worst monster film that would stalk drive-ins throughout the 1950s. But it’s not quite charming enough and all too easily you’ll find your attention wandering as you tire of the burgeoning Hastings/Clayton relationship and start checking your watch to work out just how long it’s been since the titular beast has been off stage in its own film. Arnold did giant spiders much better in The Incredible Shrinking Man.
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