Director: Jack Arnold
Writers: Robert M. Fresco, Martin Berkeley
Stars: John Agar, Mara Corday, Leo G. Carroll
Run Time: 1 Hour, 20 Minutes
Link: https://amzn.to/36jtV05
Synopsis
We open on a panoramic shot of the desert. A man staggers toward the camera and collapses. From his outfit, we see that he’s wearing pajamas, and he’s been disfigured or mutated horribly. Credits roll.
Dr. Hastings lands his plane and announces that he’s just delivered twins. He heads into town to the hotel where he has his office. The sheriff calls, as there’s been an emergency. Hastings looks at the body that the sheriff found, and they think he’s Dr. Jacobs, a scientist who worked for professor Deemer as a “nutrient biologist.” Deemer identifies the body, which is a real mess.
Deemer explains that it’s acromegalia, a disease which causes deformity. Jacobs was fine four days ago, and it progressed rapidly. Hastings doesn’t believe the story, since the disease takes years to progress to that stage.
We cut to Deemer working in his lab. He loads up a syringe and injects it into a rat. We see several giant rats and guinea pigs in the cages behind him. We also see a tarantula in a cage that’s at least five feet long. As Deemer gets ready to inject a monkey, another deformed man comes into the lab and tears the place up. He injects Deemer with the serum, but in the fight, the tarantula gets out of his cage and escapes. A fire starts, and Deemer’s lab is destroyed. The mutant man dies, and Deemer buries him in the desert.
Stephanie Clayton comes to town, and Hastings drives her out to Deemer’s place; she’s here as a student scientist. We see the giant tarantula, and it’s more like twelve feet across now. Deemer opens up and explains what he’s been up to. He’s using a radioactive isotope with nutrients to end world hunger. Deemer’s not a mad scientist, nor does he hide or lie about anything. He honestly thinks the tarantula burned up in the fire with the other lab animals.
Hastings does an autopsy on Jacobs and it really is acromegaly, but he can’t explain the speed of the disease. We can see that Deemer is starting to show symptoms as well.
On her day off, Stephanie and Hastings go out on a date in the desert. They narrowly miss getting squashed by falling rocks, but then they don’t hang around long enough to see the giant tarantula climbing up the other side of the mountain.
The sheriff calls Hastings again, and now farm animals in the area are being stripped down to the bone. We see the tarantula, big as a house, stalking the horses in their corral. The farmer sees it, takes a shot, and is killed by the spider. There’s some wet stuff left behind, and Hastings says it’s some kind of insect venom.
Stephanie calls, and Deemer is looking horrible. She screams, and Hastings rushes out to help. Deemer explains that Jacobs and Paul starting experimenting on themselves with the nutrient, and acromegaly was the side effect. Deemer brags about his giant rat, guinea pig, and tarantula.
Hastings immediately picks up on the tarantula connection. He sees an expert on tarantulas who explains all about the spider.
All the phone lines suddenly stop working in town; the spider has knocked out the phone cables. The spider attacks Deemer’s house, and Stephanie runs out the front door when it tears open the roof to get Deemer. She drives off with Hastings towards town, and the spider follows. The police set up submachine guns, but that doesn’t work.
They call in the army with dynamite, napalm, and everything they’ve got. Can they keep the monster out of town? They mine the road with dynamite. But that doesn’t help. The Air Force comes in, and they shoot it with missiles. Finally, it catches fire from the napalm and missiles, and it stops just outside of town. Has mankind learned its lesson?
Commentary
The effects for the giant lab animals in Deemer’s lab are excellent— they looked real to me. Most of the giant spider effects are well done also, but they are darker than everything else in the film, which takes away from the aesthetic a lot. Many of the spider shots are just a big black blur on the screen.
There’s really no mystery here; we see all along what’s going on. It’s suspenseful, since it keeps getting bigger and bigger and the deaths start stacking up. At what point will it become too big to stop?
Clint Eastwood has his second uncredited film appearance as a fighter pilot in the climax.