Steve D
Slow lumbering cheese.
Rated 0.5/5 Stars •
Rated 0.5 out of 5 stars
04/07/24
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Alisdair A
Saw this when I was 21, when it was re-released in 1962. It scared me so effectively and convincingly that when I was driving home through lonely countryside on a warm summer's night I had to stop and put up my convertible's roof - in case I was plucked out of the car!
Rated 5/5 Stars •
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
10/25/23
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Dave S
When you sit yourself down to watch a low-budget, sci-fi/horror movie from the 50s about giant insects or reptiles terrorizing mankind, you can usually expect it to be pretty crappy. In this sense, Tarantula is a bit of a pleasant surprise. The premise is pretty much the same as others of the time – a scientist experimenting with giantism inadvertently releases a monstrously large spider, which then terrorizes a small desert community. Once you get past the expected silliness of the premise, you'll come to realize that the acting is quite good, the dialogue is smart, it's extremely well shot, the special effects are decent for the time period, and, all in all, it's surprisingly entertaining.
Rated 3.5/5 Stars •
Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars
09/27/23
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Jens B
How wonderfully dated this flick is! I just get a cozy feeling watching this kind of film. The spider has two friendly eyes and roars! And we get spider pov shots :)
Rated 3/5 Stars •
Rated 3 out of 5 stars
09/27/23
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Matthew B
A mysterious figure shambles out of the desert. As he lurches towards the cameras we see that his face is horribly deformed. He falls dead at our feet, and the credits begin.
Dr Matt Hastings (John Agar) is called into the town of Desert Rock to investigate the mysterious death. The symptoms are those of an acromegaly sufferer, but the slow development of this disease makes it unlikely that Jacobs could have developed such an advanced illness in such a short time.
In fact what has happened is that Deemer and his colleagues are working on a new scientific discovery to enlarge animals as a potential food source to relieve the worries of overpopulation. Deemer's two colleagues rashly chose to inject themselves with the formula and contracted fast-acting acromegaly as a result. Deemer's second colleague is driven mad by his illness, and attacks Deemer, injecting him with a hypodermic needle. During the skirmish, the lab is burned down, but a giant tarantula escapes. This tarantula goes on to terrorise the local area, killing livestock and humans,
Tarantula involves a creature that inspires disgust and repellence in many people, but which is now inflated to a much larger size, increasing our sense of horror. The spider has venom, so its additional bulk makes it deadly in a way that the common home-grown versions are usually not.
The tarantula is an early example of the notorious tendency of monsters to roar, even when their anatomy makes this impossible. Speaking of which, the anatomy of a spider makes them it hard to kill.
The movie begins in the desert, a convenient location for sci-fi horror movies of this kind. It ensures that the characters are isolated and have limited means of help at their disposal. The action takes place in a small town in the middle of nowhere. The hero is a country doctor, the sheriff commands no large staff of police officers, there is only one reporter, and the man who looks after the hotel listens in on people's calls. The remoteness of the landscape also provides an explanation for how a large creature is able to grow to full height without being seen.
Director Jack Arnold replaces the documentary-style approach of the similarly-themed Them with a more straightforward narrative approach. Tarantula is a story about the spider, not the efforts to destroy the spider. Hence the lead character is a medical doctor, and not an investigating official.
Arnold needs to be more sparing in his use of the tarantula because there is only one monster in his film, and not a nest of them, hence there is a long initial period in which there are no action set pieces involving the tarantula. We see the spider in Prof Deemer's laboratory early on, and later we see it escape. After that the creature does not threaten anybody's life until the movie is nearly three-fifths over.
To keep the viewer interested, we are given a few scares along the way. As the characters drive through the desert, we catch ominous glimpses of the giant tarantula, so that we are never allowed to forget its presence for long. A creature leaps at Deemer, but it turns out to be a monkey. Dr Hastings and Stephanie Clayton (Mara Corday) are forced to run for cover from a rock fall.
Tarantula has a good old dose of 50s sexism. When Hastings discovers that Stephanie Clayton is going down to help Prof Deemer, he remarks, "Give women the vote and what do you get? Lady scientists." Deemer proves to be equally unenlightened with his clumsy attempt at a compliment: "I didn't expect a biologist who looks like you."
The film looks at the dangers of scientific research. Deemer is the cause of the crisis in Tarantula. Where Medford is concerned and ethical, Deemer is a cold and aloof person. He is not a bad man. In fact his intentions are good. He is concerned about overpopulation, and he is breeding larger animals out of concern for the future of mankind.
We cannot call him a responsible or sensible scientist, alas. He chooses a remote location for his work so that nobody can keep an eye on him. He seeks to cover up the death of his colleagues, even burying one of them in the desert. We may also wonder why an experiment in increasing food production necessitated the creation of a giant tarantula.
I wrote a longer appreciation of Tarantula comparing it to Them on my blog page if you would like to read more: https://themoviescreenscene.wordpress.com/2017/10/03/arrival-of-the-bug-movies-them-1954-and-tarantula-1955/
Rated 4.5/5 Stars •
Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars
09/22/23
Full Review
CodyZamboni
Watchable creature feature, with smarter characters than the typical dolts that appear in these types of movies. Not scary, but kinda cheesy, especially when the giant spider leers at the leading lady thru a bedroom window. Cheap, lame fx also hurt the overall impact. But the explosive, fiery jet action starring Clint Eastwood is all kinds of awesome.
Rated 3/5 Stars •
Rated 3 out of 5 stars
09/20/23
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