Weirdhouse Cinema: Tarantula

I absolutely agree. And it's one that I hadn't seen either, but I've been I've been familiar with it for ages. Because of course, this is one of of many films classic sci fi and horror films that's referenced in the Lyrics to Science Fiction Double feature from the Rocky Art Picture Show. It goes a little like this, It goes Hi knew Leo G. Care was over a barrel wind to Rancholla took to the hills, And that's Leo G. Carroll's will discuss is in this film, and the tarantula

does in fact take to the hills. Now, Leo G. Carroll was much more famous for being in Alfred Hitchcock thrillers a funny coincidence. Just last week I watched north By Northwest for the very first time, and he's in that playing a character called the Professor, which is what he's called in this movie. Yeah, he has, he had, He has a great vibe. He has a very scholarly atmosphere too, British actor that moved to Hollywood. But yeah, this it's interesting because he's not one of these names.

Even though his name is now synonymous with science fiction double feature, he's not one of these actors that that was really in a ton of B movies. He's really really should be more well known for these Hitchcock films. But Rocky Horror Picture Show has immortalized him in another direction as well. Well. I think that's the point of the lyric, right, he was over a barrel when so I think they're saying, like Leo G. Carroll he was having some rough times when he ended up into ranchula.

I don't know if that's true. You know, some of the times you see an actor more associated with prestigious movies ending up in a creature feature, it's like, oh wow, they were really slumming it. But other times you get the feeling that this was just fun. They decided to be fun to do that. I mean, it varies wildly

depending on the actor, certainly depending on the production. I didn't run across anything that said Leo JI Carroll didn't like the experience, But if he were inclined to dislike the experience, and he does have to hold a monkey and gets eventually covered up with a bunch of makeup, so there's plenty of room there where I could imagine an actor of his caliber maybe being a little uh uh disillusioned by his his foray into sci fi B pictures.

Rob he does not only have to hold a monkey, he has to catch a monkey, because this movie has an exquisite uh monkey jumps care where Leo G. Carroll is in the middle of the desert in the nighttime, secretly burying a body in the sand, and then you see a figure sneak up behind him. It's like a silhouette. What is it going to be? Is it going to be a giant spider? Is it going to be a monster man? And then turn it's just a little monkey and he has to catch it in his arms. It's adorable.

Quick poster note on this one. If you look at the original poster that features a giant tarantula, like a puppet tarantula, and I think this is an image of one of the puppets that was used to some extent in the film, though a lot of what you see is just an actual tarantula. It's made to look like it's crawling across the desert hills, but in the poster, or at least most of the versions of the poster, it is made to look like it is holding a

woman in its pinchers. This does not actually happen in the movie at all, but it's one of those situations where the classic trope of the time was, of course, show your monster, generally a humanoid monster holding ann conscious woman, and that was the that was supposed to, you know, drawl in the viewers. It was what they came to expect, even though nothing like that actually happens in this film. There are so many movies like this from the fifties.

I think of Bride of the Monster, the Edwood movie, which I think the poster for it showed Bella Legosi, who is in the movie carrying an unconscious woman in his arms, which he does not do in the movie. The Attack of the Crab monsters. Poster has the giant crab, the giant psychic crab who eats people and gains their knowledge. It has a woman in a bathing suit in its claw. That never happens in the movie. That puppet never carries anybody. It does eat people, but it never holds anybody in

its claws. I used to have these, some of these universal trading cards that I think had been my dad's or something my way back in the day, black and white, and they have all these images of classic monsters on them, and a lot of them are those monsters either scaring

a woman or holding an unconscious woman, like we're discussing here. Yeah, the way the posters always depict women sort of in peril, especially in peril, and a kind of reclined posture I think is supposed to be sexually titillating in some ways in a way that would be enough to get people's attention but also not to get censored. Yeah, yeah, and it's you know, at the time, as a child, I would look at these and other things. It was almost like, oh, well, she needs to be carried to bed, and here is

an ape man to do it. Um. Fun fact, we've watched a couple of movies that have the German born actress Helga Line you know in them, uh, you know, the redheaded actor from Horror Rises from the Tomb, as well as what was the other film, Aloralized Grasp, Yeah, the Looralized Grasp. There's some vampire film. I forget the name off hand, but on the front of it, she is holding a man in that pose like there's like a skinny dude and she's holding him up like that.

So it's got a nice gender reversal on the trope. That's what I want. I want fifties movie posters that are switched like that, where it's the lady carrying a giant crab in her arms. That would be good. Alright, So Tarantula from nineteen five. This is exciting because this is also only our fifth fifties movie on Weird House Cinema.

Oh okay, I would have thought more than that. But let's see how many we we did the thing from another World, we did um Fiend without a Face, we did Not of this Earth, and we did the brain Eaters. Is that all of them so far? That's it? You got them all? And this makes five? Okay, when you rank all those together, Where would you say Tarantula fits. Actually, I don't know how you do and compare them. We just when you rank them in terms of an absurd

good time? Where does Tarantula go in there? Oh, for sheer fun, I'd say it's top of the pack. For quality, I don't know, things probably top of the pack tarantula thing or duking it out for top billing here I think, Oh, I'd say definitely Thing is the best, if the best for non i onic purposes. And though I think it's clearly the worst of all of them, I really have a soft spot for the brain eaters. That one's never gonna leave my heart. All right, Well, let's get to

the elevator pitch. On this one. I'm just gonna go with what's written on the poster, and it is all caps, giant spider strikes crawling terror a hundred feet high? Is it still crawling if it's a hundred feet high? Something about the word crawling to me suggests proximity to the ground. That's a good point. All right, Let's hear the Let's hear the trailer. This is a great nineteen fifties trailer.

But what have circumstances were magnifying one of the size and strength took it out of its primitive world and turned it loose in our Then expect something that's fiercer, more cruel, and deadly than anything that ever woked here. Even science was stunned. The new atomic miracles should have been mankind's greatest boon. Instead, when such power to cause phenomenal growth gloop dangerously unstable, man was confused with this most shocking blunder. The figgered out nutrient into a nightmare.

I'm wonder that transformed a tiny insect into a hundred books spider that was now ravaging the panic stricken countryside. All right, before we continue here, I'm just gonna advise everyone out there who is interested in watching Tarantula, well, you have a lot of options. I watched Tarantula on a double featured disc from the Classic Sci Fi Ultimate collection More People, The More People is on the same desk. But I've seen that one before. This has been a while.

I rented this from Video Drome. That collection has some nice titles in it. It's pretty cheap, but there's also a standalone Universal Vault disc that you can rent or purchase. Uh digitally most places as well. It does seem to be available on Blu Ray in various formats as well, So however you want your Tarantula, it can be provided. I did a digital rental on Amazon and their transfer looks pretty good. Yeah. Yeah, this one, this one on

the disc was really solid. In fact, speaking of looking pretty good, uh so, Tarantula has a lot of the same sort of script pathologies as as many other creature features of the time. But the special effects in this movie, I would say are excellent for the time period. I mean, for nineteen fifty five. The superimposition of the giant spider onto the desert backgrounds and everything. I think this is out of the park. Yeah. My son walked in while I was watching the finale and he immediately said he

was excited to check it out. He's like, I can tell it's not real. So, yes, you can tell it's not real. And definitely this style of giant monster, of the style of using an actual creature such as a spider or a lizard and filming it in such a way that it looks big, this largely doesn't really work anymore. But I think if you if you take the picture in in its time, it still looks pretty good. Oh yeah, So, I mean compared this to other movies from around the

same time that use the same techniques. Birdeye Gordon movies are famous for the superimposing uh something onto a different background to make it look huge. These look better than most of the people who did this. But so, there are two different ways of showing a giant spider in this movie. One is this uh you know, photographic trick where they're taking real footage of a real tarantula and then just super imposing it over a background to make it look huge. The other one is a puppet. And

I think the puppet in this movie is killer. It's so good. Yeah, the puppet is really good, and and I look forward to to talking about the man who built the puppet. That's actually a fun story as well. Well. But I guess if we're going to have to start with the director here, one of the things that I didn't realize until after I watched the movie is that this is the creature from the Black Lagoon guy. Right, Yeah, Yeah, this is Jack Arnold, who not only directed it, he

also has a story credit. He lived nineteen twelve through uh noted fifties sci fi director for responsible for a slew of films, so Creature from the Black Lagoon in fifty four for sure, as well as Revenge of the Creature in fifty five. He also did nineteen fifty three's It Came from Outer Space. He has an uncredited um directorial credit on IMDb for This Island Earth, but he also directed The Incredible Shrinking Man in fifty seven, The Space Children and fifty eight, and Monster on Campus in

fifty eight. Prior to these sci fi pictures, he did a pair of dramas nineteen fifties with These Hands, which sounds like a thriller but was produced by the International Ladies Garment Workers Union. So I don't think it's a I don't think it's like a pro do jal Allow jallow kind of film. It's wait. That's the same the union that has the commercial in the Star Wars Holiday Special, or at least one of the famous tapes of it where they're all singing the union song. It's the International

Lady Ladies Garment Workers Union. Do Do Do Do, do the very thing. He also did a nineteen fifty three film before all this, titled Girls Night Out, which indeed seems to be a film noir thing, and during the sixties he ventured into TV. He did a lot of work on a lot of popular TV shows, rounding it all out with a few episodes of The Love Boat,

you know. Putting together all of the Jack Arnold movies I've seen now, including Tarantula here, the Black Lagoon movies, it seems like he specializes in films where, if you really stop to think about it, you kind of pity the monster and and the humans are sort of the bad guys. Yeah, yeah, definitely that's the case with Creature. Um, we've i think we've talked about that at least on episodes of Stuff to Blow your Mind in the past.

That Yeah, it's going back and watching Creature from the Black Agoon is kind of a weird experience because the monster is fabulous, and he is the thing that you get behind. He is the he is the character that you sympathize with. And I'm not saying Jack Arnold meant it that way. I don't think that's what's really intended, but it does feel that way because in Creature, you know, we've talked about this, I think on the show before, like the humans go into his house, there. It's not

like he's attacking towns or something. Creatures just hanging out in a pond somewhere. And then all these uh, these the scientists and people with guns show up and they're like, well, we're gonna catch this thing. And I guess you're supposed to be on their side. I don't know. I will say the difference is that having a creature in the black logoon seems like a sustainable situation. You can just give the creature some room and he will be fine. The giant tarantula in this movie, I clearly this is

not sustainable. Like, clearly something needs to be done. We can't just keep having this creature. But to spoil the ending the way they deal with it in the end, as they napalm it and then the spider is just burning in the background. You see it's hairy legs on fire. The hair is kind of singing, and they're like, well the end a universal international picture, yeah, but also edible, potentially edible, right that could they? I mean, ultimately they

wanted to solve issues about feeding a growing world. Well now you have it, giant roasted to rachula, three hundred tons of spider meat. Yeah, um on the subject with Jack Arnold, though, I was looking into his filmography a bit, and I was really intrigued by this nineteen seven film that he directed titled The Monolith Monsters, which immediately went to Michael Weldon's books to see if that he had written anything about it, and I don't think he had.

But the film sounds curious. A meteorite lands near a sleepy desert town, so you know, entirely unlike Tarantula, but then it starts growing into skyscraper sized mon a liths of stone, so it sounds pretty unique. And that the threat is not alien at all, at least not in an organic sense. It's like a chemical threat. It's just unchecked rock growth. So it kind of sounds ahead of its time, like this sounds like something we would maybe watch in the nineteen seventies as opposed to in the

ninety seven. Interesting and one more note Jack Arnold as an actor. He had a cameo in John Landis thriller Into the Night. I believe he is a man walking his dog in that. Oh well, you attached to picture from The Monolith Monsters, And now that I can see it, it's it makes more sense to me. They are these uh giant like sort of shards of obsidian jutting up

out of the desert. But yeah, they're as big as buildings. Yeah, strange, Like I can tell that this probably didn't work without even it just this is this isn't maybe what the drive in audience was looking for. They ultimately wanted a monster, Like how do you even shoot this thing so that it's holding a woman's unconscious body? Now, now that is a job for a creative poster maker. What do you I guess you have the crystals kind of forming a hand and the ladies there and I don't know. Yeah,

yeah it could work. I'm sure a talented poster artist good could figure it out. All right, let's get onto the screenplay here. A screenplay was written by um two individuals. There's Robert M. Fresco, who lived nine, also a writer on the Monolith Monster in various TV shows, as well as uncredited writing on ninety nine The Alligator People, which

should be of note to fans of Rocky Rickson. That's right, if you're one of those hiding behind the trees with moss forever, hearing the swamp birds screaming, or if this One's actually less of her boast than some of his songs on the Evil One. But I do love that line when they see alligator persons in the bog and fog. Yeah, it's it's something's really funny about alligator persons instead of alligator people. Yes, but but I I and I don't know if certain, but I assume he's referring to this film.

A lot of those songs do refer back to It's a classic monster movies and so forth. All Right. The other screenplay credit is Martin Berkeley, who lived nineteen o four through ninety nine. Screenwriter active through the forties, fifties, and sixties. He worked on screenplays for westerns like Green Grass of Wyoming and Red Sundown, but also films like Revenge of the Creature and The Deadly Mantis, which I believe I've seen this one before. This is a giant

killer mantis. I'm not well, it is technically a giant killer mantis, but a giant praying mantis film. Now, I wonder, once you had written one Giant Bug screenplay, what was it like writing the second and third Giant Bug screenplay? Do you like? How are you? How are you coming up with new angles on that. What does the giant

bug mean this time? Yeah, it's a it's an interesting question, I think, one that's partially answered by Tarantula in that in the way that Tarantula both uh certainly matches the sort of pre existing format of giant animal movies, but also bucks some of the ends as well discussed and not like, most notably being this is not a giant atomic monster creature, even though it's very much a product of the of the atomic age and during a time

when so many atomic giant animals were rampaging through cinema. That's true. They don't say it's directly atomic radiation, though I do think there's a little bit of atomic magic implicated, and it's there's a there's a whole sequence in the middle of the movie with some of the most gorgeous

technobabble that you have ever encountered. We're gonna have to spend some time on that, but I think they sort of are trying to say that there's radioactive something in the juice they're squirting into these animals, but it's hard to tell. It's hard to decipher alright, Well, speaking of the science, everyone please get out your periodic table of classic Hollywood actors. Because this movie contains um Agar, um, is it Agar or Agar? I'm gonna say Agar, John Agar,

John Agar, John Agar. In this film, he plays Dr Matt Hastings. That's right. Today's John Agar role will be played by John Agar, who is just h He's just a country doctor with common sense, probably a strong right hook. I don't think we ever see him throw one, but you can imagine, uh, and apparently a permanent sense of amusement at the concept of equal rights for women. Uh. And he he really polished his jawline for this movie. He is such such a perfect example of the fifties

creature feature lug hero. Yeah, if you haven't seen this film, and you haven't seen John Agar in anything, you can, you can still picture him in your mind right now. He's exactly like you think he looks. He acts exactly like you think he acts. Uh. He lived nine one through two thousand and two. Longtime American actor who appeared in films from eight through two thousand and one. Uh and even I think a two thousand and five release via like delayed release. But you can basically divide a

Gar's work into two categories. War in westerns and B movies, and in the former category he acted alongside folks like John Wayne and the Sands of theo Jima fort Apachi. She wore a yellow ribbon all in the late nineteen forties. But then in the B movie category he appeared in a lot of quality Monster Mayhem flicks, like The Mole People from the nineteen fifty six that was on the same disc as this one. For me, that's a that's

a very fun like Hollow Earth type of film. The Brain from Planet Arows from seven, Revenge of the Creature from fifty five, and Hand of Death from sixty two. I think we discussed doing the Brain from Planet Arouse or Arose. However you say that, Uh, we ended up doing Fiend Without a Face instead because we want to do some kind of brain movie and that there's a handful that looked pretty juicy. Yeah, we may have to come back to that one because that has a really

fun looking brain monster in it. It kind of floats around. So Agar did a lot of TV later in his career, but the B movie association stuck. And I was reading on on IMDb that in n two Famous Monsters of Filmland, a fan magazine. They declared him dead. Uh they said, you know, r I P. John Agar. But Agar was not dead, And so he apparently made the rounds at a lot of sci fi fan conventions back in the day,

signing these magazines about his death. That's good. He was at one point married to Shirley Temple, and late in life he had cameos in two films of note nine nineties, Night Breed, the Clive Barker film, and John Carpenter's anthology film Body Bags. This is the one where John Carpenter himself sort of plays the crypt keeper. Uh so I haven't seen Body Bags. I have seen Nightbreed. Nightbreed is

Clive Barker, and it's full of interesting various monsters. But actually the thing that most sticks out to me and about it is the character played by David Cronenberg. He was he was an actor, just an actor in the movie, playing the main character, psychotherapist but who also turns out to be a serial killer who wears a creepy sock over his head. Yeah. That's a really fun role and what is ultimately a really fun film. I haven't watched it in a while, but I remember being quite fond

of it back in the day. I remember enjoying the book as well. But with Clive Barker, obviously, he's a he was a big he was a big fan of classic Hollywood and and all of that, so it makes sense that he might bring John Agar in to do a little cameo. But so anyway, the character John Agar plays in this is sort of set against the scientist characters who they're The scientists are off doing uh you know, dangerous unholy experiments in their isolated laboratory in the desert.

Meanwhile John Agar is just he's he's ready to slap some common sense up against them. So that's our malely in the film. But we also have a lead female character in the form of Stephanie Clayton better known as Steve to everyone, and she was played by the beautiful Mara corday So born nineteen thirty and as of this recording is still still with us. Um. Yeah, she was a model actress fifties cult icon. She later on she

was in the nineteen fifty eight Playboy magazine Centerfold. She mostly did small acting jobs prior to Tarrantula, but this is the film that kind of gave her a chance to shine and kind of propelled her more into the limelight. So she was more prominently featured in films after this point, including the nineteen fifty seven Monster films, The Black Scorpion and The Giant Claw, which is a giant goofy bird movie.

She met Clint Eastwood on the set of this film, and we'll explain how that is possible in a bed. But after meeting on the set of this film, they reported remained friends for a very long time, and all of her final screen credits are roles in Clint Eastwood films The Gauntlet in seventy seven, Sudden Impact in eighty three, Pink Cadillac in eighty nine, and The Rookie in nineteen nine.

In fact, in Sudden Impact, she's the waitress in the scene where Dirty Harry coins the catchphrase go ahead, make my day. I think she's being held at gunpoint or something and he saves her. Oh interesting, Well, you know what I think. Mark Corday is great in this movie. She uh, she really brings a sense of fun and amusement to the silliness here. Yeah, it's a it's a fun performance. Um. She plays a quote unquote lady scientist and It's kind of an interesting role for for the

time period. I was I was looking around about this a little bit because you you look at some of these nineteen fifties films and clack. In fact, if you look at The Thing from Another World, Uh, it also has a I don't know if she's quite a scientist in it, but you still have a she's at least what a secretary to a scientist. You have a very

strong female role in that film. I think the character in The Thing from Another World is widely considered one of the examples of the the the Howard Hawks leading lady type character. Yeah. Yeah, And we talked about the Hawks and um uh female role in that episode of Weird House that we did. But I was reading a bit about this from this is a blog post by Bob Calhoun at Roger Ebert dot com titled Atomic Age

Feminists the Women of fifties sci Fi. And this is pretty interesting because Calhoun pointed out the first of all several great examples of female scientists characters or sort of scientists adjacent characters in such films as The Daily Earth Stood Still from fifty one, Thing from Another World fifty one,

Revenge of the Creature from fifty five. And then I was looking around at the Classic Horror Film Board, and I saw a thread where people were bringing up other examples, like them rocket Ship x M, the Giant Claw from Hell, it came the Beast from twenty thousand fathoms, uh, Pamela Duncan's character and Attack of the Crab Monsters. So there's

a long list, and so Calhoun. In this he cites feminist American art and film critic Carrie Ricky, pointing out that much of this seems to come down to the studio system, which during the thirties and forties had female screenwriters create the female characters, and that this practice, or its influence the influence of this practice at any rate, may have carried over into the nineteen fifties to some extent. Thus we have all these nuanced, professional female characters showing

up in monster movies and sci fi features. Um However, he points out that the reverse seems to be true as well. With the full collapse of the studio system, you find fewer female scientists roles in films of this caliber moving forward, and he specifically, of course points to John Carpenter's remake of the Thing from another world, which is we discussed in our in our episode about that movie about about the original that you know, Carpenter's film

has no female characters. It's an entirely male film. Um So it's um, it is interesting to look back at all these pictures and see that, Yeah, this is kind of the era of the B movie female scientist character that is assertive and strong and and generally holds her own with with male characters and counterparts. Yes, there's this

interesting mixture where these characters do show up. But of course, like the funny thing is is how ridiculously sexist the context still is so like, do you will have a movie where, oh, you know, so the scientist character is a woman, that's cool, but then she like has to make coffee for everybody. That's all of these movies are in this movie. Um, when she meets John Agar and they're flirting, and like the first thing he says is like, oh, lady scientists. Uh yeah, He's like, oh, you give a

woman the vote, what do you get, lady scientists? That's like it's literally the line from the film. Yeah, there's other stuff in here too, Like this is one part where he's John Agar's character is a doctor and he's delivering medicine to somebody he keeps. It's kind of a neat or a clever plot device for this is he's always been called away on jobs, so it kind of gets him out of scenes when you need him the

action to move on. But he's dropping off medication for somebody and the husband picks it up and he's like, well, do you know women, she won't take it, but you know she'll feel better. Annoying, it's on the shelf. And I didn't even know that was a stereotype. Yeah, I've never even heard that. I mean, well, but anyway. Mark Horday is great in this, and she seems to like John Agar makes a lady scientist joke. It just seems

to roll off her back. Also, when the first time she meets um what's his name, Leo G. Carroll's scientist character, he's like, oh, I didn't expect our new assistant to look like you. He's just he's not doing a good job creating a a friendly and productive workplace. But yeah, so it's yeah, when you're talking about feminism in ninet fifties monster movies, it's a mixed back, but it's a.

It makes for an interesting analysis, all right. Well, speaking of Leo G. Carroll, Yes, he plays Professor Gerald Seamer. So Carol we already talked a little bit about him. Lived eighteen eighty six through nine seventy two British Hollywood actor, best known for his roles in Hitchcock films like north By Northwest from fifty nine, Strangers on a Train fifty one, and Spellbound from forty five. He also played the character Alexander Waverley on the series The Man from Uncle as

well as The Girl from Uncle. I believe he played the same character in both of those shows. One I guess it's a spin off of the other. He also played Marley's ghost in the nineteen thirty eight adaptation of A Christmas Carol. He was active from nineteen thirty four through nineteen seventy. I don't think he did a lot of films like this, uh oh. And he was also

in the original nineteen sixty one The Parent Trap. You don't necessarily get the sense that Carol is unhappy to be in this movie, but you do get the feeling that you know, he's one of those actors who's clearly kind of in a different League, and he's here giving a more subtle performance than you would expect as the mad scientist whose crea eating giant spiders. Right, Yeah, like he doesn't. He certainly doesn't come off as you're you're

sort of cackling mad scientists. And part that's in the writing too, Like he's ultimately you buy him more as a guy who's trying to do the right thing. Maybe he got a little sloppy may maybe he should have had some better uh uh lab safety protocols in place, But for the most part, he's not uh, he's not you know, Lawn Cheney Jr. He's not uh, you know,

the the cackling madman. All right. Another interesting actor in this we have this actor Nestor Paiva who lived nineteen o five through nineteen sixty six, who plays Sheriff Jack Andrews, who's not taken any crap off anybody, especially off of

John Agar. He's our cranky local sheriff. And yeah, Nestor here, American actor of Portuguese descent, did a lot of Westerns, including the TV Zoro Show from Disney back in the day, but is most remembered as cap and Lucas in both Creature from the Black Lagoon and Revenge of the Creature. He was also in The Mole People and his final film was They Saved Hitler's Brain. We will get into more detail about this as we go on, but this

is an unusual type of character, Sheriff Andrews. Here is this Haysey Desert sheriff who really thinks that egg heads scientists, really they know what they're doing and they're hard one expertise should be respected, right right, We shouldn't go investigate the mysterious lab. Are you crazy? No, don't mess with those people. And you know what, Doc, you don't know what you're doing. He's just really into science. Al right. Speaking of science, there's another character that shows up that's

worth noting. This character Townsend. Who is Is he supposed to be like Spider Expert? Is he a biologist? I don't recall his credentials exactly. Oh yeah, he's the guy who John Agar goes to visit at the Arizona Agricultural Institute, who shows him a film strip about Tarantula's and shares a lot of tarantial effects and in a very funny scene. Yeah, it's it's a memory Will seen in this Uh, This character Townsend was played by Raymond Bailey, who's of nineteen

o four. Bailey is best known by classic TV fans as Milbourne Drysdale on The Beverly Hillbillies, but he was also in Hitchcock's Vertico. But yeah, when you hear you're here to Drysdale, Mr Drysdale, this is Mr Drysdale. I didn't know that when I watched the movie, but now that you say it, I totally see it. Heat he he is like a snooty bank manager. Yeah, alright, we mentioned Clint Eastwood earlier. Yes, Clint Eastwood is in this movie.

He plays uncredited. He plays the jet squadron leader who shows up to napalm the Spider in the final moments of the film. Uh, this is not a proper Clint Eastwood movie, so we're not gonna get exhaustive on this. But you know, Clint Eastwood legendary actor and director still

active today, not only alive, but active. This was only his fourth screen appearance, along with some other uncredited roles in films like Revenge of the Creature, Francis and the Navy and Lady could Iva of Coventry, all released the same year as tarantula. He was only twenty five years old at the time. Can't really comment on his performance. He just sort of sits in a cockpit and then he's like releasing napalm. Now, yeah, he has a mask on, so you really only see his eyes. But man, there's

no denying whose eyes those are. That's clean Eastwitt. All right. Another uncredited actor of note, uh just playing deputized townsmen is actor Being Russell, who lived through two thousand and three, best known perhaps for playing Deputy Clym Foster on the Western series Bonanza and Robert in The Magnificent Seven. But he was also Kurt Russell's dad, and he owned the Portland Mavericks at one point. Now here's this is another

interesting connection. I alluded to this earlier. But as we mentioned, the tarantula, when we see it is often this actual tarantula that's made to look big. But also we have this tarantula puppet. And this was built by Wa Chang who lived nineteen seventeen through two thousand in three of Hawaii born Chinese American designer, sculptor and artist, responsible for the triantula puppet on this film and later responsible for key prop design on Star Trek the original series, including

the tricorder and the Communicator. Yeah. He also did some costumes on Key Classic Track episodes. He apparently created the Triples legendary, Yeah, legendary. He also worked on the original Outer Limits, the original Planet of the Apes movie, the

TV series Land of the Lost. He did visual effects in the nineteen six adaptation of H. G. Wells The Time Machine, stop motion puppets on the Monster from Green Hill from fifty seven and uh he was the adoptive son of James Balding sloan on American etcher printmaker, uh, theater theatrical designer and also a puppeteer. But yeah, this was an interesting uh case here. I've looked up some images of him showing him when creating various dragons and creatures.

I think he was so had some involvement in some Disney productions with sort of modeling of creatures to be animated. So quite an interesting story. Well, I say once again bravo. On The Spider Puppet, I would say broadly, this movie does not actually have any scary parts except for one. There's one scene where the Spider Puppet kind of peers through a window at Mara Corday and that, oh, that one is actually creepy. Yeah, that that scene I found

was legitimately creepy. It too is also kind of a classic trope of the time period, right the the female character is changing or getting ready for bed and a monster peers through the window. Though it's it's kind of funny that in this scene she's she's about to take her her nightgown off, you know, to get into bed, and we only briefly see that she's she's wearing full length pajamas underneath there. So I don't know what the spider thought he was going to say, but that's right.

The tarantula is peeping in, though it seems clearly that this is not a lusty peeping in. This is just like king for fluid filled humans to drain, right, yes, But also, you know, coming back to Steve Mars character, you know, she's she's a smart lady. She knows there is a rampaging spider on the loose, so we're sensible garments to bed, you don't want to, don't wear anything you don't want to take off across town in that's correct,

and she does get out of the situation. Yeah, uh, Finally, on the music note, I'm gonna spend a lot of time on this because it's my understanding that this was just studio stock music we used on this. But the two individuals that are uncredited are Henry Mancini, who lived twenty four through and Hermann Stein, who lived nineteen fifteen

through two thousand and seven. Mancini notable for such scores as The Pink Panther, Breakfast at Tiffany's, and six Romeo and Juliet, and Stein he worked on a lot of nineteen fifties sci fi films, including It Came from Outer Space, Revenge of the Creature, This Island Earth, and many more. All Right, is it time to talk about the plot. Let's do it. Let's dive right in. Al So, the film begins in the desert. Actually, one of the first things I noticed about it was one of the opening

desert shots all the shows. These different plants, kind of scrub plants out in the desert, and they're all kind of equally spaced apart from each other, almost as if they're trying to keep their distance. I don't know if that was a detail chosen on purpose, but anyway, you got the scrub plants, You've got rocks, sand wind, and then a man in pajamas with monster makeup on his face stumbles around until he dies. Oh man, this game's

full length pajama game is strong. Um. It makes me think of how I remember hearing that supposedly on HBO's Game of Thrones, there was like somebody from the studio or from the network there that was there just to remind the director. It's like, hey, you can have full nudity in this scene if you want. I like to think there was somebody on this picture that's like, hey, by the way, if you want full length pajamas and this shot, you got it. We got them on all sides.

It is ready to go. Oh they do them up and down, so many pajamas. But this monster makeup looks pretty good and it's a strong start to the film. Yes, I would say the monster makeup looks good, though it also it does not match up well with something that they they end up attributing the monster makeup too. Yes, because this individual is supposed to have acromegaly uh, the the rare condition that causes excessive production of growth hormone by the peteritary gland that results in large bones in

the face, feet, and hands. Right today, it's known as acromegaly, and that that's the I'm not positive, but that's the way I've always heard it pronounced. In this movie, they call it acromegalia, And uh, from what I can tell, this movie is not at all a good barometer of what acromegaly actually looks like. Of course, acromegally does affect to different body parts with you know, with abnormal growth, you get changes to the facial features and so forth.

But this movie just straight up puts people in Frankenstein makeup, which is not accurate. So don't get your ideas about acromegaly from Tarantula. Yeah, I mean, I guess they were sort of going for a rondo um hat and look on these characters. He was, of course, was a was an actor who appeared in a lot of genre pieces. He died in forty six, so you know he'd been he was dead by the time this came out, but he was kind of a signature presence and a lot

of these old Hollywood horror films. Uh so maybe that was sort of the inspiration here. Yeah, possibly the makeup. Either way, the makeup takes takes this to fantastical extremes, and I guess that makes sense because this is I don't know, maybe we're supposed to understand that this is not actually acromegaly. It is just some acromegaly resembling science fiction condition caused by the the intake of this high

fictional nutrient. Yeah, but I can see where audiences would have been rather shocked and surprised, because you know, you're getting a giant spider in this film. That's definitely gonna happen. And then suddenly there's this something else is going on. You have some sort of you know, strange mutations and deformities occurring. Just right off the bat. The first character you meet in this film, uh Is, is severely disfigured. People may be wondering, did I walk into the wrong movie?

I thought I was going to see a giant spider. Yeah, but no, So you get this character. He collapses in the desert, and then credits, and then we begin the main plot. So the first thing we see is a small aircraft that is landing at an airstrip in Arizona, and outsteps John A. Gar apparently the pilot A pilot, the pilot of this plane. But no, he's not a

professional pilot. He is a doctor. He starts talking to the guy who works at the air strip and the guy says, what's the score, doc, So I guess we understand he's a doctor, and he responds, twins cutest things you ever saw. And this initially really confused me because I, erroneus assumed that he was reporting that he and his wife had just had twins, and that does not make

sense within the rest of the movie. It wouldn't make sense with the situation at all, because you know, John Agar is going to be your leading man, uh and a fifties creature feature hero always needs to be single so he can have a romance with the leading lady. But upon revisiting, I realized he's talking about delivering twins for some people who are living out in the desert. There's somebody else's twins, So I guess he does remote

house calls in his airplane. I guess. So. I mean, I know that this has been the case in remote places around the world, where you would have doctor's flown into remote communities and so forth, But this picture kind of makes it seem like he's just flying to somebody's house, landing in in their their the desert front yard, and then climbing out and going in, delivering some twins, maybe just leaving the the engine running, coming back out, getting

in the plane, flying home. Yeah, it really does seem to be suggesting that I don't know exactly how to read this. Every little bit of a window we get into his actual medical practice does not inspire confidence, right, Like isn't his office in a hotel? Yeah? Yeah, so okay, So he hops into his convertible and heads into town and he lives in this this Arizona desert town. What's the town called. It's called like Rock Desert or something. Something.

Only did that effect and I should know that even though it's supposed to take place in Arizona, everything you see is California that this film was. This film was definitely filmed in California, So we're seeing the California desert

even though it's supposed to be the Arizona Desert. As you already mentioned, Um drives around in a convertible with the top down, no hat, no sunglasses, no Yeah, this is a guy that lives and works in the desert, and yet no no effort at all is put into protecting himself from the sun that I just couldn't get past that the whole movie. I'm like, put the top up on that convertible. Can you grab a hat or some shades or something. Yeah, But so you mentioned that

it's he seems to work out of a hotel. I concluded the same thing. So he goes into town and we casually meet several characters. Johnny Gargan is a doctor, but he seems to use the lobby of a place called the Palace Hotel as his office, like literally using the desk worker at the hotel. Who's this funny older guy named Josh as his secretary? Like like Josh like takes phone calls for him, places phone calls for him, listens in on the phone calls. Yeah, this this is

a guy. Josh was played by Hank Patterson, who later went on to have a role on Green Acres. So I think a lot of people, at least he used to. I don't know how well versed modern viewers are in Green Anchors, but a lot of people would watch the film and be like, Hey, it's the guy from Green Anchors. What do you call this type of stock character who's like the the kind of funny, older, wrinkly guy with kind of a wrinkly hound dog face who is the butt of jokes. I don't know what you it seems

to be a type. Yeah, I don't know, but it it's kind of nice that it it shows you in a movie like this. They were thinking about, Okay, well, well can we make this scene funny? We have to have some sort of character interacting here between this character and another. Let's let's get somebody handy in there. Do a little bit, nothing, nothing too extreme, but just enough humor to get us from one scene to the next. Little did they know that the movie was going to

be plenty funny enough with all the science scenes. Okay, but anyway, Dr Hastings here John Aygar. He gets a call from the sheriff. Uh, it's you know, we need you to come down to the police station to help with something. There was a man found dead in the desert, but he looks unusual and the sheriff this is again

Sheriff Jack Andrews played by Nestor Piva. He thinks there is something about this man's face that, in one sense, looks like a guy that they knew named Eric Jacobs, but then there's something else about him that says, well, maybe it ain't him, And so I think the audience here is clearly supposed to conclude this was the guy in pajamas that we saw before the credits, and we learned that Eric Jacobs was a biologist who worked with Professor Deemer, an old scientist who's doing research at a

secluded house out in the desert. And they want John Agar's opinion on the body. But then while John Agar is investigating, uh, Deemer himself arrives and he identifies the body. He says that the cause of death was again that condition acromegalia, and John Agar says, well, yeah, okay, so it kind of looks like that. But also some people saw him just a month ago and he didn't have any signs of it then, and acromegalia cannot progress that fast,

so they argue about this. Deemer says it is zacromegalia, and Agar says, there's never been a case of acromegalia working like that, and then Deemer says, but the history of medicine is the history of the unusual, which is a fantastic rhetorical gambit, right, Like anybody who says, anything seems implausible. You could just say, but isn't the world

very strange? There's no way to argue with it, right, Like I can breathe in outer space and I can digest lead blocks for nutrition, and you might say that's not possible, and I say, is medicine not the history of the unusual? Anyway? Deemer says, well, Eric began to complain muscle pains four days ago. He says, he says,

these things happen as you grow older. And eventually Deemer leaves and Agar is talking to the sheriff and he's like, well, there's no way this is Zachromegalia, and the country sheriff just forcefully rebukes him. He says, the quote is yeah, young fellow, like you can't stack what he knows against the professor. So it's and this is a repeated theme. The sheriff in this movie is an egghead professor, super fan. He's got all these lines that are along the lines.

You know. It's like, look, John, Agar, all you have is rugged all American common sense, and that don't mean nothing compared to the high falutint ivory Tower book Learning of a reclusive professor with foreign accent. It's the exact opposite of Fiend without a face, in which everyone was super suspicious of the science facility and it's possible connections to all the strange things that were occurring. But here the Sheriff's not having any of that crap. Yeah, totally,

the sheriff. The sheriff has so much faith in the professor. Uh and and John Agar actually like ribs him for it. He's like, well, I guess there's no getting over the wall of prestige. So anyway, we follow Professor Deemer. Now he goes back to his lab. We see him checking on his experiments, and he's got all these specimens. He's got giant rats and giant rabbits and giant guinea pigs and a giant tarantula in a glass tank. It's like an aquarium tank, but I guess without water in it.

And we see him working on his notes, which include like numbers of days since an injection of something. The farther out from the injection, the bigger the animal gets. And the tarantula is already too big, like it's already her responsibly big. This is already like giant tortoise sized. Anyway, while he's doing his experiments. Oops, there's another guy who looks like Eric Jacobs did at the beginning, and he comes in. He bashes Deemer on the head with something

he sets fired everything. He injects Deemer with the mystery serum. Uh. This guy has identified as Paul, so I think this was Deemer's other research assistant. That that there were the three of them working in the house and two of them got this condition. Oh and during the fighting, the glass of the aquarium breaks and the tarantula escapes out the open door while the humans are fighting. So Deemer

survives this, I think. I think somehow Paul Paul is killed in the fight, and Deemer manages to put out the fire, but his laboratory is ruined, and then he heads out in the middle of the night to secretly bury the other guy. This is the scene with the hilarious monkey jump scare that I mentioned earlier, but it also ends in a very cute and sweet way. After Deemer catches the monkey in his arms, he's like, Coco, you startled me, and clearly loves his monkey. He's like, oh,

your paws are burned. I'll help you. If he gets some monk key bomb monkey bomb will go right on there. Uh. So then we go back to more action with John Agar and the sheriff. John Agar shows up back in town to report. He's like, hey, I followed up on this. I went to the medical librarian Phoenix, and I confirmed there has never been a case in recorded history of acromegalia developing in four days. And he says, I may be a simple country doctor, but I know what I know.

And uh And again the sheriff is not having it. He's like, are you trying to say the professor was lying to us? You want me to charge him with confusing a country doctor. He is ruthless and just dressing down John Agar in these scenes. Yeah, but John agar suspicions are not only not going down, they're mounting. He's suspicious now, not just about the death. He's raising in a big old eyebrow, at the whole operation. He says, Jacobs and Deemer are two of the leading nutrient biologists

in the world. And he says, when there are two guys like that they hold up in a remote desert mansion, you know what that means. They're probably trying to do secret research. Oh. And then we meet another character here comes Joe Birch, the newspaperman who just wanders into the into the office, and he's on the case. He wants information and he's going to go investigate Deemer himself. We get the impression that he is an irritating and tenacious attack dog. Yeah. I looked up this actor and he

he appeared in a lot of things back then. I think he was on the Andy Griff Show at some point. Um, I couldn't pinpoint exactly what I recognized him from, but he has that face that that smug um. This is the face that's the smug and a little too assertive. You know, he's he's taking too much pleasure in messing with your business. And I feel like that's probably the sort of character he played a lot. I don't know, if you agree to me. His face has has slight

notes of Christopher Guest. Yeah maybe so yeah. Anyway, Okay, so we just met another character. We're gonna meet yet another character. And this is when Maracorda shows up, arrives in town by bus. You've got a bunch of luggage, and she goes into the hotel and meets Josh there, oh old Josh, and she says, Hey, I'm looking to get to the Deemer house. You know, how can I get there? And he gives her this whole speech, basically, well you can't get there from here. She She's like,

wouldn't it, couldn't you call me? Uh? Would you mind calling me a cab? And he says, I wouldn't mind it a bit, but it won't do no good. But anyway, what do you know? John Agar walks in and the moment he and Maracorda size each other up, you know, there might as well be a saxophone lick on the soundtrack. It's just love at first sight. They're immediately flirting and John Agar is going to give her a ride to

the Deemer house. There's a reaction to this whole scene where Josh the hotel guys he they leave and he just leans back and says directly into the camera, it's getting to be a fast world. But so we're with John Agar Maro Corda. They introduced themselves to each other while riding in the convertible. Uh, she says, oh. She makes clear her name is Steve, and he goes, I like Steve, and they they flirt and you know, he wants to know, Hey, why are you going out to Deemers?

What's going on there? And she explains she's getting her PhD in biology and she's going to study with Deemer and Jacobs. Uh. And this is where John Agar says the line I wrote it down. He says, I knew it would happen. Give women the vote, and what do you get lady scientists? And her retort as well students so far. But so she explains she's going to live at the house and cook for them, but also do

science in the lab. Yeah, it seems like they're asking a lot like this is really should have been like two or three different hires here, and they should have just kept Steve for for just lab work type stuff. And you know what, they maybe should have arranged for transportation by join the town and their secluded um laboratory here. Well, I think Deemer doesn't even know she's coming. It's she only made arrangements with Jacobs, remember, and he died in

the desert. Oh, and so they also talked abo that. John Agar is like, well, by the way, the guy you're coming to meet here is dead, and she's like, oh no, but anyway, when so they they're about to arrive at the Deemer house, and what follows is an absolutely extraordinary scene of nonsensical techno babble where Professor Deemer is explaining his experiments. Tomorrow Corday and John Agar so they arrive Deemer, the Deemer character is already in the

middle of an interview with Joe Birch, the newspaperman. Uh, you know, he's he's explaining what happened to his lab. He's got a monkey on his shoulders while he's doing it, and Joe Birch wants to know more about what happened to Jacobs. But Deemer is done. He's like, this interview is over, and Joe Birch has a sidekick with him. It's a cowboy photographer named Ridley, and he wants Ridley to get a picture of them. He's like Pat the

monkey professor. Because so anyway, the newspaper guys leave and then uh, Matt Hastings and Steve are left there with Deemer, and Deemer of course is like, what who are you? Before Steve can introduce her, say, Matt jumps in and says, this is Stephanie Clayton. She goes by Steve. You know, she's the graduate student who is going to come work with you in your lab, or maybe not with you. I think she's the one who's going to come work with Professor Jacobs. You know. Unfortunately he turned into a

Frankenstein and exploded in the desert. Um, so I guess she I guess she has to assist Leo G. Carroll instead. Yeah, and then this is the scene where he's like, well, you probably don't want to stay, but if you want to, then fine we can use you. Yeah exactly, He's like, I'm not sure you want to stay on seeing is you know how my lab is on fire and everyone is dead. And she's like, oh, I would love to be of service. Um, so they begin the lab to oh.

This is also the scene where he's like, he says, I didn't expect to see a biologist that looked like you. I mean that as a compliment of course, Deemer Deamer. It makes you wonder like, is this what happened to the other two researchers that Frankenstein themselves? Like did they get sick of Deemer making annoying comments at them? And they're like, it's time to inject the new tree? And yes, anyway, begin the lab tour, so uh Deemer explains, everything that

I have and care for is here. Um And so they're looking around and John Agar starts looking down into a containment box, which is one of those boxes like in the credits of The Simpsons. You know, it's got the gloves, the sealed gloves coming in from the outside so you can manipulate stuff on the inside, but it stays contained. This is a great lab scene, by the way, that the whole set is great. There's there's just a

lot of fun gear. There are scenes even I think at this point in later where they're like multiple Bunsen burners going in the background, the various glass containers having bubbling liquids. So there's a lot going on here. And it's a it's it's a it's a neat set totally. And they leave the beaker's burning when they're they leave the house and the beakers are still burning. Yeah. I think it's that kind of lappiness that that's what led to a giant spider rampaging across the hills. Here. I

have to agree. Here, Okay, now here's where some of the technobabble starts. John Iger, he looks at the beaker he says, what's in the beaker? Deemer says a nutrient. Steve says, you mean a synthetic How does that follow from a nutrient? Deemer says completely. Non organic food concentrate medicine has lengthened the lifespan and people live longer, but the food supply remains fairly static. World population is increasing at the rate of twenty five million a year, an

overcrowded world. That means not enough to eat. The disease of hunger, like most diseases, well it spreads. There are two billion people in the world today. In nineteen five, there will be three billion. In the year two thousand, there will be three billion, six hundred and twenty five million. You're off by a few billion there um. And he says the world may not be able to deuce enough food to feed all these people. Now, perhaps you'll understand

what an inexpensive nutrient will mean. And John Agar, instead of saying every everything you just said is wrong, he says, well, not many of us look that far into the future, sir, And Deemer says, our business is the future. No man can do it on his own. Of course, you don't pull it out of your hat like a magician's rabbit. You build on what hundreds of others have learned before you. Okay. John Agar then says, I thought synthesis was impossible without

a bonding agent to hold everything together. Deemer says, and we use the simplest of all the atom Let me show you. And then they motioned to a room that's like sealed behind glass, but there's a table in there with a bunch of vials on it. And then Matt, looking through the glass at it these vials on the table, says, that's an isotope, isn't it. Deemer says, a radio act to isotope ammoniac. And then Matt says, and that's what binds your solution. Deemer says, binds it and triggers it

using it. Eric's dreame in mind, maybe a reality before. But then there's a phone call that interrupts whatever he was going to say, interrupts this beautiful sequence of events. And I was just thinking, by god, this like we could do a whole episode on just trying to sort out the weirdness of all the science babble he just said.

Now it is worth noting that it is Leo G. Carroll saying all of the science babble, and so it is at least stated in a very nice British accent, which has makes it a lot more believable for all the wrong reasons. I guess what they're all saying is sort of equally like huh. But the John Agar lines sound much stupider than the Deemer ones, Like when John Agar says, that's an isotope, isn't it? It's just like

a table. Yeah. But if I understand the scheme here that this, well, the scientific objective here is the population is growing. There's not going to be enough food for everyone. So what if we could just inject nutrients directly into our body so we don't have to eat. I think

that is the idea they're saying. Now. Of course they get all the population statistics wrong, and of course, you know, at the time this movie was being made, I don't have a lot of knowledge about this, but you know, something in the mid century, I think, like the fifties through especially, I think like the late sixties early seventies, there was the the Third Agricultural Revolution going on, you know, the the Green Revolution, which had a bunch of changes

in in crops that allowed for increased crop yields and food production. Um. So it's interesting that this is simultaneous with like real advances going on in the world, but by completely different means, by completely different means than using an isotope. Oh but anyway, so the phone call, it's for John Agar. He's got to go do a house call. But before he leaves, he gets deem or permission to do an autopsy on Jacobs to see if it was

really quote acromegalia. And then so he's leaving and then deemers talking to Steve and he's like, well, now I'll show you to your quarters, which just made me think basically, it's gonna be like, Steve, let me show you to your glass aquarium tank where the one where you'll be staying. The previous tenant left a few patches of silk webbing and scrat corpses. We'll have to get those cleaned up.

But anyway, so we followed John Agar around. He does the autopsy, he comes out to talk with the sheriff and admits that his suspicions were wrong. He says, yep, yep, the death was caused by acromegalia and this is where and the Sheriff's like, you mean, the professor was right. This scene, by the way, it takes place in front of two stained glass windows, which I've read online that at least one of these windows it was later used

in Psycho. Oh. Interesting. I have to say, a colorful stained glass window like this in black and white, it has a unique kind of feel to it, uh as it does in Psycho. I agree. I don't recall when it is in Psycho, but I can totally see that it clicks for me. It seems to make sense. But so, yeah, I guess they're in the medical examiner's office or something, and um, yeah, so you know, the Sheriff's like, you mean, the professor was right? And then he does another just

absolutely brutal, demoralizing dressing down of John Agar. Oh yeah, this is where he says, next time, I'm going to bring in a doctor from Phoenix. It's just just so brutal, Like I feel like most in real life, how many professionals would take this degree of of of dressing down from uh the old crank. But but Agar just kind of takes it, takes it in stride. Well, nothing bothers him. So in the middle third of the movie. I'm gonna skip more lightly over a few things here, but we

see Deemer and Steve working in the laboratory. They're getting more explanations of of how the nutrient works, what's gone wrong with previous experiments, and so forth. Uh, Steve. Oh, there's a part where Steve has to leave for town and she says the line is science is science, but a girl must get her hair done. So she's gonna go get her hair done, and also like thirty things like you later run into her aunt and she has

like thirty thirty. She has a bunch of parcels she's picked up, so I don't know, I mean, she did just move to the area. I'm sure these are all important purchases. Well, but also we're supposed to get the impression that this town has like a hundred people in it. What's the shopping district like in Rock Desert, Arizona or whatever?

This is? So John Agar and Steve meet up while she's in town, and then they walk around sit on benches and they flirt and they have a romantic afternoon that ends with them going for a ride in the desert and they have a have a nice hike and sit under a rock formation to have a cigarette, when suddenly there is a landslide that nearly crushes them and they have to they have to get out of the way. By the way, the whole time they're out in the desert, here in the middle of the day, John Agar is

in full jacket and tie. Yes, with those enormous shoulders on the that that that that jacket. I just was weirded out by the jacket the whole time. I guess jacket. Yeah, I guess it's the style of the day. But nobody else's shoulders are that big by virtue of the garment alone, seemingly. I don't know. Maybe agars shoulders are really that long, but I doubt it. Well, So after there's a landslide, Steve is like, I've had enough of the unknown for one day. And she she's sort of pondering in the car.

She's like, that rock slide. Something must have caused it. You can almost tell, like an earlier draft of the script head or say, like it's almost as if there was a giant spider up there or something. And this is when John Agar says, you can't second guess the desert. But we see we start to see Deemer presenting the same symptoms as his colleagues from earlier. Uh you know

he oh. Uh. Steve shows John Agar around the lab some more, and deemers like, you shouldn't have done that, You should have you know, you're you're not allowed to bring people in. And then meanwhile John Agar in the sheriff go investigate a rancher's complaints that his horses and cattle are being stripped of all flesh in the night, and uh, it's leaving just piles of clean bones in the grass. Later, I think the rancher himself is eaten mysteriously.

And they find that a car was thrown off the highway as if it was picked up from above and tossed thirty feet. But they also keep finding big strange puddles of some sort of whitish substance. And at first they're they're all like a little too unconcerned over this. They're like, like, what are this? Why are there giant puddles of white liquid? And they're like it's probably not related, But then they eventually come back around to it. John Agar tries to assess what is in the puddles of

goo by tasting it. He like he dips his fingers and the goo and he like puts it in his mouth and then he goes, it's not milk, not milk, it's not cheese, and I don't know, you have to have it tested. I think he concludes its insect venom. But also in this middle section of the movie, we start getting more and more shots of the actual tarantula, Like we watched the tarantula attack a bunch of horses on a ranch at night and then attack the rancher, throw the car off the road, and so forth, and

man again, the special effects look pretty great. Yeah, yeah, they do um and the spider comes off as a real threat. It's it's kind of scary to why you don't, you know, see people visibly digested by the spider and so forth. But it's still pretty horrifying to see the see it to come in and all the cut to the I think the puppet spider pinchers and all as it's actually supposed to be grabbing the individual, and then they cut away and leave the grizzly details to your imagination,

as it should be in a film from this era. Yeah. Well, eventually Steve gets concerned about Professor Deemer because of the symptoms he's showing and uh and so John Aygar goes to help. Uh. He he shows up there and Deemer can hardly breathe. Then, so John Agar gives him some kind of injection. I don't think it specified what it is, but here it's finally time for Deemer to spill the beans. He says that, Okay, he and Jacobs had been working on this together quote since our days at oak Ridge.

I assume he's referring to oak Ridge, Tennessee, which was the production site for the Manhattan Project during World War Two, developing the atomic bomb. So this, along with the sort of vague talk about quote an isotope or a radioactive isotope, makes me think they're sort of getting some atomic age stuff in here. But but they're they're just not very

clear on how it works. Anyway, Deemer says, you know, Jacobs, he was an impatient old man, and even though the nutrients sometimes failed on the animals they were testing it on, he thought it still might work on humans. So one day, while Deemer was out, Jacobs and the other guy, Paul Lundon, they decided, well, you know, let's do it. Let's inject ourselves with it, and like it keeps making the rabbits explode, but you know, it just might work on humans. Let's

try it. Let's experiment on ourselves with this dangerous nutrient, and that's apparently how it goes down. But you know, I kept I I would look back on this and I had questions that I'm sure the film, this is not a film that I think was really trying to play with any subtlety like this. But like when one of the Frankenstein researchers injects Deemer, there's this sense of like like now you're gonna die too. Now you're like

a vengeance almost. That made me question like, well, well, who injected who did Deem or inject them because they seem very vengeful towards him if they just injected themselves. But um, the film doesn't actually push uh an audience um interpretation in that direction at any point, So it's probably just me overthinking it. Yeah, I know what you're talking about with that scene that is weird when Lund injects Deemer. I don't know exactly what to make of that.

It could be a product of like an earlier draft of the script or something where maybe at one point, Deemer's character was supposed to be more malicious, and then they realized and worked a little better. If he was not, I don't know, but at any rate, he's a Deemer Certainly Frankenstein ngu pretty hard. At this point, Deemer says, the isotope triggered our nutrient into a nightmare. That's a quote Deemer. He also in the scene he gets very

emotional about his specimens. He's like walking through the lab kind of saying, you should have seen them all before the fire. They lived on nothing but our nutrient. A rat eight times normal size, the guinea pig big as a police dog, a tarantula lost all lost. Oh, and John agar Is is interested in the tarantula. He's like, what happened to it? And Deemer says it got burned, but we know otherwise. And he passes out due to

grief about his precious tarantula. So they put him to bed. Uh. John agar tell Steve that there is no hope whatsoever for him, but gives her some pills and says to give him to Deemer for pain, and then he says he's got to go check on something because we know what's going on. John John Agar spidy senses are tingling, especially since he's seen that goo out in the ranch. So this is where he goes to the Agricultural Institute

to get the goose samples tested. He wonders if it's insect venom while he meets Mr Drysdale here at the lab, and Drysdale tells him it's not insect venom. He says, quote, it's from a species called a rack nidda. You mean a spider a tarantula to be exact. But the scientist says, I've never seen so much of it. He says, there's more venom in this test tube than you'd find in

a hundred tarantulas. And then by simple math, John Agar concludes, well, a tarantula that could secrete that much venom must be a hundred times larger than a regular tarantula. But this is just a sample, Like, this is just what he fit into the tube, not the amount that was produced. Yeah, this is just, you know, what he was able to put in the tube, not not counting the other puddles that were litter all over the place of the scene of the murder. By the way, I hope that the

tarantula the giant tarantula. Also ate that plus sized rat and that guinea pig the size of a police dog if they escaped, because you know, otherwise, if it's skipping those and going straight to humans, like, shame on, new tarantula, at least eat the other plus sized animals first. They never address what happened to the other animals that I was thinking that after the movie was over. It's like they burned the tarantula, but there could be a rampaging

guinea pig the size of a blue whale. Yeah, they could be in a sequel, just rolling across the hills. Well, anyway, Johnny Gar tells the scientist about all the puddles, and the scientist is incredulous, but he and then he's like, anyway, let's watch an educational film strip about tarantula's Uh so we learned all kinds of things in the scene. First.

The really funny thing here is that apparently the scientists begins by using the film strip to demonstrate that there are no such things in nature as tarantulas that are a hundred feet tall. So like he's like, you know, see the largest tarantulas in South America, it's only a foot in diameter with the legs stretched out the ones in Arizona, or even smaller. So so you see, you know, a tarantula the size of a blue whale is just

not to be found in nature. I found it interesting that the video they watch does acknowledge the tarantula hawk wasp, you know, the the wasp that that that that lay their eggs inside of the tarantula. Uh, Because I was thinking to myself, it's like, well, you know, kudos that they acknowledge that that these wasps are really at the top of the heap and not the tarantula, because I felt like they might have been tempted to edit things so that they just position the tarantula as more fierce

than it actually is. Well, let's see what they do say, because we learn a lot of things from this film strip. So we learned the following. Okay, are you ready, let's do it. Tarantula's have eight legs. Correct, they can move faster than you think. Depends on what you think. Yeah. Yeah. They say this assures him of a long life, the scientists disgustingly saying him of the tarantula. I don't know why this assures him of a long life. Sometimes twenty

five years. Okay, don't I don't know that. Maybe I don't have the facts the keyed up on that. Uh. They say the spider wasp is the tarantula's deadliest enemy. Strong case to be made for it. Okay. From here we go to tarantula does not know the meaning of fear. Well, yes, that's probably true. Uh, he'll back down a rattlesnake if he has to. Well, we are given the cinematic evidence of this. Uh. Quote their flesh eaters, these are John Agar's words, and desert beetles are their usual diet. Okay,

we have more footages provided, so we buy this. Okay. Their jaws are powerful enough to pierce a man's finger, so they say it could be the case. They pre digest their food by flooding the wound with a powerful solvent so that the flesh can be sucked into the body. And then John A. Car says that would account for the bones um. But then finally the scientist says, fortunately, the venom of a tarantula is no more dangerous to

a human than a hornet sting. And he tells John Agar He's solemnly looks at him and says, we must accept them as we do the rest of God's creatures. What a strange thing to say. It's just like, I know you don't like it, but you have to accept it. They are part of nature. By the way, if anyone out there is wondering what it might be like to be eaten by a giant spider, we we have an episode in the vault somewhere that we devoted to the very question that one was fun Um. Yeah, So the

scientists like, look, you know, they're just part of God's plan. Uh, you got to accept them. And he says each animal as a function within its own world. And then John Agar is like, yeah, but what if one got really big? And then the scientist says, then, and this is a quote, then expect something that's fiercer, more cruel, and deadly than anything that ever walked the earth. Cut straight to giant tarantula walking through the desert, knocking down telephone lines and

power cables. Yeah, and it is just upsettingly big at this point. It's it's like it's big enough at this point that you're it's how many people would it take to feed this thing? It's how many horses, how many cattle? It's just way too big. Somebody needs to do something about the spider. So we see the spider out in the in the desert in the middle of the night. It eats a couple of cowboys who are sleeping out

under the stars. This is that classic trip that we've talked about before when you have new characters suddenly introduced. This late in the Monster movie. Oh it's not looking good. They are food. Yeah, But John Agar gets in touch with the sheriff and he's like, okay, time to arm everyone called the state police meet me at the Deemer place, and the sheriff reluctantly believes him. But but here's where we get the attack on Maracorda in the Deemer house,

so that the tarantula creeps up on the house. Uh, this is the scene where we see the tarantula peeking in through the window. Yeah, and um it's it's a creepy scene. That big tarantula pumpet with his big eyes. Very effective, I thought. And this is just the beginning of a full on attack on the house, which is an exciting sequence with lots of cool effects and uh special effects, big spider parts ramming in through the walls and so forth. Yeah, it attacks the house. It bites

through the roof. It's fangs are coming into Deemer's room. I think it. I think it eats Deemer owen Deemer full pajamas by the way, glorious. Yeah, full pajamas with the stripes and that. Yeah, he's going. Um. Steve escapes instead of running into the basement, though she runs outside. Luckily for her, John Agar is just then arrived being to pick her up in his convertible, and the tarantula chases the cars. It speeds down the highway, and I love how they don't even talk about it. You know

that she gets in the car they drive away. She's not like giant spider. That was weird, huh yeah. Um. But the rendezvous with the police and then every the police, everybody now sees the spider. So there's no more debate about whether there's a giant spider. We're all on the same page now, all of humankind must span together to annihilate it. Uh. And so this part they get like more. Corda and John Agar get into the police car and ride off, and then we see two cops approaching the

spider with guns drawn. I was like, what okay, And I guess they just needed to be doomed. But then it gets even weirder when I see okay, no, they're not just randomly walking at the spider pointing guns at it. They were going to get John Agar's car. So the premise of this scene is that this classic convertible is worth at least two human lives. Well, I remember correctly, it was a sports car. Like, this is a new car.

This is a nice car. They're like, it's our duty as law enforcement officers to make sure the spider doesn't eat this fine automobile. Yeah, but unfortunately the spider eats them instead. Uh So, John Agar and Mark Corday ride back with the cops and they're all on the radio like, get us all the dynamite you can find, and get napalm too. And we've seen the sheriff saying dog gone and I wish I had some nitro. And they set a big trap for the spider on the highway. They

lay out all this dynamite. They really use a lot of dynamite, but it doesn't work. No, no, no. Also, okay, here's a question that's come up in recent episodes. Why is John Agar in charge here? Biggest shoulders. Once again, this is what was the movie where we were talking about this problem of movies where suddenly a random civilian is allowed to be involved in police business, or even in charge of police business. I guess just because they're

the hero. Oh, it shows up all the time. Yeah, where it's someone's a photographer, but somehow they're in every scene of the investigation, like they're suddenly co lead detective or something. Yeah. So like basically John Agar's character gets to call in an airstrike. Yes, I get why he's John Agar. I guess, yeah, Oh it was an atragon. Remember it was those those photographers, Yes, I do now, Yeah, like all of the military leaders are listening to what

these sleazy photographers are telling them to do. You know. I guess it comes down in an emergency situation, like somebody needs to to take the lead and tell people what to do and uh. And so it holds true in any emergency situation, including giant spiders. Okay, but so the dynamite trap doesn't work spiders coming toward town. I guess they're only hope at this point is the air force. And again, this is such a nineteen fifties movie because it literally just ends with the military coming in and

destroying the monster and it works and that's it. Yeah, So like the Clinting Eastwood flies in in a jet with a few other jets. They dropped napalm on the spider and then the spider catches on fire and it actually looks very brutal. Like you said, they had some kind of puppet that they set fire too. I felt bad for the tarantula. And then that's just the end. Just that's straight to the end title card Monsters on Fire. Nobody has anything to say about it. The end a

universal international picture. Why did so many movies of this period end exactly like this? I'm sure you know what I'm talking about, Like, no additional character resolution, no day Newmont, the monster is dead, there's no comment on it. Film ends immediately. Yeah, they wrap it up in a nice tight bow. They get the movie, uh, you know, in under time. And I have to say, sometimes I kind

of missed this. I feel like modern films, especially, they're always trying to play like for d chest with their endings, and sometimes I just want to say, look, it's okay if you just blow up the monster and in the movie, you know, we literally like you see the monster splatter, it's clearly dead. And then just the end, Yeah, it's it's it's okay if like the military just shows up and blows up the monster and we can just imagine how these characters interacted thereafter. We don't need thirty more

minutes of the movie, okay. But to counter this, what if it ended with a stinger, which is okay, you know, uh, John Agar and Marcorda, They're like, well, we're in love now, we're gonna have a happy life together. But then in the background you see a giant guinea pigs stampedeing over the mountains. Well, obviously I would love that, uh setting up the sequel that never was um any of the giant animals coming back, that would have been good or

the same. By the naming convention, though it would have to be tarantula to col and guinea pig. Yeah yeah, the guinea pig is it's still the size of a police thought. And then because that's a that's the one question you have to ask. So different animals grow different in different ways. So and clearly we've already established the nutrient affects people in different ways as well, Like it doesn't seem to be making fifty foot tall humans. It's just um, you know, killing humans over the course of

like four days. Meanwhile, the spider keeps growing and growing. What happens to the guinea pig? Does I think they's blowde Does it just stay the size of a police dog? Or does it become enormous as well? Well? To side a little bit of biology, I am pretty sure that there are stricter size limits on arthropods than there are on mammals. I think presumably you could actually get a bigger guinea pig than you could get a big spider. Because spider, what are the reasons? I know we've talked

about this before. I have something to do with respiration that like arthur pods, like insects and spiders, they have to uh like do gas exchange through their skin And if you just get a certain amount of volume, you can't do enough of that with the outside surface. Yeah. And plus he goes without saying for for many for most animals, you would be can asking this question about you can't just scale it up because the things are gonna happen, like the legs are going to just snap

underneath its weight. It's it's like that body size is not meant to be scaled up to the size of a skyscraper. It's just not going to support that creature anymore, so it could potentially just fall apart. I think it also affects stuff about body heat and cooling and all that. So yeah, anyway, yeah, yeah, the square cube law comes into play and so forth. But I guess what we're trying to say is that this can't happen. This didn't

really happen Tarantula fictional film. We we are like Mr Drysdale in the thing, saying, see, let me educate you about how they're not there are not in fact whale size spiders. Um. Fun kind of tie in for this movie. So I watched this film the other day. In a few days prior, I saw the new Jordan Peel movie Nope Um over the weekend. And I'm not gonna share any spoilers on Nope other than to say it's it's fun, fun flick with a lot of surprises in it. But

uh Nope. Takes place in the California desert, with scenes of some sort of a lurking threat being present and also scenes of horses. Uh So, while again, while this movie Tarantula was set in Arizona. It was filmed in California, and it features what feel like some of the same sorts of rolling hills and places as well as cattles and cattle and horses. Um, so I was looking this up,

I was just like, I wonder how close the settings were. Well, Tarantula was filmed in Lucerne Valley and Pivotal Nope, scenes were filmed in Santa Clarita, and those are about a hundred miles apart. So, um, you know, still same neck of the state to at least a limited extent. Maybe our local Californian listeners can chime in on the differences,

please do. All right, Well, that's that's Tarantula again. Nine film and probably one of the probably one of the more entertaining giant animal films of the era that you could seek out. I agree this one is a lot of fun. I think it's just the right combination of um brisk pace, great absurdity, and uh genuinely good special effects for the time. It's it's a lot of fun.

All right. Well, we'll hope you'll join us next time with this this uh, these episodes Weird House Cinema they published every Friday, and the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed and normally where a science podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but on Fridays we set most of that aside and just talk about a weird film. Uh.

Two websites of note for Weird House Cinema. There's some mut music dot com, which is just a blog where I'll do some blog posts about these episodes and include things like the trailer and related video or audio if it's applicable to the film that we're featuring. But also weird House has a Letterboxed account that's U l e T T E r b o x d. Our user name there is weird House. It's a fun website. It's really really I have more and more I'm using Letterboxed

to help research films. Uh. They have some wonderful interface options, like, for instance, you can go to our list under weird House. We have a list of all the episodes we've done, and you can do things with like quick drop down. You can see like which movies we've done from the nineteen fifties, which movies we've done from the nineteen sixties, etcetera, which we can separate them by genre and so forth.

So it's a really fun website that that I'm I'm having I'm having a great time using and we're on there, so if you're on there, follow us. We'll all have a good time watching movies together. Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future, just to say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.

Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.