Tarantula (film)

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Movie
Original title Tarantula
Tarantula Logo 001.svg
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1955
length 81 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Jack Arnold
script Robert M. Fresco
Martin Berkeley
production William Alland
music Joseph Gershenson
camera George Robinson
Clifford Stine
cut William Morgan
occupation
synchronization

Tarantula is an American black and white science fiction horror thriller from 1955 starring John Agar , Mara Corday and Leo G. Carroll , directed by Jack Arnold . A huge tarantula can escape its terrarium unnoticed and becomes a deadly danger for humans and animals. Although Tarantula is a typical B-movie , the film has become a cult classic over the decades.

The script is based on a story by Jack Arnold and Robert M. Fresco. Fresco found inspiration for the script for this film by his own television play No Food for Thought , which he wrote for the Science Fiction Theater in May 1955.

action

A hideously deformed body is found near the desert nest of Desert Rock, Arizona . Sheriff Jack Andrews accompanies the country doctor Dr. Matt Hastings to the morgue. The scientist Prof. Gerald Deemer arrives there and identifies the deceased as his colleague and best friend Dr. Eric Jacobs, with whom he worked on scientific experiments in a lonely house in the desert. He claims Jacobs died of complications from acromegaly . Dr. Hastings has doubts about this diagnosis.

Prof. Deemer returns to his house and works in his laboratory, where he breeds larger-than-life rats, mice and guinea pigs. A very large tarantula also lives in a glass box. While the scientist is absorbed in his experiments, a deformed figure sneaks up to him from the background and attacks him. It is his laboratory assistant Paul Lund. A fight ensues, the laboratory is ravaged by fire, and the monstrous figure gives Deemer an injection before she dies. The spider escapes unnoticed. Deemer secretly buries his employee in the desert at night.

In the meantime, Dr. Hastings in the town of beautiful Stephanie "Steve" Clayton. The professor's new assistant has just arrived and the doctor is taking her to Deemer's house in the desert. Deemer shows the two of them his laboratory and tells them that he is working on a synthetic nutrient fluid that will one day solve the world's hunger problems.

The professor trains his assistant Steve Clayton and shows her his experiments. Meanwhile, his injection site is starting to hurt. Shortly afterwards, Dr. Hastings and Steve. During a cigarette break in the desert, huge boulders suddenly detach from a stone mound, which almost kills them. They flee in horror and drive away in their car. After their departure you can see the gigantic tarantula appear behind the rocks.

Back in the professor's house, the laboratory assistant discovers that the professor is changing. He too begins to show deformations, a result of the injection of growth serum by the laboratory technician. She is seized with horror. Dr. Hastings and the sheriff now discover the skeletons of several horses and a puddle with a mysterious whitish liquid at the farmer Andy Anderson's. The men return to town, perplexed.

At night, the giant spider attacks the farm, killing Anderson and two men who drive through the night in a pickup truck. In the morning, Dr. Hastings took a sample of the liquid found there at the scene of the accident and identified it as an insecticide under his microscope. Steve Clayton informs the doctor that Prof. Deemer is seriously ill. Hastings drives out to the professor and tries to help him. He now reveals to him that Jacobs and the laboratory technician Paul have fallen victim to a self-experiment, and tells Hastings the whole story. Deemer believes that many of his animals were killed in the laboratory fire, he also thinks the spider is dead. Hastings pricks up his ears and flies to Phoenix to have his findings confirmed. Now a light is dawning on him. He suspects that a giant spider lives in the desert.

When the doctor returns to the desert city late in the evening, he is aware of the impending danger and alerts the sheriff. Meanwhile, the spider attacks Deemer's house. Steve panics when the monster breaks the window pane. The professor wakes up too, terribly deformed. The spider devours him while Steve escapes and is saved by Matt at the last minute. On the road they meet the sheriff and some police officers. While some of the men flee, two policemen who stayed behind open fire with their submachine guns, but to no avail, they too are devoured. There is excitement as the city is evacuated. Hastings suggests using fighter planes with napalm bombs against the monster.

A combat squadron starts in the morning while the city police use dynamite to set a booby trap for the spider. Now even the last doubters, including newspaper reporter Joe Burch, are convinced of the seriousness of the situation. The monster doesn't mind the blast on the country road. Unharmed, it continues its way into the city. The small group continues to flee to the abandoned city. When the spider appears on the outskirts, the fighter jets attack. They drop napalm bombs until the monster perishes in a sea of ​​flames. As if spellbound, the people from the city watch the end of the monster.

Background information

The film works with two horror scenarios, on the one hand the fear of spiders ( arachnophobia ) and on the other hand the shocking, hideous deformations that are said to have been caused by the acromegaly as a result of the laboratory tests. Prof. Deemer's serum triggers different reactions: giant growth in animals, physical deformations in humans. However, the film does not provide an explanation for this; it is merely pointed out that successful animal experiments do not necessarily lead to the desired results in humans. Insects and reptiles were often objects of the cinemas flooded with science fiction and horror films in the 1950s, such as the film Formicula , which was shown in cinemas in 1954 , where ants mutate to gigantic sizes due to radiation, or the 1959 film Die Nacht der eerie beasts where this happens to mice.

A real tarantula in a miniature landscape was used for the filming. Their movements were controlled with compressed air nozzles. Some aids such as cotton, miniature mounds, and leg supports covered with hair were also used. The desert scenes set in Arizona were filmed in California, where the heat prevailing there threatened to melt the tools constructed with wax, such as the gap between the large front teeth of the spider. For Jack Arnold "playing with fear" was not just his "declared hobbyhorse" since Tarantula, like his previously made monster films Danger from Space (1953), The Terror of the Amazon (1954) or Metaluna IV Doesn't Answer (1955) demonstrate impressively.

For the then 25-year-old Clint Eastwood , who had been used in four other films by Universal Pictures in small roles in 1955 , the part of the squadron commander was one of his first film appearances. He can only be seen in the last few minutes of the movie when he starts the attack with his fighter jets from the nearby air base. Eastwood's debut in The Monster Revenge was also directed by Jack Arnold; Also the producer William Alland and the main actor John Agar were there. Eastwood, whose preference for quick work processes is well known, already valued Arnold's way of working back then. Mara Corday, who played the female lead, had a reputation as a screaming queen because she could scream bloodcurdily. The film marks the beginning of a long friendship between Eastwood and Corday. After more than 20 years of filming hiatus, Eastwood later brought her back in front of the camera in four of his films after her husband, actor Richard Long , passed away.

In the action film Coogan's Big Bluff (1968), Eastwood announced with a wink that he counts Tarantula to be an important stop on his way - a giant monster spider crawls across the screen for a few seconds as an ornament in a party decoration.

The Briton Leo G. Carroll, who embodied the character of the biologist Professor Deemer, was a "passionate theater actor" who was predestined for the role of the mad scientist, eaten by ambition. He worked with Alfred Hitchcock several times and was one of the director's preferred mimes. Leading actor John Agar, briefly married to Shirley Temple , was considered a gifted B movie star. Agar was aware that his films were not high cinematic art, but he was of the opinion that he had entertained people splendidly, and that was what ultimately counted in this profession.

In the opening song Science Fiction / Double Feature of the Rocky Horror Show , Tarantula is sung about: "I knew Leo G. Carroll was over a barrel when Tarantula took to the hills". Henry Mancini , who was later nominated for an Oscar 18 times for his outstanding achievements, also worked in the music department for the film .

The film produced by Universal International contains a few errors: Once the trick technique was used improperly, one of the spider's legs "disappears" briefly in the sky. Several F-84 fighter jets are launched to destroy the monster, but the attack is carried out by F-80 / P-80 machines . In both the original and the dubbed version, the tires of the doctor's plane make screeching noises, like on an asphalt runway , even though it touches down on a sand runway . The English "billion" ("Milliarde") was translated into German "Billion". The scientist says: "There are already two trillion people in the world", which would correspond to two thousand billion people. With the annual growth of 25 million people assumed by scientists, "the new millennium begins with 3 trillion and 625 million". If translated correctly, however, it would be 3 billion and 625 million people in 2000.

publication

The film premiered in Los Angeles on November 23, 1955 , and opened in Rochester , New York State on December 7, 1955 . The German premiere of the film was on March 23, 1956; in Austria it was released on December 6, 1956. His revival experienced Tarantula in October 1984 at the Chicago International Film Festival .

It also started in 1956 in the following countries: Sweden, Finland, France, Australia; In 1957/1958 he started in Portugal, Turkey and Denmark. It was also published in Argentina, Brazil, Spain, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Serbia and the Soviet Union.

In the Federal Republic of Germany, for example, the film was advertised with the following headlines:

  • "A film that lifts the veil on the future, a film of tomorrow that tomorrow can be a film of today."
  • “Terror strikes the country, panic rages through the city. Man himself created the monster that threatens to destroy him. "
  • "Out of the retort grew the horrible monster that shows humanity that it is helpless: Tarantula"
  • "They made love, but the gigantic shadow of a gigantic spider lay over their happiness."
  • “A film for strong nerves. A thriller from the world of tomorrow. "
  • "The biggest monster that the screen has shown so far - The exciting film utopia about a giant spider: Tarantula"
  • “Man made them a monster. Man made her a murderer. "
  • “The victim of his scientific experiments took horrific revenge. He created his own murderer. "

The first DVD release took place on April 13, 2006, on August 16, 2012 the film was re-released on DVD as part of the “Jahr100Film” series, and on June 12, 2014 it was released as Blu-ray. DeAgostini Deutschland GmbH included the film under number 42 in their Clint Eastwood DVD collection. The DVD comes with a 14-page booklet with information about the film.

synchronization

The German synchronous processing was created in 1956 in the studios of Berliner Synchron GmbH in Berlin . Volker Becker was responsible for the dubbing and directing .

role actor Voice actor
Dr. Matt Hastings John Agar Gert Günther Hoffmann
Stephanie "Steve" Clayton Mara Corday Ilse Kiewiet
Professor Gerald Deemer Leo G. Carroll Alfred Haase
Sheriff Jack Andrews Nestor Paiva Robert Klupp
Joe Burch Ross Elliott Friedrich Joloff
scientist Raymond Bailey Siegfried Schürenberg

criticism

The film took fourth place for the online portal Moviepilot - after Die Demonischen (1956), Die Rache der Pharaonen (1959) and Dracula (1958) among the “best genre films of the 50s” in the science fiction / horror category a.

"[...] classic big insect film with illuminating subplots and special effects that are well worth seeing. (Rating: 3 stars = very good). "

- Lexicon "Films on TV"

“[...] a horror film staged with simple dramaturgical means, but exciting and stylish, which has become a classic of the genre. Incidentally, but effectively, he develops a subliminal erotic and political mythology: the spider as an incarnation of threatening instincts, but also as an expression of growing fears of a nuclear war. "

- Lexicon of international film

Variety found that a tarantula the size of a barn brought horror in this well-made science fiction film . The film is staged quite believably and well played . Leo G. Carroll was excellent in his role as a scientist, and John Agar, in his role as a young country doctor at Mara Corday's side, was more than up to the romantic demands that would be placed on both of them.

In TimeOut it was said that we are dealing with the production to a largely effective merging of mad scientists, the mutant monsters under the direction of the best science fiction directors of the 50s had created: Jack Arnold.

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops was of the opinion that despite a small budget, director Jack Arnold had managed to make the threat clear. In the beginning, the scientific experiments are even more frightening than the monster spider rampages illustrated with special effects. However, the film demonstrates stylized violence and how threatening the situation is. He was deemed morally objectionable .

literature

  • Frank Schnelle, Frank Arnold, Lars-Olav Beier , Robert Fischer et al .: Hollywood Professional. Jack Arnold and his films. Fischer-Wiedleroither, Stuttgart 1993, ISBN 3-924098-05-0

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Release certificate for Tarantula . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , January 2006 (PDF; test number: 11 425 V / DVD).
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g h i The great Clint Eastwood DVD Collection No. 42 Tarantula by DeAgostini, Verlag DeAgostini Deutschland GmbH, Hamburg, editorial management: Ariane Ossowski, editing: Joachim Seidel, project management: Niklas Fürer, 2016, p. 3-7.
  3. ↑ Tarantula (1955) Screenplay Info at TCM - Turner Classic Movies (English)
  4. ↑ a b Tarantula (1955) Articles at TCM (English)
  5. ↑ a b Volker Schoneberg: Tarantula (1955) at dienachtderlebendentexte.wordpress.com. Retrieved October 11, 2016.
  6. ↑ Tarantula on bmovies.de (information, posters and posters)
  7. ^ Tarantula , Illustrierte Film-Bühne No. 3212, Munich undated / Thomas Bräutigam: Lexicon of film and television synchronization. More than 2000 films and series with their German voice actors etc. Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-89602-289-X , p. 352
  8. ^ Adolf Heinzlmeier and Berndt Schulz in Lexicon Films on TV (extended new edition). Rasch and Röhring, Hamburg 1990, ISBN 3-89136-392-3 , p. 802.
  9. ↑ Tarantula. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 27, 2019 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  10. ↑ Review: 'Tarantula' at Variety (English). Retrieved October 11, 2016.
  11. ↑ Tarantula at timeout.com (English)
  12. ↑ Tarantula at archive.usccb.org (English)