You can smell it in the air now, with the advent of warmer temperatures – that freshness in the breeze that signals the coming of spring. Flowers blossom; grass greens and lengthens; trees sprout protrusions of supple leaf.

Spring … when men’s minds turn to thoughts of … GIANT INSECTS THREATENING TO STOMP ENTIRE CITIES INTO RUBBLE!!!

Okay, so maybe I’m not your typical springtime guy, but when the weather warms up, the bugs come out. That nifty little lamp outside your front door starts pulling double duty. Moths flash and dart in the glow of the porch light. Fireflies put on a show in your backyard. Just imagine what the light show would look like if the fireflies were forty feet long!

If you’ve never seen the film before and have no idea what to expect, you’d be hard-pressed to figure out what the hell’s going on until the first gi-ant (hyuck hyuck) pokes its big ugly mug up over the top of a sand dune. Joan Weldon’s Dr. Patricia Medford is not your typical defenseless woman, but when it comes right down to it, she can scream with the best of ‘em – and she lets fly with a howler when that ant shows up. Fay Wray, eat your heart out!

The second act is more in line with your typical monster movie fare: the good guys find the monsters’ hangout and trash it, then go inside to clear away the stragglers. The third act turns the film into something else again: a hide-and-seek thriller. You know the monsters are in there; you’re just not sure where. The three separate and distinct ways in which the story moves is enough to distinguish it from the literally dozens of dime-store knockoffs that followed it. It’s cool bug stuff, man. Trust me.

Tarantula is also an excellent big bug movie, and my personal favorite in this quaint little category. Directed by genre veteran Jack Arnold (Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Incredible Shrinking Man, It Came From Outer Space, This Island Earth) in 1955, this has so many cool elements it’s hard to keep up with all of them! The special effects stand the test of time very well (due in part to the fact that the title creature is, rather conveniently, completely black, making matte and process shots easy to blend). The film has great camp value in its casting of Leo G. Carroll as the archetypal "mad scientist." He even becomes a monster of sorts himself before his untimely death at the end of the first act, having given himself acromegaly by shooting up with his own super-growth serum!

Of course, he experimented with animals, too. Made some big rabbits. Big rooster, even. Scary? Nah. But a tarantula.?!!? My God, man … even if you could do it, why the hell would you want to?

The scariest scene in the film is at the end of the first act. Professor Deemer’s laboratory burns. The animals panic, breaking free of their prisons or dying in the fire. Does the tarantula die? What’s the name of this movie, pal? Heck no, it doesn’t die! It crawls out the front door and into the night. The movie poster art depicts a spider as big as a house, but it’s not that big yet. It needs to eat a few cows first. At this point, it’s about as big as a German Shepherd.

Small enough to hide … but easily big enough to kill a man.

Gulp.

Anyway, while the thought of a dog-sized spider creeps me out completely, it gets a lot bigger in a hurry. There are some great scenes foreshadowing the utter chaos to come, including one real gem in which John Agar and Mara Corday enjoy a romantic little picnic at the base of a huge rock outcropping in the middle of the desert. They haven’t even popped the top off the coffee Thermos when a huge chunk of rock almost creams them. Making their narrow escape, they don’t look behind them, but we get to see what they don’t – giant spider legs emerging from behind the escarpment!!!

The moment is like that; it’s one of those triple-exclamation-point scenes, with great music to match (Henry Mancini contributed uncredited music for this, according to IMDB). There are quite a few of these triple-exclamation-point scenes – big action spikes in which the spider wreaks mayhem on the poor backwoods community. There’s a classic in which the giant, slavering spider with glowing eyes like car headlights (have we seen this trick repeated, much less effectively, in a certain other giant spider movie?) stares into Mara Corday’s bedroom window as she undresses for bed! All that genetically-altered food not only makes him big, it makes him horny for human women. Go figure. Geneticists the world over, let this be a lesson to you.

The last reel of this flick totally rules. Every attempt to stop the monster has failed. Now, as the evil arachnid approaches the township of our hapless heroes, an Air Force pilot flies over the giant creature, dumps napalm all over him and fries him to a cinder! Great stuff. Like The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, the final scene of the film is the monster’s death scene. There is no need for character resolution. The only character that really matters in the final analysis is the monster. That’s why they call ‘em monster movies instead of people-vs.-monster movies!

Most of you probably know by now that the Air Force pilot who dumps the napalm is Clint Eastwood in his first screen role, but it’s such a cool little tidbit I had to mention it in case you didn’t know! Good ol’ Clint. I think Clint would have made a great monster-killer hero in his younger days. Can you imagine him facing down a werewolf, his trusty .44 loaded up with silver bullets? "Do you feel lucky, dog-breath?"

I digress.

Hope you’ve heard enough about good big bug movies, because this last one’s a serious turkey – but aah, turkeys are fun, and this movie, while blatantly ripping off the two I’ve already mentioned, still manages to be fun. The Beginning of the End, one of Burt I. Gordon’s non-masterpieces, lensed in 1957 and starring Peter Graves, is not the worst big bug flick (I’d have to reserve that privilege for The Giant Spider Invasion), but even It Came from Beneath the Sea is better, and the giant octopus in that flick only had six tentacles!

In this unintentionally hilarious loser, it’s giant grasshoppers (mutated by the old standby, radiation) who pose the threat to humanity. That they’re any threat at all is pretty hard to buy, since it’s obvious that they’re never close enough to people to do any damage. Always distanced from their human victims by at least one generation of bad film stock, these rear-projected, badly matted ineptly-handled real grasshoppers hop around on photographs of large buildings in an attempt to convince you they’re climbing to the top of Sears tower to rain death and destruction on the city of Chicago. The only problem is, they occasionally climb away from the edge of the buildings, which means they’re climbing on the sky. Whee. I can almost buy The Blob being poured across a color glossy photo of the diner, but this?

Peter Graves went on to star in my absolute favorite low-budget nasty, It Conquered the World, in which he embarrassed himself further, if such a thing is possible. In this one, he comes up with a sure-fire way to keep the bugs out of the big city: blast their mating call over a loudspeaker and lure them into a nearby lake. Hey, it works.

You know, I’m not a fisherman myself, but I’m thinking grasshoppers make pretty decent bait. Giant bluegill, anyone? Carp as big as a houseboat? I grew up near a dam with a big man-made lake, and there were rumors of blind catfish big as Volkswagens in the deep water. Sounds like excellent sequel material to me …

Spring has sprung! Enjoy!

And enjoy it we will, thanks Dave!   Remember all you green-thumb types as you're battling those backyard bugs:  It could be worse!  Cheers!

Article copyright Dave Duggins