By DAVE DUGGINS

You know, I sure do enjoy bashing the hell out of the occasionally passable but more frequently abysmal movies I review here at HORROR-WOOD–what our delightful British brethren would call a "piss take." Doesn’t that just say it all?

But every once in awhile I’ve gotta take a break.

So this month, I’m not going to be swinging any hatchets, lambasting any hair-brained directors for thinking they could make a decent movie on a budget of fifty bucks, pasting actors and actresses for broad-as-a-barn-door performances, or shooting special effects technicians in the kneecaps for blowing a million bucks on something you could pull off with your little brother’s Revell model kits.

This month, we’re going to take a look at a film I love dearly: Tarantula, starring John Agar, Mara Corday and Leo G. Carroll. This is the horror movie–the big bug movie–as art.

Now I can already hear those snorts and hoots of derision from the peanut gallery. Some guy’s sitting back there muttering, "Dude, you have lost it. This movie sucks every bit as badly as every other garbage gem you’ve coated with sarcasm in the past couple of years."

You know what? That’s cool. That’s your opinion. I respect it. So for those of you who think I’m full of it … write your own damned column in HORROR-WOOD! Call it "Why Tarantula Sucks" and send it to Renfield. If he likes it, he’ll put it in the next issue. It’s a big old world out there, with room for lots of viewpoints.

But until then...just watch yer mouth, pal. It’s art if I say it’s art. And that’s my giant spider you’re talking about.

So let me give you a little background.

The movies I’ve really fallen in love with are mostly the ones I saw when I was a kid. I used to bust my butt to get home after school and catch the 4 o’clock matinee on Channel 6--especially during Science Fiction Week (all the real SF people out there just groan and slap their foreheads when I say this). It could have just as easily been called Big Bug Week or Monster Week. Come to think of it, maybe there was a Big Bug Week. Anyway, it was in this two-hour period before dinner that I came to befriend Sinbad and all his stop-motion buddies, a Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, a giant octopus with only six tentacles, an Id monster, a dinosaur that somehow popped up in the middle of a Western flick … and a giant tarantula. These guys were my friends in grade school, and I visited them again and again in my teens.

You’re probably thinking, "If this guy had movie monsters for friends, he must have been a total geek." Well … of course I was a geek. I’m a writer, man. What did you expect? If I’d been the quarterback of the football team I wouldn’t even know what movies were. I’d know what cheerleaders were. Now sit down and shut up. And if you don’t stop throwing popcorn at the screen I’m going to have you kicked out.

Tarantula stars John Agar, Mara Corday, and Leo G. Carroll.

Where was I? Oh, right. Tarantula. Yeah. Most of these movies didn’t scare me; if anything, I just wanted to be the monster for one day. Just one day, man. All those bigger kids who picked on me would get theirs and then some. The monster movie as power trip.

They also fascinated me in a clinical "how did they do that?" kind of way, and I read everything I could get my hands on about how they did that. For awhile there I was pretty sure my career choice was going to be effects makeup artist, so I could do cool stuff like Leo Carroll’s acromegaly makeup.

But I didn’t really believe it. I wasn’t scared.

Until I saw Tarantula.

Man, that movie scared the crap out of me. And it still gives me that nice shiver down the spine.

As far as I’m concerned it’s less than important that the movie has the same, recycled stock plot of half a hundred monster movies of its ilk. Mad Scientist Leo G. Carroll experiments with a serum to grow oversized plants and feed entire impoverished countries. Of course, he also tries it out on mice, rabbits … and a tarantula. Hey, why not, right? Makes perfect sense. And since you’re trying it out on animals, why not people, too?

Eventually he injects himself, which brings about the aforementioned physical deformities. Mad Scientist, remember. Emphasis on mad.

None of that stuff matters. What does matter is that Carroll’s lab partner, also of questionable mental stability and jacked up on growth serum (hey, man, can you, like, hear colors with that stuff?), accidentally burns the lab to the ground. Most of the mutated animals die in the fire … but, in a moment of slow, dreamlike terror–all the more powerful for being shot in black and white – the tarantula, now the size of a German Shepherd, escapes into the desert night.

It’s at its most frightening in this scene, because it’s big enough to kill you...but small enough to hide. Imagine walking home after the feature, your date on your arm, the two of you smiling, oblivious to anything but each other–and then this thing comes lumbering out of the hedges next to the sidewalk, silent, bloated and dripping with deadly poison.

To stare into those rows of hideous eyes, see your own horrified face, the knowledge of your own impending doom stamped clearly there …

To look into those eyes and survive would mean a life of madness.

Whew.

Anyway, later in the film it gets even larger, so large in fact that it dwarfs a farmhouse, and eventually has to be dispatched by a planeload of napalm (led by a pilot played by none other than Clint Eastwood). End of story--and looking at just the story, there’s not that much to it, is there?

Yes, John Agar and Mara Corday are definitely doing some barn painting–because the script they have to work with is painted in broad, melodramatic strokes. Like most horror, the story on the surface isn’t really the story at all. It’s allegory. And for that guy in the back row throwing popcorn and shouting "Are you trying to tell me this schlocky monster movie is allegorical?"

Yeah, buddy, that’s what I’m trying to tell you. Any horror film that’s doing its job is allegorical. It has subtext. Now sit down. That’s two strikes, buddy. One more and you’re out of here.

There’s some stuff about the film that doesn’t work. But here’s why it doesn’t matter:

There’s that great lab fire scene when the spider escapes.

There’s the scene where, stopped for a romantic interlude in front of a large rock outcropping, our heroes are almost crushed by a huge boulder that falls from the top of the rock face. As they drive away, oblivious, we see one giant spider leg peeking up over the top of the rock face. It’s a moment, man, one of those moments that makes the hair stand up on the back of your neck. It makes you twelve years old again, running home through the dark from your best friend’s house because it’s one thing to say it’s all make believe in the broad light of day...and quite another to hear something creeping stealthily along on the other side of the hedgerow. In the dark. Pacing you as you run.

There’s the scene where the spider peeks down into Mara Corday’s bedroom (and yes, those big glowing spider-eyes are the single cheeseball effect in the whole movie, but by that time the twelve-year-old in my head bought it, and still does). Magic at work, folks. Believe it.

I don’t think for one second that Jack Arnold was trying to create art with this movie. I think he saw the script and thought, "Geez, people absolutely loathe spiders. They’re really gonna be terrified of one that’s bigger than a house!" He made the movie to scare. Spiders scare a lot of people, and the movie still packs a wallop, after all these years.

So the work of the movie is to scare people. But at its best, art just happens.

Thanks, Dave!  You know, there is an art to scaring movie audiences...just consider all the fright flicks made for a lot more money than Tarantula that fail to foster a flicker of fear in fans ("flicker of fear"...that's not bad...).

Article copyright © Dave Duggins.   Visit his website.   Artwork by Erik Weems.

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