Tarantula (1955) dir. Jack Arnold, Universal-International Pictures
What could charitably be called an ape man staggers out into the desert and drops dead. Sheriff Andrews (Nestor Paiva) is puzzled and so's Dr. Hastings (John Agar). He guesses it might be Eric Jacobs, a scientist Hastings knew but how he got like that? No idea.
Enter Dr. Deemer (Leo G. Carroll), Jacobs' employer. He is very quick to get the death declared natural causes. Naturally Hastings would like to know what in nature could cause a man to become so deformed? Especially since Hastings saw Jacobs a few days ago and he looked just fine.
Deemer has an answer-acromegaly. Yup, Jacobs have been suffering in silence for years and it was only recently the disease took a severe turn. The sheriff buys it and declares the case closed. Hastings, not being an idiot, doesn't buy it.
Back at Deemer's isolated lab, another ape man is running amuck. Seems he was Deemer's other assistant. He seems awfully annoyed with the doc and smashes up the lab, destroying or freeing all the oversized animals and bugs. He even manages to knock out Deemer and inject something in his arm before he drops dead.
Deemer manages to bury the poor devil and clean up the lab before his new assistant arrives. Stephanie "Steve" Clayton (Mara Corday) arrives in town. Since the only taxi is busy, Hastings gives her a ride. Ignoring local reporter Joe Burch (Ross Elliot), Deemer talks to Hastings and explains his work. Namely he's working on reducing world hunger-mostly by injecting radioactive elements into things which makes them bigger.
Starting to see why he runs through so many assistants.
A few days later, a bunch of cattle vanish. Remember those oversized animals? A common tarantula was one of them and we didn't see it die in the fire.
Yup, giant spider. Can Hastings stop this oversized arachnid?
As far as film goes, rather week. The spider fails to really rampage all that much plus the whole radiation to make things big hasn't aged all that well. It just isn't ridiculous enough, but the actors carry themselves well enough.
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