It is kind of surprising, to me at least, that I have never seen this particular giant bug movie. I think I have seen nearly all the others, but somehow this one kept slipping past me. With this screening I can now call my science-fiction double feature viewing complete. That is I have seen ever film referenced in the song Science-Fiction Double Feature at least once. (Of course I have seen some of them many times.)

Tarantula naturally is about a giant spider ravaging the desert countryside killing cattle, ranchers, and hobos, before turning toward the small defenseless town full of ever so tasty civilians.

The film was directed by Jack Arnold who, just a  year earlier, had directed the classic film Creature From The Black Lagoon, (one of my favorite monster movies.) Tarantula is not up to Creature standards in budget, special effects, (Though these are credible) or scripting.  However the film does have some charm to it particularly in the fact that most of the film is not about the giant spider. Mostly the movies focuses on Dr Deemer and why the townspeople who had accept this stranger man now suspects he is up to no good. It doesn’t help that Deemer associate turns up dead in the desert of a deformity  that takes years to develop when he seemed quite healthy and normal just weeks earlier.

Dr. Deemer has been working with radio nucleotides in an attempt to make an artificial food to feed the coming billions in the world population. In other scripts he would have at this point become obsessed with his formula and injected his partner, forcibly, to prove it worked, but no in this movie. The partner and a lab assistance injected themselves without consulting Dr. Deemer certainly that they had liked the problem. Since they both end up dead and deformed clearly they had not, but the assistant, driven mad by his deformity over powers Dr. Deemer and injects him, but in the fight the lab is trashed and a Tarantula, already nearly the size of a man, escapes and continues to grow.

This was a fun little film, but not one I can heartily recommend. (Though if you watch and listen closely you can spot Clint Eastwood in an early role.)