Cardboard Science: Over A Barrel

Year: 1955

Director: Jack Arnold

Cast: John Agar, Mara Corday, Leo G. Carroll

Run Time: 1 hour 20 minutes

It's that time of year again! The leaves are turning colors (if you live somewhere other than California, at least) and the weather has cooled (again, if you live elsewhere - it is currently 90 degrees as I'm writing this), and as Halloween approaches, I am once again delivering on my blood pact with Hunter Allen of Kinemalogue. That's right, it's time for the Ninth Annual (that number can't possibly be right) Great Switcheroo, where I give him three of my '80s slasher titles and he generously trades three '50s B-movies. Keep an eye on his blog, where those reviews will be coming a little later in the month. But I like to get a jump on things and start the month big, and what could be bigger than Tarantula?

Tarantula, in addition to being one of the films mentioned in the "Science Fiction, Double Feature" opening number of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, is chock full of folks who have cropped up in Cardboard Science entries past. This includes everyone's favorite squarejaw John Agar (the star of none other than The Brain from Planet Arous), Mara Corday (of The Giant Claw), and director Jack Arnold (who brought us both It Came from Outer Space and Creature from the Black Lagoon).

He's so prolific, it's like he's got eight legs or something.

Tarantula follows Dr. Matt Hastings (John Agar) of Desert Rock, Arizona, as he investigates the mysterious death of a man inflicted with an elephantiasis-esque disease. This brings him into the orbit of Professor Gerald Deemer (Leo G. Carroll), who is seeking to discover a nutrient that will feed the Earth's booming population, as well as his beautiful new live-in assistant, Stephanie "Steve" Clayton (Mara Corday). Of course the nutrient causes uncontrolled growth in animals and of course Deemer injects it into a tarantula, because why wouldn't you? There's a fire in the lab and bada bing, bada boom, you've got yourself a giant mutant tarantula taking to the hills.

Pictured: The hills, as played by the same two mile stretch of California scrub where they shot every sci-fi movie for 12 years. And a mutant. We'll put a pin in that for now.

So, I've seen my fair share of giant bug films at this point. We had giant killer ants in Them! and giant killer locusts in Beginning of the End. It would be foolhardy to suggest that I expected the special effects in Tarantula to be any good at all. But I've got say, there's just not a lot of there there, even by the standards of these kinds of movies. 

The shots of the spider roaming through the hillsides are... fine, though they are not numerous. The plate containing the shot of the spider seems a little fuzzy even at the best of times, his feet never really connecting with the ground properly. Now, don't get me wrong, this is all fine. They did what they could with the technology and budget they were working with.

What's most frustrating about the spider - other than the fact that it's kind of a negligible feature of a movie named Tarantula - is that they can think of absolutely nothing to do with it. There sure are a greatdeal of shots of twitching mandibles inching closer to screaming men, but those get old rather quickly, and there just isn't any pizzazz to the sequence where they battle the humongous arachnid. It really makes you miss the dazzling stupidity of something like The Giant Claw's final battle when all you get is three minutes of the military shooting bigger and bigger weapons at the spider until they succeed.

Third time's a charm!

It's not like Them! had a particularly academically rigorous third act, but at least it had folks in the trenches fighting big monsters! Here we are watching people watch a spider get shot three times, and it's a huge radioactive snooze. The movie thrives when it gets smaller, ironically, as there is an incredibly random subplot of human test subjects developing strange mutations. Those effects are solid in exactly the B-movie way you want, and there are also a few shots of caged animals in early stages of growth hormone injection that look quite terrific by any standard.

It's too much to ask that the human plot really carry the weight of a project like this, but the characters here aren't particularly interesting either (with the exception of an extremely minor character - the snooping receptionist Josh). One's knowledge of the genre (as well as the absurdly over-the-top score) might lead one to expect that Agar and Corday are destined to fall in love and at least provide the requisite "they're kissing at the end of the movie even though they've known each other for all of 12 seconds" moment, but that's not in the cards either. Which is transgressive, I suppose, but I rather think it's an accident deriving from the fact that the screenwriters don't seem to care one whit about any of these characters.

Carroll is doing fine work here, providing his scenes with a twinge of menace that the rest of the film is sorely lacking. Otherwise, unfortunately, it's boilerplate all the way down, without enough flavor to make it memorable or even memorably bad.

That which is indistinguishable from magic:

*Forget the tarantula, these people need glasses. They drive down the road and then an ominous sting announces the arrival of the tarantula - from the same direction they were driving in. It's physically impossible to not have noticed it. 

The morality of the past, in the future!:

*There's something tremendously 1950s about the opening sequence, where a dying man who is wandering through the desert in his pajamas is still wearing dress shoes and socks.

*John Agar's assertion that being in the desert is so boring it makes couples want to fuck is probably still solid advice. His disgusted comments on giving women the right to vote leading to them becoming scientists less so.

*The worldwide population number that has thrown Leo G. Carroll into such a tizzy is 3 billion. Imagine.

Sensawunda:

*The most terrifying scene in the movie is an early shot when John Agar enters his office, and an extra on a bench is just watching him with lifeless eyes and the broadest grin on his face, like he's advertising Smile 65 years ahead of schedule.

TL;DR: Tarantula is a boilerplate giant monster attack movie, without too much to recommend it above any of its brethren.

Rating: 5/10

Word Count: 1107

Cardboard Science on Popcorn Culture
2014: Invaders from Mars (1953) The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) Them! (1954)
2015: The Giant Claw (1957) It Came from Beneath the Sea (1955) The Brain from Planet Arous (1957)
2016: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) Godzilla (1954) The Beginning of the End (1957)
2017: It Conquered the World (1958) I Married a Monster from Outer Space (1958) Forbidden Planet (1956)
2018: The Fly (1958) Attack of the 50 Ft. Woman (1958) Fiend without a Face (1958)
2019: Mysterious Island (1961) Robinson Crusoe on Mars (1964) Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959)

2020: The Colossus of New York (1958) It Came from Outer Space (1953) Rodan (1956)

2021: Robot Monster (1953) Queen of Outer Space (1958) The Cyclops (1957)

2022: Tarantula (1955) The Amazing Colossal Man (1957) Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959)

Census Bloodbath on Kinemalogue
2014: My Bloody Valentine (1981) Pieces (1982) The Burning (1981)
2015: Terror Train (1980) The House on Sorority Row (1983) Killer Party (1986)
2016: The Initiation (1984) Chopping Mall (1986) I, Madman  (1989)
2017: Slumber Party Massacre (1982) Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II (1987) Happy Birthday to Me (1981)
2018: The Prowler (1981) Slumber Party Massacre II (1987) Death Spa (1989)
2019: Phantom of the Mall: Eric's Revenge (1989) Psycho III (1986) StageFright: Aquarius (1987)

2020: Night School (1981) The Fan (1981) Madhouse (1981)

2021: Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988) Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989) The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2 (1986)

2022: Hell Night (1981) Return to Horror High (1987) Cutting Class (1989)

Cardboard Science: Wild Goose Chase

Year: 1957

Director: Fred F. Sears

Cast: Jeff Morrow, Mara Corday, Morris Ankrum

Run Time: 1 hour 15 minutes

MPAA Rating: N/A

This October, we’re bringing the past to life. As I’ve now reached the halfway point in my Halloween marathon, it’s time to bring back another tradition from our ‘Ween season spectacular: Cardboard Science! That’s right, it’s our second annual crossover with BFF (Blog Friend Forever) Hunter Allen over at Kinemalogue! He’ll be taking on three choice treats from my Census Bloodbath gallery of terrors and I’ve been assigned three tricks from his favored genre: 50’s sci-fi.

Obviously, I’m not quite as well equipped to discuss this genre in a cinematically historical context. My understanding of 50’s B-movies begins and ends at The Blob. But I’m greatly looking forward to taking on this challenge of exploring a new genre. I hope you are too!

Last year, I left you off with the insipid Invaders from Mars, the pedantic but engaging The Day the Earth Stood Still, and the secretly pretty cool Them!. It’s time to dig a little deeper, starting with our first film: The Giant Claw.

Oooooh……

First off, that title is a bit of a misnomer. There’s definitely more claws than they’ve been letting on, and they’re attached to a bird the size of a battleship. When electronics engineer Mitch MacAfee (Jeff Morrow) is test piloting a plane for the military, he spots this brobdingnagian buzzard out of the corner of his eye. In no time, planes start disappearing all over North American (including Canada, marking what must be the first time our northerly neighbors were ever mentioned in a Hollywood film – history comes alive!).

It’s up to Mitch and mathematician turned girlfriend Sally (Mara Corday) to discover the truth behind the giant fowl and help the Good Old Boys of the army discover how to stop it. They’re accepted with open arms because there’s nothing the military likes more than letting plucky civilians have access to top secret equipment and intelligence. Of course, the job gets more challenging as the bird widens its range, attacking all the important world cities that white people care about and they discoverer that the beast is surrounded by an impenetrable force field of antimatter.

Science, y’all.

For an epically corny giant monster movie that doesn’t even have the decency to be an allegory for nuclear woes. The Giant Claw actually starts off pretty strong. It’s a pretty typical first act, but “generic done well” is still a surprising stroke of quality for a film of his caliber. The strong-jawed hero with a belt around his ribs in a futile attempt to give him a barrel chest, the beautiful and smart heroine, the slow burn before the bird’s reveal… It’s all there.

The really startling thing is the dialogue, which is just genuinely fun. Sally and Mitch’s sly flirting incorporates a good half dozen baseball metaphors, and they approach every scenario – no matter how intimidating – with wry, clever banter. A personal favorite comes when Mitch is urgently called to the general’s office and he answers the door in his bathrobe: “You keep your shirt on and I’ll get my pants on.” Ibsen it ain’t, but it’s highly amusing and far more intelligent than one could reasonably expect from a flick called The Giant Claw.

Somebody call Aaron Sorkin and let’s get a remake going.

So here we have clever characters barreling through a variety of aerial antics, including an airplane crash that’s edited using every trick in the book to make it only minimally cheesy, like a quick dash of parmesan. These engaging archetypes are attempting to solve the mystery of the Unidentified Flying Object and discover that it’s attacking in a spiral pattern, a nice touch that shows off their skill and aptitude. The film starts rockin’ and rollin’, but it rocks a little too hard and rolls onto its back, where it gets stuck.

About midway through the film, all those nice setups (the blossoming romance, the spiral theory, any subtextual potential) scatter like cockroaches when a light is turned on. Where once it was a slightly eerie giant monster flick, the film abruptly converts into a hard science extravaganza of macho insipidity. The discovery of the bird’s flight pattern is never utilized, in favor of blundering after it with big-ass guns while a scientist provides an absurdly detailed lecture about the nature of antimatter and serosorted quarks or whatever. Look, it’s not like I took notes. This flick had the budget of a sewer rat, it’s not like they could have consulted with Stephen Hawking to keep the science accurate.

The question that arises is this: Does the giant bird really need to have an antimatter force field to avoid radar and repel missiles? It’s already an evil space bird. Can’t it just be really strong or something? It smacks of pandering to the popular science of the day, and the intense focus on educating the viewer smashes the characters into oblivion, converting them into soulless flesh lumps that nod and go “Oh, how interesting.” Then they build a Science is Magic weapon so they can go shoot more rockets at a bird. Whee.

It’s a primitive, almost vulgar approach to the conclusion of a story that began with such relative elegance. The finale is such an anticlimax that it dominates my negative responses to this movie even more than the hideous puppet that plays the bird.

Behold, The Giant Flaw!

Yup, this is the abomination summoned to terrify the masses. I’ve seen my share of shoddy special effects, but the work here is just mortifying. There’s a couple decent moment overall, including a crumbling building and a wounded pilot with an alarming amount of blood for the 1957 crowd (this was before Psycho, remember, the musty charms of which were the goriest thing American audiences ever bore witness to at the time). But that outsized chicken is past redemption. It looks like one of those hand turkeys that kindergarteners trace pm Thanksgiving, and its stiff beak never once matches up with the forlorn cacophony of caws on the soundtrack.

Luckily, the bird does provide some of that crappy B-move sparkle. The Giant Claw doesn’t have too much in the way of camp (it’s way too enthusiastic about didacticism for that), but between the bird and a chirpy narrator espousing the community values of the 1950’s, there’s enough to go on for cinematic dumpster divers (my favorite moment is when the disembodied voiceover seems to get actively frustrated at Mitch’s failures to create a machine, a touch very reminiscent of Arrested Development). And let us never forget that, for about fifty percent of the time, the film is actually kind of a good movie. Unfortunately, the sum of its parts is far lesser than the whole, but as it stands, The Giant Claw is a totally passable, mildly amusing diversion.

That which is indistinguishable from magic:

• Mitch builds an anti-antimatter weapon with a screwdriver.
• Cabin pressurizing technology is so advanced on military planes that they can access the outside via a regular swinging door.
• The bird isn’t antimatter, but it comes from an antimatter galaxy and surrounds itself with a cloud of anti… Johnson! Get the encyclopedia!

The morality of the past, I the future!:

• A committed relationship can totally start by kissing an unconscious woman on a plane. No flaws here.
• Sally might be a mathematician, but we can’t ask a man to get the sandwiches and coffee.
• “A kiss you take is better than one you give.”
• A woman shoots a gun in this movie, but it’s OK because she’s from Montana. Some men probably taught her how, so we’re safe.

Sensawunda:

• I’m honestly impressed that they allowed Mitch to make a spanking joke in the first scene. Go 1957!
• In 1957, you could say “holey Toledo” and “honest to Pete” in the same sentence without getting shot.

TL;DR: The Giant Claw has a promising beginning but quickly devolves into insipidity.

Rating: 5/10

Word Count: 1340

Cardboard Science on Popcorn Culture

2014: Invaders from Mars (1953) The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) Them! (1954)
2015: The Giant Claw (1957) It Came from Beneath the Sea (1955) The Brain from Planet Arous (1957)
2016: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) Godzilla (1954) The Beginning of the End (1957)
2017: It Conquered the World (1958) I Married a Monster from Outer Space (1958) Forbidden Planet (1956)
2018: The Fly (1958) Attack of the 50 Ft. Woman (1958) Fiend Without a Face (1958)
2019: Mysterious Island (1961) Robinson Crusoe on Mars (1964) Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959)

Census Bloodbath on Kinemalogue
2014: My Bloody Valentine (1981) Pieces (1982) The Burning (1981)
2015: Terror Train (1980) The House on Sorority Row (1983) Killer Party (1986)
2016: The Initiation (1984) Chopping Mall (1986) I, Madman  (1989)
2017: Slumber Party Massacre (1982) Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II (1987) Happy Birthday to Me (1981)
2018: The Prowler (1981) Slumber Party Massacre II (1987) Death Spa (1989)
2019: Phantom of the Mall: Eric's Revenge (1989) Psycho III (1986) StageFright: Aquarius (1987)