Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is
Speaker 1: Rob Lamb and this is Joe McCormick, and today we're
Speaker 1: doing a classic heat hampered in God's Domain movie. It's
Speaker 1: a nineteen fifty atomic age creature feature called Tarantula. Rob.
Speaker 1: This movie was your pick, and I'm so glad you
Speaker 1: picked it. I've never seen it before, but it is
Speaker 1: both m hilarious and pretty good for what it is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I absolutely agree. And it's one that I hadn't seen either,
Speaker 1: but I've been I've been familiar with it for ages.
Speaker 1: Because of course, this is one of of many films
Speaker 1: classic sci fi and horror films that's referenced in the
Speaker 1: Lyrics to Science Fiction Double feature from the Rocky Art
Speaker 1: Picture Show. It goes a little like this, It goes
Speaker 1: Hi knew Leo G. Care was over a barrel wind
Speaker 1: to Rancholla took to the hills, And that's Leo G.
Speaker 1: Carroll's will discuss is in this film, and the tarantula
Speaker 1: does in fact take to the hills. Now, Leo G.
Speaker 1: Carroll was much more famous for being in Alfred Hitchcock
Speaker 1: thrillers a funny coincidence. Just last week I watched north
Speaker 1: By Northwest for the very first time, and he's in
Speaker 1: that playing a character called the Professor, which is what
Speaker 1: he's called in this movie. Yeah, he has, he had,
Speaker 1: He has a great vibe. He has a very scholarly
Speaker 1: atmosphere too, British actor that moved to Hollywood. But yeah,
Speaker 1: this it's interesting because he's not one of these names.
Speaker 1: Even though his name is now synonymous with science fiction
Speaker 1: double feature, he's not one of these actors that that
Speaker 1: was really in a ton of B movies. He's really
Speaker 1: really should be more well known for these Hitchcock films.
Speaker 1: But Rocky Horror Picture Show has immortalized him in another
Speaker 1: direction as well. Well. I think that's the point of
Speaker 1: the lyric, right, he was over a barrel when so
Speaker 1: I think they're saying, like Leo G. Carroll he was
Speaker 1: having some rough times when he ended up into ranchula.
Speaker 1: I don't know if that's true. You know, some of
Speaker 1: the times you see an actor more associated with prestigious
Speaker 1: movies ending up in a creature feature, it's like, oh wow,
Speaker 1: they were really slumming it. But other times you get
Speaker 1: the feeling that this was just fun. They decided to
Speaker 1: be fun to do that. I mean, it varies wildly
Speaker 1: depending on the actor, certainly depending on the production. I
Speaker 1: didn't run across anything that said Leo JI Carroll didn't
Speaker 1: like the experience, But if he were inclined to dislike
Speaker 1: the experience, and he does have to hold a monkey
Speaker 1: and gets eventually covered up with a bunch of makeup,
Speaker 1: so there's plenty of room there where I could imagine
Speaker 1: an actor of his caliber maybe being a little uh
Speaker 1: uh disillusioned by his his foray into sci fi B pictures.
Speaker 1: Rob he does not only have to hold a monkey,
Speaker 1: he has to catch a monkey, because this movie has
Speaker 1: an exquisite uh monkey jumps care where Leo G. Carroll
Speaker 1: is in the middle of the desert in the nighttime,
Speaker 1: secretly burying a body in the sand, and then you
Speaker 1: see a figure sneak up behind him. It's like a silhouette.
Speaker 1: What is it going to be? Is it going to
Speaker 1: be a giant spider? Is it going to be a
Speaker 1: monster man? And then turn it's just a little monkey
Speaker 1: and he has to catch it in his arms. It's adorable.
Speaker 1: Quick poster note on this one. If you look at
Speaker 1: the original poster that features a giant tarantula, like a
Speaker 1: puppet tarantula, and I think this is an image of
Speaker 1: one of the puppets that was used to some extent
Speaker 1: in the film, though a lot of what you see
Speaker 1: is just an actual tarantula. It's made to look like
Speaker 1: it's crawling across the desert hills, but in the poster,
Speaker 1: or at least most of the versions of the poster,
Speaker 1: it is made to look like it is holding a
Speaker 1: woman in its pinchers. This does not actually happen in
Speaker 1: the movie at all, but it's one of those situations
Speaker 1: where the classic trope of the time was, of course,
Speaker 1: show your monster, generally a humanoid monster holding ann conscious woman,
Speaker 1: and that was the that was supposed to, you know,
Speaker 1: drawl in the viewers. It was what they came to expect,
Speaker 1: even though nothing like that actually happens in this film.
Speaker 1: There are so many movies like this from the fifties.
Speaker 1: I think of Bride of the Monster, the Edwood movie,
Speaker 1: which I think the poster for it showed Bella Legosi,
Speaker 1: who is in the movie carrying an unconscious woman in
Speaker 1: his arms, which he does not do in the movie.
Speaker 1: The Attack of the Crab monsters. Poster has the giant crab,
Speaker 1: the giant psychic crab who eats people and gains their knowledge.
Speaker 1: It has a woman in a bathing suit in its claw.
Speaker 1: That never happens in the movie. That puppet never carries anybody.
Speaker 1: It does eat people, but it never holds anybody in
Speaker 1: its claws. I used to have these, some of these
Speaker 1: universal trading cards that I think had been my dad's
Speaker 1: or something my way back in the day, black and white,
Speaker 1: and they have all these images of classic monsters on them,
Speaker 1: and a lot of them are those monsters either scaring
Speaker 1: a woman or holding an unconscious woman, like we're discussing here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the way the posters always depict women sort of in peril,
Speaker 1: especially in peril, and a kind of reclined posture I
Speaker 1: think is supposed to be sexually titillating in some ways
Speaker 1: in a way that would be enough to get people's
Speaker 1: attention but also not to get censored. Yeah, yeah, and
Speaker 1: it's you know, at the time, as a child, I
Speaker 1: would look at these and other things. It was almost like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: she needs to be carried to bed, and here is
Speaker 1: an ape man to do it. Um. Fun fact, we've
Speaker 1: watched a couple of movies that have the German born
Speaker 1: actress Helga Line you know in them, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: the redheaded actor from Horror Rises from the Tomb, as
Speaker 1: well as what was the other film, Aloralized Grasp, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the Looralized Grasp. There's some vampire film. I forget the
Speaker 1: name off hand, but on the front of it, she
Speaker 1: is holding a man in that pose like there's like
Speaker 1: a skinny dude and she's holding him up like that.
Speaker 1: So it's got a nice gender reversal on the trope.
Speaker 1: That's what I want. I want fifties movie posters that
Speaker 1: are switched like that, where it's the lady carrying a
Speaker 1: giant crab in her arms. That would be good. Alright,
Speaker 1: So Tarantula from nineteen five. This is exciting because this
Speaker 1: is also only our fifth fifties movie on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, I would have thought more than that. But
Speaker 1: let's see how many we we did the thing from
Speaker 1: another World, we did um Fiend without a Face, we
Speaker 1: did Not of this Earth, and we did the brain Eaters.
Speaker 1: Is that all of them so far? That's it? You
Speaker 1: got them all? And this makes five? Okay, when you
Speaker 1: rank all those together, Where would you say Tarantula fits. Actually,
Speaker 1: I don't know how you do and compare them. We
Speaker 1: just when you rank them in terms of an absurd
Speaker 1: good time? Where does Tarantula go in there? Oh, for
Speaker 1: sheer fun, I'd say it's top of the pack. For quality,
Speaker 1: I don't know, things probably top of the pack tarantula
Speaker 1: thing or duking it out for top billing here I think, Oh,
Speaker 1: I'd say definitely Thing is the best, if the best
Speaker 1: for non i onic purposes. And though I think it's
Speaker 1: clearly the worst of all of them, I really have
Speaker 1: a soft spot for the brain eaters. That one's never
Speaker 1: gonna leave my heart. All right, Well, let's get to
Speaker 1: the elevator pitch. On this one. I'm just gonna go
Speaker 1: with what's written on the poster, and it is all caps,
Speaker 1: giant spider strikes crawling terror a hundred feet high? Is
Speaker 1: it still crawling if it's a hundred feet high? Something
Speaker 1: about the word crawling to me suggests proximity to the ground.
Speaker 1: That's a good point. All right, Let's hear the Let's
Speaker 1: hear the trailer. This is a great nineteen fifties trailer.
Speaker 1: But what have circumstances were magnifying one of the size
Speaker 1: and strength took it out of its primitive world and
Speaker 1: turned it loose in our Then expect something that's fiercer,
Speaker 1: more cruel, and deadly than anything that ever woked here.
Speaker 1: Even science was stunned. The new atomic miracles should have
Speaker 1: been mankind's greatest boon. Instead, when such power to cause
Speaker 1: phenomenal growth gloop dangerously unstable, man was confused with this
Speaker 1: most shocking blunder. The figgered out nutrient into a nightmare.
Speaker 1: I'm wonder that transformed a tiny insect into a hundred
Speaker 1: books spider that was now ravaging the panic stricken countryside.
Speaker 1: All right, before we continue here, I'm just gonna advise
Speaker 1: everyone out there who is interested in watching Tarantula, well,
Speaker 1: you have a lot of options. I watched Tarantula on
Speaker 1: a double featured disc from the Classic Sci Fi Ultimate
Speaker 1: collection More People, The More People is on the same desk.
Speaker 1: But I've seen that one before. This has been a while.
Speaker 1: I rented this from Video Drome. That collection has some
Speaker 1: nice titles in it. It's pretty cheap, but there's also
Speaker 1: a standalone Universal Vault disc that you can rent or purchase.
Speaker 1: Uh digitally most places as well. It does seem to
Speaker 1: be available on Blu Ray in various formats as well,
Speaker 1: So however you want your Tarantula, it can be provided.
Speaker 1: I did a digital rental on Amazon and their transfer
Speaker 1: looks pretty good. Yeah. Yeah, this one, this one on
Speaker 1: the disc was really solid. In fact, speaking of looking
Speaker 1: pretty good, uh so, Tarantula has a lot of the
Speaker 1: same sort of script pathologies as as many other creature
Speaker 1: features of the time. But the special effects in this movie,
Speaker 1: I would say are excellent for the time period. I mean,
Speaker 1: for nineteen fifty five. The superimposition of the giant spider
Speaker 1: onto the desert backgrounds and everything. I think this is
Speaker 1: out of the park. Yeah. My son walked in while
Speaker 1: I was watching the finale and he immediately said he
Speaker 1: was excited to check it out. He's like, I can
Speaker 1: tell it's not real. So, yes, you can tell it's
Speaker 1: not real. And definitely this style of giant monster, of
Speaker 1: the style of using an actual creature such as a
Speaker 1: spider or a lizard and filming it in such a
Speaker 1: way that it looks big, this largely doesn't really work anymore.
Speaker 1: But I think if you if you take the picture
Speaker 1: in in its time, it still looks pretty good. Oh yeah, So,
Speaker 1: I mean compared this to other movies from around the
Speaker 1: same time that use the same techniques. Birdeye Gordon movies
Speaker 1: are famous for the superimposing uh something onto a different
Speaker 1: background to make it look huge. These look better than
Speaker 1: most of the people who did this. But so, there
Speaker 1: are two different ways of showing a giant spider in
Speaker 1: this movie. One is this uh you know, photographic trick
Speaker 1: where they're taking real footage of a real tarantula and
Speaker 1: then just super imposing it over a background to make
Speaker 1: it look huge. The other one is a puppet. And
Speaker 1: I think the puppet in this movie is killer. It's
Speaker 1: so good. Yeah, the puppet is really good, and and
Speaker 1: I look forward to to talking about the man who
Speaker 1: built the puppet. That's actually a fun story as well. Well.
Speaker 1: But I guess if we're going to have to start
Speaker 1: with the director here, one of the things that I
Speaker 1: didn't realize until after I watched the movie is that
Speaker 1: this is the creature from the Black Lagoon guy. Right, Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is Jack Arnold, who not only directed it, he
Speaker 1: also has a story credit. He lived nineteen twelve through
Speaker 1: uh noted fifties sci fi director for responsible for a
Speaker 1: slew of films, so Creature from the Black Lagoon in
Speaker 1: fifty four for sure, as well as Revenge of the
Speaker 1: Creature in fifty five. He also did nineteen fifty three's
Speaker 1: It Came from Outer Space. He has an uncredited um
Speaker 1: directorial credit on IMDb for This Island Earth, but he
Speaker 1: also directed The Incredible Shrinking Man in fifty seven, The
Speaker 1: Space Children and fifty eight, and Monster on Campus in
Speaker 1: fifty eight. Prior to these sci fi pictures, he did
Speaker 1: a pair of dramas nineteen fifties with These Hands, which
Speaker 1: sounds like a thriller but was produced by the International
Speaker 1: Ladies Garment Workers Union. So I don't think it's a
Speaker 1: I don't think it's like a pro do jal Allow
Speaker 1: jallow kind of film. It's wait. That's the same the
Speaker 1: union that has the commercial in the Star Wars Holiday Special,
Speaker 1: or at least one of the famous tapes of it
Speaker 1: where they're all singing the union song. It's the International
Speaker 1: Lady Ladies Garment Workers Union. Do Do Do Do, do
Speaker 1: the very thing. He also did a nineteen fifty three
Speaker 1: film before all this, titled Girls Night Out, which indeed
Speaker 1: seems to be a film noir thing, and during the
Speaker 1: sixties he ventured into TV. He did a lot of
Speaker 1: work on a lot of popular TV shows, rounding it
Speaker 1: all out with a few episodes of The Love Boat,
Speaker 1: you know. Putting together all of the Jack Arnold movies
Speaker 1: I've seen now, including Tarantula here, the Black Lagoon movies,
Speaker 1: it seems like he specializes in films where, if you
Speaker 1: really stop to think about it, you kind of pity
Speaker 1: the monster and and the humans are sort of the
Speaker 1: bad guys. Yeah, yeah, definitely that's the case with Creature. Um,
Speaker 1: we've i think we've talked about that at least on
Speaker 1: episodes of Stuff to Blow your Mind in the past.
Speaker 1: That Yeah, it's going back and watching Creature from the
Speaker 1: Black Agoon is kind of a weird experience because the
Speaker 1: monster is fabulous, and he is the thing that you
Speaker 1: get behind. He is the he is the character that
Speaker 1: you sympathize with. And I'm not saying Jack Arnold meant
Speaker 1: it that way. I don't think that's what's really intended,
Speaker 1: but it does feel that way because in Creature, you know,
Speaker 1: we've talked about this, I think on the show before,
Speaker 1: like the humans go into his house, there. It's not
Speaker 1: like he's attacking towns or something. Creatures just hanging out
Speaker 1: in a pond somewhere. And then all these uh, these
Speaker 1: the scientists and people with guns show up and they're like, well,
Speaker 1: we're gonna catch this thing. And I guess you're supposed
Speaker 1: to be on their side. I don't know. I will
Speaker 1: say the difference is that having a creature in the
Speaker 1: black logoon seems like a sustainable situation. You can just
Speaker 1: give the creature some room and he will be fine.
Speaker 1: The giant tarantula in this movie, I clearly this is
Speaker 1: not sustainable. Like, clearly something needs to be done. We
Speaker 1: can't just keep having this creature. But to spoil the
Speaker 1: ending the way they deal with it in the end,
Speaker 1: as they napalm it and then the spider is just
Speaker 1: burning in the background. You see it's hairy legs on fire.
Speaker 1: The hair is kind of singing, and they're like, well
Speaker 1: the end a universal international picture, yeah, but also edible,
Speaker 1: potentially edible, right that could they? I mean, ultimately they
Speaker 1: wanted to solve issues about feeding a growing world. Well
Speaker 1: now you have it, giant roasted to rachula, three hundred
Speaker 1: tons of spider meat. Yeah, um on the subject with
Speaker 1: Jack Arnold, though, I was looking into his filmography a bit,
Speaker 1: and I was really intrigued by this nineteen seven film
Speaker 1: that he directed titled The Monolith Monsters, which immediately went
Speaker 1: to Michael Weldon's books to see if that he had
Speaker 1: written anything about it, and I don't think he had.
Speaker 1: But the film sounds curious. A meteorite lands near a
Speaker 1: sleepy desert town, so you know, entirely unlike Tarantula, but
Speaker 1: then it starts growing into skyscraper sized mon a liths
Speaker 1: of stone, so it sounds pretty unique. And that the
Speaker 1: threat is not alien at all, at least not in
Speaker 1: an organic sense. It's like a chemical threat. It's just
Speaker 1: unchecked rock growth. So it kind of sounds ahead of
Speaker 1: its time, like this sounds like something we would maybe
Speaker 1: watch in the nineteen seventies as opposed to in the
Speaker 1: ninety seven. Interesting and one more note Jack Arnold as
Speaker 1: an actor. He had a cameo in John Landis thriller
Speaker 1: Into the Night. I believe he is a man walking
Speaker 1: his dog in that. Oh well, you attached to picture
Speaker 1: from The Monolith Monsters, And now that I can see it,
Speaker 1: it's it makes more sense to me. They are these
Speaker 1: uh giant like sort of shards of obsidian jutting up
Speaker 1: out of the desert. But yeah, they're as big as buildings. Yeah, strange,
Speaker 1: Like I can tell that this probably didn't work without
Speaker 1: even it just this is this isn't maybe what the
Speaker 1: drive in audience was looking for. They ultimately wanted a monster,
Speaker 1: Like how do you even shoot this thing so that
Speaker 1: it's holding a woman's unconscious body? Now, now that is
Speaker 1: a job for a creative poster maker. What do you
Speaker 1: I guess you have the crystals kind of forming a
Speaker 1: hand and the ladies there and I don't know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: yeah it could work. I'm sure a talented poster artist
Speaker 1: good could figure it out. All right, let's get onto
Speaker 1: the screenplay here. A screenplay was written by um two individuals.
Speaker 1: There's Robert M. Fresco, who lived nine, also a writer
Speaker 1: on the Monolith Monster in various TV shows, as well
Speaker 1: as uncredited writing on ninety nine The Alligator People, which
Speaker 1: should be of note to fans of Rocky Rickson. That's right,
Speaker 1: if you're one of those hiding behind the trees with
Speaker 1: moss forever, hearing the swamp birds screaming, or if this
Speaker 1: One's actually less of her boast than some of his
Speaker 1: songs on the Evil One. But I do love that
Speaker 1: line when they see alligator persons in the bog and fog. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's something's really funny about alligator persons instead of
Speaker 1: alligator people. Yes, but but I I and I don't
Speaker 1: know if certain, but I assume he's referring to this film.
Speaker 1: A lot of those songs do refer back to It's
Speaker 1: a classic monster movies and so forth. All Right. The
Speaker 1: other screenplay credit is Martin Berkeley, who lived nineteen o
Speaker 1: four through ninety nine. Screenwriter active through the forties, fifties,
Speaker 1: and sixties. He worked on screenplays for westerns like Green
Speaker 1: Grass of Wyoming and Red Sundown, but also films like
Speaker 1: Revenge of the Creature and The Deadly Mantis, which I
Speaker 1: believe I've seen this one before. This is a giant
Speaker 1: killer mantis. I'm not well, it is technically a giant
Speaker 1: killer mantis, but a giant praying mantis film. Now, I wonder,
Speaker 1: once you had written one Giant Bug screenplay, what was
Speaker 1: it like writing the second and third Giant Bug screenplay?
Speaker 1: Do you like? How are you? How are you coming
Speaker 1: up with new angles on that. What does the giant
Speaker 1: bug mean this time? Yeah, it's a it's an interesting question,
Speaker 1: I think, one that's partially answered by Tarantula in that
Speaker 1: in the way that Tarantula both uh certainly matches the
Speaker 1: sort of pre existing format of giant animal movies, but
Speaker 1: also bucks some of the ends as well discussed and
Speaker 1: not like, most notably being this is not a giant
Speaker 1: atomic monster creature, even though it's very much a product
Speaker 1: of the of the atomic age and during a time
Speaker 1: when so many atomic giant animals were rampaging through cinema.
Speaker 1: That's true. They don't say it's directly atomic radiation, though
Speaker 1: I do think there's a little bit of atomic magic implicated,
Speaker 1: and it's there's a there's a whole sequence in the
Speaker 1: middle of the movie with some of the most gorgeous
Speaker 1: technobabble that you have ever encountered. We're gonna have to
Speaker 1: spend some time on that, but I think they sort
Speaker 1: of are trying to say that there's radioactive something in
Speaker 1: the juice they're squirting into these animals, but it's hard
Speaker 1: to tell. It's hard to decipher alright, Well, speaking of
Speaker 1: the science, everyone please get out your periodic table of
Speaker 1: classic Hollywood actors. Because this movie contains um Agar, um,
Speaker 1: is it Agar or Agar? I'm gonna say Agar, John Agar,
Speaker 1: John Agar, John Agar. In this film, he plays Dr
Speaker 1: Matt Hastings. That's right. Today's John Agar role will be
Speaker 1: played by John Agar, who is just h He's just
Speaker 1: a country doctor with common sense, probably a strong right hook.
Speaker 1: I don't think we ever see him throw one, but
Speaker 1: you can imagine, uh, and apparently a permanent sense of
Speaker 1: amusement at the concept of equal rights for women. Uh.
Speaker 1: And he he really polished his jawline for this movie.
Speaker 1: He is such such a perfect example of the fifties
Speaker 1: creature feature lug hero. Yeah, if you haven't seen this film,
Speaker 1: and you haven't seen John Agar in anything, you can,
Speaker 1: you can still picture him in your mind right now.
Speaker 1: He's exactly like you think he looks. He acts exactly
Speaker 1: like you think he acts. Uh. He lived nine one
Speaker 1: through two thousand and two. Longtime American actor who appeared
Speaker 1: in films from eight through two thousand and one. Uh
Speaker 1: and even I think a two thousand and five release
Speaker 1: via like delayed release. But you can basically divide a
Speaker 1: Gar's work into two categories. War in westerns and B movies,
Speaker 1: and in the former category he acted alongside folks like
Speaker 1: John Wayne and the Sands of theo Jima fort Apachi.
Speaker 1: She wore a yellow ribbon all in the late nineteen forties.
Speaker 1: But then in the B movie category he appeared in
Speaker 1: a lot of quality Monster Mayhem flicks, like The Mole
Speaker 1: People from the nineteen fifty six that was on the
Speaker 1: same disc as this one. For me, that's a that's
Speaker 1: a very fun like Hollow Earth type of film. The
Speaker 1: Brain from Planet Arows from seven, Revenge of the Creature
Speaker 1: from fifty five, and Hand of Death from sixty two.
Speaker 1: I think we discussed doing the Brain from Planet Arouse
Speaker 1: or Arose. However you say that, Uh, we ended up
Speaker 1: doing Fiend Without a Face instead because we want to
Speaker 1: do some kind of brain movie and that there's a
Speaker 1: handful that looked pretty juicy. Yeah, we may have to
Speaker 1: come back to that one because that has a really
Speaker 1: fun looking brain monster in it. It kind of floats around.
Speaker 1: So Agar did a lot of TV later in his career,
Speaker 1: but the B movie association stuck. And I was reading
Speaker 1: on on IMDb that in n two Famous Monsters of Filmland,
Speaker 1: a fan magazine. They declared him dead. Uh they said,
Speaker 1: you know, r I P. John Agar. But Agar was
Speaker 1: not dead, And so he apparently made the rounds at
Speaker 1: a lot of sci fi fan conventions back in the day,
Speaker 1: signing these magazines about his death. That's good. He was
Speaker 1: at one point married to Shirley Temple, and late in
Speaker 1: life he had cameos in two films of note nine nineties,
Speaker 1: Night Breed, the Clive Barker film, and John Carpenter's anthology
Speaker 1: film Body Bags. This is the one where John Carpenter
Speaker 1: himself sort of plays the crypt keeper. Uh so I
Speaker 1: haven't seen Body Bags. I have seen Nightbreed. Nightbreed is
Speaker 1: Clive Barker, and it's full of interesting various monsters. But
Speaker 1: actually the thing that most sticks out to me and
Speaker 1: about it is the character played by David Cronenberg. He
Speaker 1: was he was an actor, just an actor in the movie,
Speaker 1: playing the main character, psychotherapist but who also turns out
Speaker 1: to be a serial killer who wears a creepy sock
Speaker 1: over his head. Yeah. That's a really fun role and
Speaker 1: what is ultimately a really fun film. I haven't watched
Speaker 1: it in a while, but I remember being quite fond
Speaker 1: of it back in the day. I remember enjoying the
Speaker 1: book as well. But with Clive Barker, obviously, he's a
Speaker 1: he was a big he was a big fan of
Speaker 1: classic Hollywood and and all of that, so it makes
Speaker 1: sense that he might bring John Agar in to do
Speaker 1: a little cameo. But so anyway, the character John Agar
Speaker 1: plays in this is sort of set against the scientist
Speaker 1: characters who they're The scientists are off doing uh you know,
Speaker 1: dangerous unholy experiments in their isolated laboratory in the desert.
Speaker 1: Meanwhile John Agar is just he's he's ready to slap
Speaker 1: some common sense up against them. So that's our malely
Speaker 1: in the film. But we also have a lead female
Speaker 1: character in the form of Stephanie Clayton better known as
Speaker 1: Steve to everyone, and she was played by the beautiful
Speaker 1: Mara corday So born nineteen thirty and as of this
Speaker 1: recording is still still with us. Um. Yeah, she was
Speaker 1: a model actress fifties cult icon. She later on she
Speaker 1: was in the nineteen fifty eight Playboy magazine Centerfold. She
Speaker 1: mostly did small acting jobs prior to Tarrantula, but this
Speaker 1: is the film that kind of gave her a chance
Speaker 1: to shine and kind of propelled her more into the limelight.
Speaker 1: So she was more prominently featured in films after this point,
Speaker 1: including the nineteen fifty seven Monster films, The Black Scorpion
Speaker 1: and The Giant Claw, which is a giant goofy bird movie.
Speaker 1: She met Clint Eastwood on the set of this film,
Speaker 1: and we'll explain how that is possible in a bed.
Speaker 1: But after meeting on the set of this film, they
Speaker 1: reported remained friends for a very long time, and all
Speaker 1: of her final screen credits are roles in Clint Eastwood
Speaker 1: films The Gauntlet in seventy seven, Sudden Impact in eighty three,
Speaker 1: Pink Cadillac in eighty nine, and The Rookie in nineteen nine.
Speaker 1: In fact, in Sudden Impact, she's the waitress in the
Speaker 1: scene where Dirty Harry coins the catchphrase go ahead, make
Speaker 1: my day. I think she's being held at gunpoint or
Speaker 1: something and he saves her. Oh interesting, Well, you know
Speaker 1: what I think. Mark Corday is great in this movie.
Speaker 1: She uh, she really brings a sense of fun and
Speaker 1: amusement to the silliness here. Yeah, it's a it's a
Speaker 1: fun performance. Um. She plays a quote unquote lady scientist
Speaker 1: and It's kind of an interesting role for for the
Speaker 1: time period. I was I was looking around about this
Speaker 1: a little bit because you you look at some of
Speaker 1: these nineteen fifties films and clack. In fact, if you
Speaker 1: look at The Thing from Another World, Uh, it also
Speaker 1: has a I don't know if she's quite a scientist
Speaker 1: in it, but you still have a she's at least
Speaker 1: what a secretary to a scientist. You have a very
Speaker 1: strong female role in that film. I think the character
Speaker 1: in The Thing from Another World is widely considered one
Speaker 1: of the examples of the the the Howard Hawks leading
Speaker 1: lady type character. Yeah. Yeah, And we talked about the
Speaker 1: Hawks and um uh female role in that episode of
Speaker 1: Weird House that we did. But I was reading a
Speaker 1: bit about this from this is a blog post by
Speaker 1: Bob Calhoun at Roger Ebert dot com titled Atomic Age
Speaker 1: Feminists the Women of fifties sci Fi. And this is
Speaker 1: pretty interesting because Calhoun pointed out the first of all
Speaker 1: several great examples of female scientists characters or sort of
Speaker 1: scientists adjacent characters in such films as The Daily Earth
Speaker 1: Stood Still from fifty one, Thing from Another World fifty one,
Speaker 1: Revenge of the Creature from fifty five. And then I
Speaker 1: was looking around at the Classic Horror Film Board, and
Speaker 1: I saw a thread where people were bringing up other examples,
Speaker 1: like them rocket Ship x M, the Giant Claw from Hell,
Speaker 1: it came the Beast from twenty thousand fathoms, uh, Pamela
Speaker 1: Duncan's character and Attack of the Crab Monsters. So there's
Speaker 1: a long list, and so Calhoun. In this he cites
Speaker 1: feminist American art and film critic Carrie Ricky, pointing out
Speaker 1: that much of this seems to come down to the
Speaker 1: studio system, which during the thirties and forties had female
Speaker 1: screenwriters create the female characters, and that this practice, or
Speaker 1: its influence the influence of this practice at any rate,
Speaker 1: may have carried over into the nineteen fifties to some extent.
Speaker 1: Thus we have all these nuanced, professional female characters showing
Speaker 1: up in monster movies and sci fi features. Um However,
Speaker 1: he points out that the reverse seems to be true
Speaker 1: as well. With the full collapse of the studio system,
Speaker 1: you find fewer female scientists roles in films of this
Speaker 1: caliber moving forward, and he specifically, of course points to
Speaker 1: John Carpenter's remake of the Thing from another world, which
Speaker 1: is we discussed in our in our episode about that
Speaker 1: movie about about the original that you know, Carpenter's film
Speaker 1: has no female characters. It's an entirely male film. Um
Speaker 1: So it's um, it is interesting to look back at
Speaker 1: all these pictures and see that, Yeah, this is kind
Speaker 1: of the era of the B movie female scientist character
Speaker 1: that is assertive and strong and and generally holds her
Speaker 1: own with with male characters and counterparts. Yes, there's this
Speaker 1: interesting mixture where these characters do show up. But of course,
Speaker 1: like the funny thing is is how ridiculously sexist the
Speaker 1: context still is so like, do you will have a
Speaker 1: movie where, oh, you know, so the scientist character is
Speaker 1: a woman, that's cool, but then she like has to
Speaker 1: make coffee for everybody. That's all of these movies are
Speaker 1: in this movie. Um, when she meets John Agar and
Speaker 1: they're flirting, and like the first thing he says is like, oh,
Speaker 1: lady scientists. Uh yeah, He's like, oh, you give a
Speaker 1: woman the vote, what do you get, lady scientists? That's
Speaker 1: like it's literally the line from the film. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: other stuff in here too, Like this is one part
Speaker 1: where he's John Agar's character is a doctor and he's
Speaker 1: delivering medicine to somebody he keeps. It's kind of a
Speaker 1: neat or a clever plot device for this is he's
Speaker 1: always been called away on jobs, so it kind of
Speaker 1: gets him out of scenes when you need him the
Speaker 1: action to move on. But he's dropping off medication for
Speaker 1: somebody and the husband picks it up and he's like, well,
Speaker 1: do you know women, she won't take it, but you
Speaker 1: know she'll feel better. Annoying, it's on the shelf. And
Speaker 1: I didn't even know that was a stereotype. Yeah, I've
Speaker 1: never even heard that. I mean, well, but anyway. Mark
Speaker 1: Horday is great in this, and she seems to like
Speaker 1: John Agar makes a lady scientist joke. It just seems
Speaker 1: to roll off her back. Also, when the first time
Speaker 1: she meets um what's his name, Leo G. Carroll's scientist character,
Speaker 1: he's like, oh, I didn't expect our new assistant to
Speaker 1: look like you. He's just he's not doing a good
Speaker 1: job creating a a friendly and productive workplace. But yeah,
Speaker 1: so it's yeah, when you're talking about feminism in ninet
Speaker 1: fifties monster movies, it's a mixed back, but it's a.
Speaker 1: It makes for an interesting analysis, all right. Well, speaking
Speaker 1: of Leo G. Carroll, Yes, he plays Professor Gerald Seamer.
Speaker 1: So Carol we already talked a little bit about him.
Speaker 1: Lived eighteen eighty six through nine seventy two British Hollywood actor,
Speaker 1: best known for his roles in Hitchcock films like north
Speaker 1: By Northwest from fifty nine, Strangers on a Train fifty one,
Speaker 1: and Spellbound from forty five. He also played the character
Speaker 1: Alexander Waverley on the series The Man from Uncle as
Speaker 1: well as The Girl from Uncle. I believe he played
Speaker 1: the same character in both of those shows. One I
Speaker 1: guess it's a spin off of the other. He also
Speaker 1: played Marley's ghost in the nineteen thirty eight adaptation of
Speaker 1: A Christmas Carol. He was active from nineteen thirty four
Speaker 1: through nineteen seventy. I don't think he did a lot
Speaker 1: of films like this, uh oh. And he was also
Speaker 1: in the original nineteen sixty one The Parent Trap. You
Speaker 1: don't necessarily get the sense that Carol is unhappy to
Speaker 1: be in this movie, but you do get the feeling
Speaker 1: that you know, he's one of those actors who's clearly
Speaker 1: kind of in a different League, and he's here giving
Speaker 1: a more subtle performance than you would expect as the
Speaker 1: mad scientist whose crea eating giant spiders. Right, Yeah, like
Speaker 1: he doesn't. He certainly doesn't come off as you're you're
Speaker 1: sort of cackling mad scientists. And part that's in the
Speaker 1: writing too, Like he's ultimately you buy him more as
Speaker 1: a guy who's trying to do the right thing. Maybe
Speaker 1: he got a little sloppy may maybe he should have
Speaker 1: had some better uh uh lab safety protocols in place,
Speaker 1: But for the most part, he's not uh, he's not
Speaker 1: you know, Lawn Cheney Jr. He's not uh, you know,
Speaker 1: the the cackling madman. All right. Another interesting actor in
Speaker 1: this we have this actor Nestor Paiva who lived nineteen
Speaker 1: o five through nineteen sixty six, who plays Sheriff Jack Andrews,
Speaker 1: who's not taken any crap off anybody, especially off of
Speaker 1: John Agar. He's our cranky local sheriff. And yeah, Nestor here,
Speaker 1: American actor of Portuguese descent, did a lot of Westerns,
Speaker 1: including the TV Zoro Show from Disney back in the day,
Speaker 1: but is most remembered as cap and Lucas in both
Speaker 1: Creature from the Black Lagoon and Revenge of the Creature.
Speaker 1: He was also in The Mole People and his final
Speaker 1: film was They Saved Hitler's Brain. We will get into
Speaker 1: more detail about this as we go on, but this
Speaker 1: is an unusual type of character, Sheriff Andrews. Here is
Speaker 1: this Haysey Desert sheriff who really thinks that egg heads scientists,
Speaker 1: really they know what they're doing and they're hard one
Speaker 1: expertise should be respected, right right, We shouldn't go investigate
Speaker 1: the mysterious lab. Are you crazy? No, don't mess with
Speaker 1: those people. And you know what, Doc, you don't know
Speaker 1: what you're doing. He's just really into science. Al right.
Speaker 1: Speaking of science, there's another character that shows up that's
Speaker 1: worth noting. This character Townsend. Who is Is he supposed
Speaker 1: to be like Spider Expert? Is he a biologist? I
Speaker 1: don't recall his credentials exactly. Oh yeah, he's the guy
Speaker 1: who John Agar goes to visit at the Arizona Agricultural Institute,
Speaker 1: who shows him a film strip about Tarantula's and shares
Speaker 1: a lot of tarantial effects and in a very funny scene. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's a memory Will seen in this Uh, This
Speaker 1: character Townsend was played by Raymond Bailey, who's of nineteen
Speaker 1: o four. Bailey is best known by classic TV fans
Speaker 1: as Milbourne Drysdale on The Beverly Hillbillies, but he was
Speaker 1: also in Hitchcock's Vertico. But yeah, when you hear you're
Speaker 1: here to Drysdale, Mr Drysdale, this is Mr Drysdale. I
Speaker 1: didn't know that when I watched the movie, but now
Speaker 1: that you say it, I totally see it. Heat he
Speaker 1: he is like a snooty bank manager. Yeah, alright, we
Speaker 1: mentioned Clint Eastwood earlier. Yes, Clint Eastwood is in this movie.
Speaker 1: He plays uncredited. He plays the jet squadron leader who
Speaker 1: shows up to napalm the Spider in the final moments
Speaker 1: of the film. Uh, this is not a proper Clint
Speaker 1: Eastwood movie, so we're not gonna get exhaustive on this.
Speaker 1: But you know, Clint Eastwood legendary actor and director still
Speaker 1: active today, not only alive, but active. This was only
Speaker 1: his fourth screen appearance, along with some other uncredited roles
Speaker 1: in films like Revenge of the Creature, Francis and the
Speaker 1: Navy and Lady could Iva of Coventry, all released the
Speaker 1: same year as tarantula. He was only twenty five years
Speaker 1: old at the time. Can't really comment on his performance.
Speaker 1: He just sort of sits in a cockpit and then
Speaker 1: he's like releasing napalm. Now, yeah, he has a mask on,
Speaker 1: so you really only see his eyes. But man, there's
Speaker 1: no denying whose eyes those are. That's clean Eastwitt. All right.
Speaker 1: Another uncredited actor of note, uh just playing deputized townsmen
Speaker 1: is actor Being Russell, who lived through two thousand and three,
Speaker 1: best known perhaps for playing Deputy Clym Foster on the
Speaker 1: Western series Bonanza and Robert in The Magnificent Seven. But
Speaker 1: he was also Kurt Russell's dad, and he owned the
Speaker 1: Portland Mavericks at one point. Now here's this is another
Speaker 1: interesting connection. I alluded to this earlier. But as we mentioned,
Speaker 1: the tarantula, when we see it is often this actual
Speaker 1: tarantula that's made to look big. But also we have
Speaker 1: this tarantula puppet. And this was built by Wa Chang
Speaker 1: who lived nineteen seventeen through two thousand in three of
Speaker 1: Hawaii born Chinese American designer, sculptor and artist, responsible for
Speaker 1: the triantula puppet on this film and later responsible for
Speaker 1: key prop design on Star Trek the original series, including
Speaker 1: the tricorder and the Communicator. Yeah. He also did some
Speaker 1: costumes on Key Classic Track episodes. He apparently created the
Speaker 1: Triples legendary, Yeah, legendary. He also worked on the original
Speaker 1: Outer Limits, the original Planet of the Apes movie, the
Speaker 1: TV series Land of the Lost. He did visual effects
Speaker 1: in the nineteen six adaptation of H. G. Wells The
Speaker 1: Time Machine, stop motion puppets on the Monster from Green
Speaker 1: Hill from fifty seven and uh he was the adoptive
Speaker 1: son of James Balding sloan on American etcher printmaker, uh,
Speaker 1: theater theatrical designer and also a puppeteer. But yeah, this
Speaker 1: was an interesting uh case here. I've looked up some
Speaker 1: images of him showing him when creating various dragons and creatures.
Speaker 1: I think he was so had some involvement in some
Speaker 1: Disney productions with sort of modeling of creatures to be animated.
Speaker 1: So quite an interesting story. Well, I say once again bravo.
Speaker 1: On The Spider Puppet, I would say broadly, this movie
Speaker 1: does not actually have any scary parts except for one.
Speaker 1: There's one scene where the Spider Puppet kind of peers
Speaker 1: through a window at Mara Corday and that, oh, that
Speaker 1: one is actually creepy. Yeah, that that scene I found
Speaker 1: was legitimately creepy. It too is also kind of a
Speaker 1: classic trope of the time period, right the the female
Speaker 1: character is changing or getting ready for bed and a
Speaker 1: monster peers through the window. Though it's it's kind of
Speaker 1: funny that in this scene she's she's about to take
Speaker 1: her her nightgown off, you know, to get into bed,
Speaker 1: and we only briefly see that she's she's wearing full
Speaker 1: length pajamas underneath there. So I don't know what the
Speaker 1: spider thought he was going to say, but that's right.
Speaker 1: The tarantula is peeping in, though it seems clearly that
Speaker 1: this is not a lusty peeping in. This is just
Speaker 1: like king for fluid filled humans to drain, right, yes,
Speaker 1: But also, you know, coming back to Steve Mars character,
Speaker 1: you know, she's she's a smart lady. She knows there
Speaker 1: is a rampaging spider on the loose, so we're sensible
Speaker 1: garments to bed, you don't want to, don't wear anything
Speaker 1: you don't want to take off across town in that's correct,
Speaker 1: and she does get out of the situation. Yeah, uh, Finally,
Speaker 1: on the music note, I'm gonna spend a lot of
Speaker 1: time on this because it's my understanding that this was
Speaker 1: just studio stock music we used on this. But the
Speaker 1: two individuals that are uncredited are Henry Mancini, who lived
Speaker 1: twenty four through and Hermann Stein, who lived nineteen fifteen
Speaker 1: through two thousand and seven. Mancini notable for such scores
Speaker 1: as The Pink Panther, Breakfast at Tiffany's, and six Romeo
Speaker 1: and Juliet, and Stein he worked on a lot of
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties sci fi films, including It Came from Outer Space,
Speaker 1: Revenge of the Creature, This Island Earth, and many more.
Speaker 1: All Right, is it time to talk about the plot.
Speaker 1: Let's do it. Let's dive right in. Al So, the
Speaker 1: film begins in the desert. Actually, one of the first
Speaker 1: things I noticed about it was one of the opening
Speaker 1: desert shots all the shows. These different plants, kind of
Speaker 1: scrub plants out in the desert, and they're all kind
Speaker 1: of equally spaced apart from each other, almost as if
Speaker 1: they're trying to keep their distance. I don't know if
Speaker 1: that was a detail chosen on purpose, but anyway, you
Speaker 1: got the scrub plants, You've got rocks, sand wind, and
Speaker 1: then a man in pajamas with monster makeup on his
Speaker 1: face stumbles around until he dies. Oh man, this game's
Speaker 1: full length pajama game is strong. Um. It makes me
Speaker 1: think of how I remember hearing that supposedly on HBO's
Speaker 1: Game of Thrones, there was like somebody from the studio
Speaker 1: or from the network there that was there just to
Speaker 1: remind the director. It's like, hey, you can have full
Speaker 1: nudity in this scene if you want. I like to
Speaker 1: think there was somebody on this picture that's like, hey,
Speaker 1: by the way, if you want full length pajamas and
Speaker 1: this shot, you got it. We got them on all sides.
Speaker 1: It is ready to go. Oh they do them up
Speaker 1: and down, so many pajamas. But this monster makeup looks
Speaker 1: pretty good and it's a strong start to the film. Yes,
Speaker 1: I would say the monster makeup looks good, though it
Speaker 1: also it does not match up well with something that
Speaker 1: they they end up attributing the monster makeup too. Yes,
Speaker 1: because this individual is supposed to have acromegaly uh, the
Speaker 1: the rare condition that causes excessive production of growth hormone
Speaker 1: by the peteritary gland that results in large bones in
Speaker 1: the face, feet, and hands. Right today, it's known as acromegaly,
Speaker 1: and that that's the I'm not positive, but that's the
Speaker 1: way I've always heard it pronounced. In this movie, they
Speaker 1: call it acromegalia, And uh, from what I can tell,
Speaker 1: this movie is not at all a good barometer of
Speaker 1: what acromegaly actually looks like. Of course, acromegally does affect
Speaker 1: to different body parts with you know, with abnormal growth,
Speaker 1: you get changes to the facial features and so forth.
Speaker 1: But this movie just straight up puts people in Frankenstein makeup,
Speaker 1: which is not accurate. So don't get your ideas about
Speaker 1: acromegaly from Tarantula. Yeah, I mean, I guess they were
Speaker 1: sort of going for a rondo um hat and look
Speaker 1: on these characters. He was, of course, was a was
Speaker 1: an actor who appeared in a lot of genre pieces.
Speaker 1: He died in forty six, so you know he'd been
Speaker 1: he was dead by the time this came out, but
Speaker 1: he was kind of a signature presence and a lot
Speaker 1: of these old Hollywood horror films. Uh so maybe that
Speaker 1: was sort of the inspiration here. Yeah, possibly the makeup.
Speaker 1: Either way, the makeup takes takes this to fantastical extremes,
Speaker 1: and I guess that makes sense because this is I
Speaker 1: don't know, maybe we're supposed to understand that this is
Speaker 1: not actually acromegaly. It is just some acromegaly resembling science
Speaker 1: fiction condition caused by the the intake of this high
Speaker 1: fictional nutrient. Yeah, but I can see where audiences would
Speaker 1: have been rather shocked and surprised, because you know, you're
Speaker 1: getting a giant spider in this film. That's definitely gonna happen.
Speaker 1: And then suddenly there's this something else is going on.
Speaker 1: You have some sort of you know, strange mutations and
Speaker 1: deformities occurring. Just right off the bat. The first character
Speaker 1: you meet in this film, uh Is, is severely disfigured.
Speaker 1: People may be wondering, did I walk into the wrong movie?
Speaker 1: I thought I was going to see a giant spider. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but no, So you get this character. He collapses in
Speaker 1: the desert, and then credits, and then we begin the
Speaker 1: main plot. So the first thing we see is a
Speaker 1: small aircraft that is landing at an airstrip in Arizona,
Speaker 1: and outsteps John A. Gar apparently the pilot A pilot,
Speaker 1: the pilot of this plane. But no, he's not a
Speaker 1: professional pilot. He is a doctor. He starts talking to
Speaker 1: the guy who works at the air strip and the
Speaker 1: guy says, what's the score, doc, So I guess we
Speaker 1: understand he's a doctor, and he responds, twins cutest things
Speaker 1: you ever saw. And this initially really confused me because I,
Speaker 1: erroneus assumed that he was reporting that he and his
Speaker 1: wife had just had twins, and that does not make
Speaker 1: sense within the rest of the movie. It wouldn't make
Speaker 1: sense with the situation at all, because you know, John
Speaker 1: Agar is going to be your leading man, uh and
Speaker 1: a fifties creature feature hero always needs to be single
Speaker 1: so he can have a romance with the leading lady.
Speaker 1: But upon revisiting, I realized he's talking about delivering twins
Speaker 1: for some people who are living out in the desert.
Speaker 1: There's somebody else's twins, So I guess he does remote
Speaker 1: house calls in his airplane. I guess. So. I mean,
Speaker 1: I know that this has been the case in remote
Speaker 1: places around the world, where you would have doctor's flown
Speaker 1: into remote communities and so forth, But this picture kind
Speaker 1: of makes it seem like he's just flying to somebody's house,
Speaker 1: landing in in their their the desert front yard, and
Speaker 1: then climbing out and going in, delivering some twins, maybe
Speaker 1: just leaving the the engine running, coming back out, getting
Speaker 1: in the plane, flying home. Yeah, it really does seem
Speaker 1: to be suggesting that I don't know exactly how to
Speaker 1: read this. Every little bit of a window we get
Speaker 1: into his actual medical practice does not inspire confidence, right,
Speaker 1: Like isn't his office in a hotel? Yeah? Yeah, so okay,
Speaker 1: So he hops into his convertible and heads into town
Speaker 1: and he lives in this this Arizona desert town. What's
Speaker 1: the town called. It's called like Rock Desert or something. Something.
Speaker 1: Only did that effect and I should know that even
Speaker 1: though it's supposed to take place in Arizona, everything you
Speaker 1: see is California that this film was. This film was
Speaker 1: definitely filmed in California, So we're seeing the California desert
Speaker 1: even though it's supposed to be the Arizona Desert. As
Speaker 1: you already mentioned, Um drives around in a convertible with
Speaker 1: the top down, no hat, no sunglasses, no Yeah, this
Speaker 1: is a guy that lives and works in the desert,
Speaker 1: and yet no no effort at all is put into
Speaker 1: protecting himself from the sun that I just couldn't get
Speaker 1: past that the whole movie. I'm like, put the top
Speaker 1: up on that convertible. Can you grab a hat or
Speaker 1: some shades or something. Yeah, But so you mentioned that
Speaker 1: it's he seems to work out of a hotel. I
Speaker 1: concluded the same thing. So he goes into town and
Speaker 1: we casually meet several characters. Johnny Gargan is a doctor,
Speaker 1: but he seems to use the lobby of a place
Speaker 1: called the Palace Hotel as his office, like literally using
Speaker 1: the desk worker at the hotel. Who's this funny older
Speaker 1: guy named Josh as his secretary? Like like Josh like
Speaker 1: takes phone calls for him, places phone calls for him,
Speaker 1: listens in on the phone calls. Yeah, this this is
Speaker 1: a guy. Josh was played by Hank Patterson, who later
Speaker 1: went on to have a role on Green Acres. So
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people, at least he used to.
Speaker 1: I don't know how well versed modern viewers are in
Speaker 1: Green Anchors, but a lot of people would watch the
Speaker 1: film and be like, Hey, it's the guy from Green Anchors.
Speaker 1: What do you call this type of stock character who's
Speaker 1: like the the kind of funny, older, wrinkly guy with
Speaker 1: kind of a wrinkly hound dog face who is the
Speaker 1: butt of jokes. I don't know what you it seems
Speaker 1: to be a type. Yeah, I don't know, but it
Speaker 1: it's kind of nice that it it shows you in
Speaker 1: a movie like this. They were thinking about, Okay, well,
Speaker 1: well can we make this scene funny? We have to
Speaker 1: have some sort of character interacting here between this character
Speaker 1: and another. Let's let's get somebody handy in there. Do
Speaker 1: a little bit, nothing, nothing too extreme, but just enough
Speaker 1: humor to get us from one scene to the next.
Speaker 1: Little did they know that the movie was going to
Speaker 1: be plenty funny enough with all the science scenes. Okay,
Speaker 1: but anyway, Dr Hastings here John Aygar. He gets a
Speaker 1: call from the sheriff. Uh, it's you know, we need
Speaker 1: you to come down to the police station to help
Speaker 1: with something. There was a man found dead in the desert,
Speaker 1: but he looks unusual and the sheriff this is again
Speaker 1: Sheriff Jack Andrews played by Nestor Piva. He thinks there
Speaker 1: is something about this man's face that, in one sense,
Speaker 1: looks like a guy that they knew named Eric Jacobs,
Speaker 1: but then there's something else about him that says, well,
Speaker 1: maybe it ain't him, And so I think the audience
Speaker 1: here is clearly supposed to conclude this was the guy
Speaker 1: in pajamas that we saw before the credits, and we
Speaker 1: learned that Eric Jacobs was a biologist who worked with
Speaker 1: Professor Deemer, an old scientist who's doing research at a
Speaker 1: secluded house out in the desert. And they want John
Speaker 1: Agar's opinion on the body. But then while John Agar
Speaker 1: is investigating, uh, Deemer himself arrives and he identifies the body.
Speaker 1: He says that the cause of death was again that
Speaker 1: condition acromegalia, and John Agar says, well, yeah, okay, so
Speaker 1: it kind of looks like that. But also some people
Speaker 1: saw him just a month ago and he didn't have
Speaker 1: any signs of it then, and acromegalia cannot progress that fast,
Speaker 1: so they argue about this. Deemer says it is zacromegalia,
Speaker 1: and Agar says, there's never been a case of acromegalia
Speaker 1: working like that, and then Deemer says, but the history
Speaker 1: of medicine is the history of the unusual, which is
Speaker 1: a fantastic rhetorical gambit, right, Like anybody who says, anything
Speaker 1: seems implausible. You could just say, but isn't the world
Speaker 1: very strange? There's no way to argue with it, right,
Speaker 1: Like I can breathe in outer space and I can
Speaker 1: digest lead blocks for nutrition, and you might say that's
Speaker 1: not possible, and I say, is medicine not the history
Speaker 1: of the unusual? Anyway? Deemer says, well, Eric began to
Speaker 1: complain muscle pains four days ago. He says, he says,
Speaker 1: these things happen as you grow older. And eventually Deemer
Speaker 1: leaves and Agar is talking to the sheriff and he's like, well,
Speaker 1: there's no way this is Zachromegalia, and the country sheriff
Speaker 1: just forcefully rebukes him. He says, the quote is yeah,
Speaker 1: young fellow, like you can't stack what he knows against
Speaker 1: the professor. So it's and this is a repeated theme.
Speaker 1: The sheriff in this movie is an egghead professor, super fan.
Speaker 1: He's got all these lines that are along the lines.
Speaker 1: You know. It's like, look, John, Agar, all you have
Speaker 1: is rugged all American common sense, and that don't mean
Speaker 1: nothing compared to the high falutint ivory Tower book Learning
Speaker 1: of a reclusive professor with foreign accent. It's the exact
Speaker 1: opposite of Fiend without a face, in which everyone was
Speaker 1: super suspicious of the science facility and it's possible connections
Speaker 1: to all the strange things that were occurring. But here
Speaker 1: the Sheriff's not having any of that crap. Yeah, totally,
Speaker 1: the sheriff. The sheriff has so much faith in the professor.
Speaker 1: Uh and and John Agar actually like ribs him for it.
Speaker 1: He's like, well, I guess there's no getting over the
Speaker 1: wall of prestige. So anyway, we follow Professor Deemer. Now
Speaker 1: he goes back to his lab. We see him checking
Speaker 1: on his experiments, and he's got all these specimens. He's
Speaker 1: got giant rats and giant rabbits and giant guinea pigs
Speaker 1: and a giant tarantula in a glass tank. It's like
Speaker 1: an aquarium tank, but I guess without water in it.
Speaker 1: And we see him working on his notes, which include
Speaker 1: like numbers of days since an injection of something. The
Speaker 1: farther out from the injection, the bigger the animal gets.
Speaker 1: And the tarantula is already too big, like it's already
Speaker 1: her responsibly big. This is already like giant tortoise sized. Anyway,
Speaker 1: while he's doing his experiments. Oops, there's another guy who
Speaker 1: looks like Eric Jacobs did at the beginning, and he
Speaker 1: comes in. He bashes Deemer on the head with something
Speaker 1: he sets fired everything. He injects Deemer with the mystery serum. Uh.
Speaker 1: This guy has identified as Paul, so I think this
Speaker 1: was Deemer's other research assistant. That that there were the
Speaker 1: three of them working in the house and two of
Speaker 1: them got this condition. Oh and during the fighting, the
Speaker 1: glass of the aquarium breaks and the tarantula escapes out
Speaker 1: the open door while the humans are fighting. So Deemer
Speaker 1: survives this, I think. I think somehow Paul Paul is
Speaker 1: killed in the fight, and Deemer manages to put out
Speaker 1: the fire, but his laboratory is ruined, and then he
Speaker 1: heads out in the middle of the night to secretly
Speaker 1: bury the other guy. This is the scene with the
Speaker 1: hilarious monkey jump scare that I mentioned earlier, but it
Speaker 1: also ends in a very cute and sweet way. After
Speaker 1: Deemer catches the monkey in his arms, he's like, Coco,
Speaker 1: you startled me, and clearly loves his monkey. He's like, oh,
Speaker 1: your paws are burned. I'll help you. If he gets
Speaker 1: some monk key bomb monkey bomb will go right on there. Uh.
Speaker 1: So then we go back to more action with John
Speaker 1: Agar and the sheriff. John Agar shows up back in
Speaker 1: town to report. He's like, hey, I followed up on this.
Speaker 1: I went to the medical librarian Phoenix, and I confirmed
Speaker 1: there has never been a case in recorded history of
Speaker 1: acromegalia developing in four days. And he says, I may
Speaker 1: be a simple country doctor, but I know what I know.
Speaker 1: And uh And again the sheriff is not having it.
Speaker 1: He's like, are you trying to say the professor was
Speaker 1: lying to us? You want me to charge him with
Speaker 1: confusing a country doctor. He is ruthless and just dressing
Speaker 1: down John Agar in these scenes. Yeah, but John agar
Speaker 1: suspicions are not only not going down, they're mounting. He's
Speaker 1: suspicious now, not just about the death. He's raising in
Speaker 1: a big old eyebrow, at the whole operation. He says,
Speaker 1: Jacobs and Deemer are two of the leading nutrient biologists
Speaker 1: in the world. And he says, when there are two
Speaker 1: guys like that they hold up in a remote desert mansion,
Speaker 1: you know what that means. They're probably trying to do
Speaker 1: secret research. Oh. And then we meet another character here
Speaker 1: comes Joe Birch, the newspaperman who just wanders into the
Speaker 1: into the office, and he's on the case. He wants
Speaker 1: information and he's going to go investigate Deemer himself. We
Speaker 1: get the impression that he is an irritating and tenacious
Speaker 1: attack dog. Yeah. I looked up this actor and he
Speaker 1: he appeared in a lot of things back then. I
Speaker 1: think he was on the Andy Griff Show at some point. Um,
Speaker 1: I couldn't pinpoint exactly what I recognized him from, but
Speaker 1: he has that face that that smug um. This is
Speaker 1: the face that's the smug and a little too assertive.
Speaker 1: You know, he's he's taking too much pleasure in messing
Speaker 1: with your business. And I feel like that's probably the
Speaker 1: sort of character he played a lot. I don't know,
Speaker 1: if you agree to me. His face has has slight
Speaker 1: notes of Christopher Guest. Yeah maybe so yeah. Anyway, Okay,
Speaker 1: so we just met another character. We're gonna meet yet
Speaker 1: another character. And this is when Maracorda shows up, arrives
Speaker 1: in town by bus. You've got a bunch of luggage,
Speaker 1: and she goes into the hotel and meets Josh there,
Speaker 1: oh old Josh, and she says, Hey, I'm looking to
Speaker 1: get to the Deemer house. You know, how can I
Speaker 1: get there? And he gives her this whole speech, basically,
Speaker 1: well you can't get there from here. She She's like,
Speaker 1: wouldn't it, couldn't you call me? Uh? Would you mind
Speaker 1: calling me a cab? And he says, I wouldn't mind
Speaker 1: it a bit, but it won't do no good. But anyway,
Speaker 1: what do you know? John Agar walks in and the
Speaker 1: moment he and Maracorda size each other up, you know,
Speaker 1: there might as well be a saxophone lick on the soundtrack.
Speaker 1: It's just love at first sight. They're immediately flirting and
Speaker 1: John Agar is going to give her a ride to
Speaker 1: the Deemer house. There's a reaction to this whole scene
Speaker 1: where Josh the hotel guys he they leave and he
Speaker 1: just leans back and says directly into the camera, it's
Speaker 1: getting to be a fast world. But so we're with
Speaker 1: John Agar Maro Corda. They introduced themselves to each other
Speaker 1: while riding in the convertible. Uh, she says, oh. She
Speaker 1: makes clear her name is Steve, and he goes, I
Speaker 1: like Steve, and they they flirt and you know, he
Speaker 1: wants to know, Hey, why are you going out to Deemers?
Speaker 1: What's going on there? And she explains she's getting her
Speaker 1: PhD in biology and she's going to study with Deemer
Speaker 1: and Jacobs. Uh. And this is where John Agar says
Speaker 1: the line I wrote it down. He says, I knew
Speaker 1: it would happen. Give women the vote, and what do
Speaker 1: you get lady scientists? And her retort as well students
Speaker 1: so far. But so she explains she's going to live
Speaker 1: at the house and cook for them, but also do
Speaker 1: science in the lab. Yeah, it seems like they're asking
Speaker 1: a lot like this is really should have been like
Speaker 1: two or three different hires here, and they should have
Speaker 1: just kept Steve for for just lab work type stuff.
Speaker 1: And you know what, they maybe should have arranged for
Speaker 1: transportation by join the town and their secluded um laboratory here. Well,
Speaker 1: I think Deemer doesn't even know she's coming. It's she
Speaker 1: only made arrangements with Jacobs, remember, and he died in
Speaker 1: the desert. Oh, and so they also talked abo that.
Speaker 1: John Agar is like, well, by the way, the guy
Speaker 1: you're coming to meet here is dead, and she's like,
Speaker 1: oh no, but anyway, when so they they're about to
Speaker 1: arrive at the Deemer house, and what follows is an
Speaker 1: absolutely extraordinary scene of nonsensical techno babble where Professor Deemer
Speaker 1: is explaining his experiments. Tomorrow Corday and John Agar so
Speaker 1: they arrive Deemer, the Deemer character is already in the
Speaker 1: middle of an interview with Joe Birch, the newspaperman. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, he's he's explaining what happened to his lab.
Speaker 1: He's got a monkey on his shoulders while he's doing it,
Speaker 1: and Joe Birch wants to know more about what happened
Speaker 1: to Jacobs. But Deemer is done. He's like, this interview
Speaker 1: is over, and Joe Birch has a sidekick with him.
Speaker 1: It's a cowboy photographer named Ridley, and he wants Ridley
Speaker 1: to get a picture of them. He's like Pat the
Speaker 1: monkey professor. Because so anyway, the newspaper guys leave and
Speaker 1: then uh, Matt Hastings and Steve are left there with Deemer,
Speaker 1: and Deemer of course is like, what who are you?
Speaker 1: Before Steve can introduce her, say, Matt jumps in and says,
Speaker 1: this is Stephanie Clayton. She goes by Steve. You know,
Speaker 1: she's the graduate student who is going to come work
Speaker 1: with you in your lab, or maybe not with you.
Speaker 1: I think she's the one who's going to come work
Speaker 1: with Professor Jacobs. You know. Unfortunately he turned into a
Speaker 1: Frankenstein and exploded in the desert. Um, so I guess
Speaker 1: she I guess she has to assist Leo G. Carroll instead. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then this is the scene where he's like, well,
Speaker 1: you probably don't want to stay, but if you want to,
Speaker 1: then fine we can use you. Yeah exactly, He's like,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure you want to stay on seeing is
Speaker 1: you know how my lab is on fire and everyone
Speaker 1: is dead. And she's like, oh, I would love to
Speaker 1: be of service. Um, so they begin the lab to oh.
Speaker 1: This is also the scene where he's like, he says,
Speaker 1: I didn't expect to see a biologist that looked like you.
Speaker 1: I mean that as a compliment of course, Deemer Deamer.
Speaker 1: It makes you wonder like, is this what happened to
Speaker 1: the other two researchers that Frankenstein themselves? Like did they
Speaker 1: get sick of Deemer making annoying comments at them? And
Speaker 1: they're like, it's time to inject the new tree? And yes, anyway,
Speaker 1: begin the lab tour, so uh Deemer explains, everything that
Speaker 1: I have and care for is here. Um And so
Speaker 1: they're looking around and John Agar starts looking down into
Speaker 1: a containment box, which is one of those boxes like
Speaker 1: in the credits of The Simpsons. You know, it's got
Speaker 1: the gloves, the sealed gloves coming in from the outside
Speaker 1: so you can manipulate stuff on the inside, but it
Speaker 1: stays contained. This is a great lab scene, by the way,
Speaker 1: that the whole set is great. There's there's just a
Speaker 1: lot of fun gear. There are scenes even I think
Speaker 1: at this point in later where they're like multiple Bunsen
Speaker 1: burners going in the background, the various glass containers having
Speaker 1: bubbling liquids. So there's a lot going on here. And
Speaker 1: it's a it's it's a it's a neat set totally.
Speaker 1: And they leave the beaker's burning when they're they leave
Speaker 1: the house and the beakers are still burning. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: think it's that kind of lappiness that that's what led
Speaker 1: to a giant spider rampaging across the hills. Here. I
Speaker 1: have to agree. Here, Okay, now here's where some of
Speaker 1: the technobabble starts. John Iger, he looks at the beaker
Speaker 1: he says, what's in the beaker? Deemer says a nutrient.
Speaker 1: Steve says, you mean a synthetic How does that follow
Speaker 1: from a nutrient? Deemer says completely. Non organic food concentrate
Speaker 1: medicine has lengthened the lifespan and people live longer, but
Speaker 1: the food supply remains fairly static. World population is increasing
Speaker 1: at the rate of twenty five million a year, an
Speaker 1: overcrowded world. That means not enough to eat. The disease
Speaker 1: of hunger, like most diseases, well it spreads. There are
Speaker 1: two billion people in the world today. In nineteen five,
Speaker 1: there will be three billion. In the year two thousand,
Speaker 1: there will be three billion, six hundred and twenty five million.
Speaker 1: You're off by a few billion there um. And he
Speaker 1: says the world may not be able to deuce enough
Speaker 1: food to feed all these people. Now, perhaps you'll understand
Speaker 1: what an inexpensive nutrient will mean. And John Agar, instead
Speaker 1: of saying every everything you just said is wrong, he says, well,
Speaker 1: not many of us look that far into the future, sir,
Speaker 1: And Deemer says, our business is the future. No man
Speaker 1: can do it on his own. Of course, you don't
Speaker 1: pull it out of your hat like a magician's rabbit.
Speaker 1: You build on what hundreds of others have learned before you. Okay.
Speaker 1: John Agar then says, I thought synthesis was impossible without
Speaker 1: a bonding agent to hold everything together. Deemer says, and
Speaker 1: we use the simplest of all the atom Let me
Speaker 1: show you. And then they motioned to a room that's
Speaker 1: like sealed behind glass, but there's a table in there
Speaker 1: with a bunch of vials on it. And then Matt,
Speaker 1: looking through the glass at it these vials on the table, says,
Speaker 1: that's an isotope, isn't it. Deemer says, a radio act
Speaker 1: to isotope ammoniac. And then Matt says, and that's what
Speaker 1: binds your solution. Deemer says, binds it and triggers it
Speaker 1: using it. Eric's dreame in mind, maybe a reality before.
Speaker 1: But then there's a phone call that interrupts whatever he
Speaker 1: was going to say, interrupts this beautiful sequence of events.
Speaker 1: And I was just thinking, by god, this like we
Speaker 1: could do a whole episode on just trying to sort
Speaker 1: out the weirdness of all the science babble he just said.
Speaker 1: Now it is worth noting that it is Leo G.
Speaker 1: Carroll saying all of the science babble, and so it
Speaker 1: is at least stated in a very nice British accent,
Speaker 1: which has makes it a lot more believable for all
Speaker 1: the wrong reasons. I guess what they're all saying is
Speaker 1: sort of equally like huh. But the John Agar lines
Speaker 1: sound much stupider than the Deemer ones, Like when John
Speaker 1: Agar says, that's an isotope, isn't it? It's just like
Speaker 1: a table. Yeah. But if I understand the scheme here
Speaker 1: that this, well, the scientific objective here is the population
Speaker 1: is growing. There's not going to be enough food for everyone.
Speaker 1: So what if we could just inject nutrients directly into
Speaker 1: our body so we don't have to eat. I think
Speaker 1: that is the idea they're saying. Now. Of course they
Speaker 1: get all the population statistics wrong, and of course, you know,
Speaker 1: at the time this movie was being made, I don't
Speaker 1: have a lot of knowledge about this, but you know,
Speaker 1: something in the mid century, I think, like the fifties
Speaker 1: through especially, I think like the late sixties early seventies,
Speaker 1: there was the the Third Agricultural Revolution going on, you know,
Speaker 1: the the Green Revolution, which had a bunch of changes
Speaker 1: in in crops that allowed for increased crop yields and
Speaker 1: food production. Um. So it's interesting that this is simultaneous
Speaker 1: with like real advances going on in the world, but
Speaker 1: by completely different means, by completely different means than using
Speaker 1: an isotope. Oh but anyway, so the phone call, it's
Speaker 1: for John Agar. He's got to go do a house call.
Speaker 1: But before he leaves, he gets deem or permission to
Speaker 1: do an autopsy on Jacobs to see if it was
Speaker 1: really quote acromegalia. And then so he's leaving and then
Speaker 1: deemers talking to Steve and he's like, well, now I'll
Speaker 1: show you to your quarters, which just made me think basically,
Speaker 1: it's gonna be like, Steve, let me show you to
Speaker 1: your glass aquarium tank where the one where you'll be staying.
Speaker 1: The previous tenant left a few patches of silk webbing
Speaker 1: and scrat corpses. We'll have to get those cleaned up.
Speaker 1: But anyway, so we followed John Agar around. He does
Speaker 1: the autopsy, he comes out to talk with the sheriff
Speaker 1: and admits that his suspicions were wrong. He says, yep, yep,
Speaker 1: the death was caused by acromegalia and this is where
Speaker 1: and the Sheriff's like, you mean, the professor was right.
Speaker 1: This scene, by the way, it takes place in front
Speaker 1: of two stained glass windows, which I've read online that
Speaker 1: at least one of these windows it was later used
Speaker 1: in Psycho. Oh. Interesting. I have to say, a colorful
Speaker 1: stained glass window like this in black and white, it
Speaker 1: has a unique kind of feel to it, uh as
Speaker 1: it does in Psycho. I agree. I don't recall when
Speaker 1: it is in Psycho, but I can totally see that
Speaker 1: it clicks for me. It seems to make sense. But so, yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess they're in the medical examiner's office or something,
Speaker 1: and um, yeah, so you know, the Sheriff's like, you mean,
Speaker 1: the professor was right? And then he does another just
Speaker 1: absolutely brutal, demoralizing dressing down of John Agar. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: this is where he says, next time, I'm going to
Speaker 1: bring in a doctor from Phoenix. It's just just so brutal,
Speaker 1: Like I feel like most in real life, how many
Speaker 1: professionals would take this degree of of of dressing down
Speaker 1: from uh the old crank. But but Agar just kind
Speaker 1: of takes it, takes it in stride. Well, nothing bothers him.
Speaker 1: So in the middle third of the movie. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: skip more lightly over a few things here, but we
Speaker 1: see Deemer and Steve working in the laboratory. They're getting
Speaker 1: more explanations of of how the nutrient works, what's gone
Speaker 1: wrong with previous experiments, and so forth. Uh, Steve. Oh,
Speaker 1: there's a part where Steve has to leave for town
Speaker 1: and she says the line is science is science, but
Speaker 1: a girl must get her hair done. So she's gonna
Speaker 1: go get her hair done, and also like thirty things
Speaker 1: like you later run into her aunt and she has
Speaker 1: like thirty thirty. She has a bunch of parcels she's
Speaker 1: picked up, so I don't know, I mean, she did
Speaker 1: just move to the area. I'm sure these are all
Speaker 1: important purchases. Well, but also we're supposed to get the
Speaker 1: impression that this town has like a hundred people in it.
Speaker 1: What's the shopping district like in Rock Desert, Arizona or whatever?
Speaker 1: This is? So John Agar and Steve meet up while
Speaker 1: she's in town, and then they walk around sit on
Speaker 1: benches and they flirt and they have a romantic afternoon
Speaker 1: that ends with them going for a ride in the
Speaker 1: desert and they have a have a nice hike and
Speaker 1: sit under a rock formation to have a cigarette, when
Speaker 1: suddenly there is a landslide that nearly crushes them and
Speaker 1: they have to they have to get out of the way.
Speaker 1: By the way, the whole time they're out in the desert,
Speaker 1: here in the middle of the day, John Agar is
Speaker 1: in full jacket and tie. Yes, with those enormous shoulders
Speaker 1: on the that that that that jacket. I just was
Speaker 1: weirded out by the jacket the whole time. I guess jacket. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess it's the style of the day. But nobody
Speaker 1: else's shoulders are that big by virtue of the garment alone, seemingly.
Speaker 1: I don't know. Maybe agars shoulders are really that long,
Speaker 1: but I doubt it. Well, So after there's a landslide,
Speaker 1: Steve is like, I've had enough of the unknown for
Speaker 1: one day. And she she's sort of pondering in the car.
Speaker 1: She's like, that rock slide. Something must have caused it.
Speaker 1: You can almost tell, like an earlier draft of the
Speaker 1: script head or say, like it's almost as if there
Speaker 1: was a giant spider up there or something. And this
Speaker 1: is when John Agar says, you can't second guess the desert.
Speaker 1: But we see we start to see Deemer presenting the
Speaker 1: same symptoms as his colleagues from earlier. Uh you know
Speaker 1: he oh. Uh. Steve shows John Agar around the lab
Speaker 1: some more, and deemers like, you shouldn't have done that,
Speaker 1: You should have you know, you're you're not allowed to
Speaker 1: bring people in. And then meanwhile John Agar in the
Speaker 1: sheriff go investigate a rancher's complaints that his horses and
Speaker 1: cattle are being stripped of all flesh in the night,
Speaker 1: and uh, it's leaving just piles of clean bones in
Speaker 1: the grass. Later, I think the rancher himself is eaten mysteriously.
Speaker 1: And they find that a car was thrown off the
Speaker 1: highway as if it was picked up from above and
Speaker 1: tossed thirty feet. But they also keep finding big strange
Speaker 1: puddles of some sort of whitish substance. And at first
Speaker 1: they're they're all like a little too unconcerned over this.
Speaker 1: They're like, like, what are this? Why are there giant
Speaker 1: puddles of white liquid? And they're like it's probably not related,
Speaker 1: But then they eventually come back around to it. John
Speaker 1: Agar tries to assess what is in the puddles of
Speaker 1: goo by tasting it. He like he dips his fingers
Speaker 1: and the goo and he like puts it in his
Speaker 1: mouth and then he goes, it's not milk, not milk,
Speaker 1: it's not cheese, and I don't know, you have to
Speaker 1: have it tested. I think he concludes its insect venom.
Speaker 1: But also in this middle section of the movie, we
Speaker 1: start getting more and more shots of the actual tarantula,
Speaker 1: Like we watched the tarantula attack a bunch of horses
Speaker 1: on a ranch at night and then attack the rancher,
Speaker 1: throw the car off the road, and so forth, and
Speaker 1: man again, the special effects look pretty great. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: they do um and the spider comes off as a
Speaker 1: real threat. It's it's kind of scary to why you don't,
Speaker 1: you know, see people visibly digested by the spider and
Speaker 1: so forth. But it's still pretty horrifying to see the
Speaker 1: see it to come in and all the cut to
Speaker 1: the I think the puppet spider pinchers and all as
Speaker 1: it's actually supposed to be grabbing the individual, and then
Speaker 1: they cut away and leave the grizzly details to your imagination,
Speaker 1: as it should be in a film from this era. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: eventually Steve gets concerned about Professor Deemer because of the
Speaker 1: symptoms he's showing and uh and so John Aygar goes
Speaker 1: to help. Uh. He he shows up there and Deemer
Speaker 1: can hardly breathe. Then, so John Agar gives him some
Speaker 1: kind of injection. I don't think it specified what it is,
Speaker 1: but here it's finally time for Deemer to spill the beans.
Speaker 1: He says that, Okay, he and Jacobs had been working
Speaker 1: on this together quote since our days at oak Ridge.
Speaker 1: I assume he's referring to oak Ridge, Tennessee, which was
Speaker 1: the production site for the Manhattan Project during World War Two,
Speaker 1: developing the atomic bomb. So this, along with the sort
Speaker 1: of vague talk about quote an isotope or a radioactive isotope,
Speaker 1: makes me think they're sort of getting some atomic age
Speaker 1: stuff in here. But but they're they're just not very
Speaker 1: clear on how it works. Anyway, Deemer says, you know, Jacobs,
Speaker 1: he was an impatient old man, and even though the
Speaker 1: nutrients sometimes failed on the animals they were testing it on,
Speaker 1: he thought it still might work on humans. So one day,
Speaker 1: while Deemer was out, Jacobs and the other guy, Paul Lundon,
Speaker 1: they decided, well, you know, let's do it. Let's inject
Speaker 1: ourselves with it, and like it keeps making the rabbits explode,
Speaker 1: but you know, it just might work on humans. Let's
Speaker 1: try it. Let's experiment on ourselves with this dangerous nutrient,
Speaker 1: and that's apparently how it goes down. But you know,
Speaker 1: I kept I I would look back on this and
Speaker 1: I had questions that I'm sure the film, this is
Speaker 1: not a film that I think was really trying to
Speaker 1: play with any subtlety like this. But like when one
Speaker 1: of the Frankenstein researchers injects Deemer, there's this sense of
Speaker 1: like like now you're gonna die too. Now you're like
Speaker 1: a vengeance almost. That made me question like, well, well,
Speaker 1: who injected who did Deem or inject them because they
Speaker 1: seem very vengeful towards him if they just injected themselves.
Speaker 1: But um, the film doesn't actually push uh an audience
Speaker 1: um interpretation in that direction at any point, So it's
Speaker 1: probably just me overthinking it. Yeah, I know what you're
Speaker 1: talking about with that scene that is weird when Lund
Speaker 1: injects Deemer. I don't know exactly what to make of that.
Speaker 1: It could be a product of like an earlier draft
Speaker 1: of the script or something where maybe at one point,
Speaker 1: Deemer's character was supposed to be more malicious, and then
Speaker 1: they realized and worked a little better. If he was not,
Speaker 1: I don't know, but at any rate, he's a Deemer
Speaker 1: Certainly Frankenstein ngu pretty hard. At this point, Deemer says,
Speaker 1: the isotope triggered our nutrient into a nightmare. That's a
Speaker 1: quote Deemer. He also in the scene he gets very
Speaker 1: emotional about his specimens. He's like walking through the lab
Speaker 1: kind of saying, you should have seen them all before
Speaker 1: the fire. They lived on nothing but our nutrient. A
Speaker 1: rat eight times normal size, the guinea pig big as
Speaker 1: a police dog, a tarantula lost all lost. Oh, and
Speaker 1: John agar Is is interested in the tarantula. He's like,
Speaker 1: what happened to it? And Deemer says it got burned,
Speaker 1: but we know otherwise. And he passes out due to
Speaker 1: grief about his precious tarantula. So they put him to bed. Uh.
Speaker 1: John agar tell Steve that there is no hope whatsoever
Speaker 1: for him, but gives her some pills and says to
Speaker 1: give him to Deemer for pain, and then he says
Speaker 1: he's got to go check on something because we know
Speaker 1: what's going on. John John Agar spidy senses are tingling,
Speaker 1: especially since he's seen that goo out in the ranch.
Speaker 1: So this is where he goes to the Agricultural Institute
Speaker 1: to get the goose samples tested. He wonders if it's
Speaker 1: insect venom while he meets Mr Drysdale here at the lab,
Speaker 1: and Drysdale tells him it's not insect venom. He says, quote,
Speaker 1: it's from a species called a rack nidda. You mean
Speaker 1: a spider a tarantula to be exact. But the scientist says,
Speaker 1: I've never seen so much of it. He says, there's
Speaker 1: more venom in this test tube than you'd find in
Speaker 1: a hundred tarantulas. And then by simple math, John Agar concludes, well,
Speaker 1: a tarantula that could secrete that much venom must be
Speaker 1: a hundred times larger than a regular tarantula. But this
Speaker 1: is just a sample, Like, this is just what he
Speaker 1: fit into the tube, not the amount that was produced. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is just, you know, what he was able to
Speaker 1: put in the tube, not not counting the other puddles
Speaker 1: that were litter all over the place of the scene
Speaker 1: of the murder. By the way, I hope that the
Speaker 1: tarantula the giant tarantula. Also ate that plus sized rat
Speaker 1: and that guinea pig the size of a police dog
Speaker 1: if they escaped, because you know, otherwise, if it's skipping
Speaker 1: those and going straight to humans, like, shame on, new tarantula,
Speaker 1: at least eat the other plus sized animals first. They
Speaker 1: never address what happened to the other animals that I
Speaker 1: was thinking that after the movie was over. It's like
Speaker 1: they burned the tarantula, but there could be a rampaging
Speaker 1: guinea pig the size of a blue whale. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: could be in a sequel, just rolling across the hills. Well, anyway,
Speaker 1: Johnny Gar tells the scientist about all the puddles, and
Speaker 1: the scientist is incredulous, but he and then he's like, anyway,
Speaker 1: let's watch an educational film strip about tarantula's Uh so
Speaker 1: we learned all kinds of things in the scene. First.
Speaker 1: The really funny thing here is that apparently the scientists
Speaker 1: begins by using the film strip to demonstrate that there
Speaker 1: are no such things in nature as tarantulas that are
Speaker 1: a hundred feet tall. So like he's like, you know,
Speaker 1: see the largest tarantulas in South America, it's only a
Speaker 1: foot in diameter with the legs stretched out the ones
Speaker 1: in Arizona, or even smaller. So so you see, you know,
Speaker 1: a tarantula the size of a blue whale is just
Speaker 1: not to be found in nature. I found it interesting
Speaker 1: that the video they watch does acknowledge the tarantula hawk wasp,
Speaker 1: you know, the the wasp that that that that lay
Speaker 1: their eggs inside of the tarantula. Uh, Because I was
Speaker 1: thinking to myself, it's like, well, you know, kudos that
Speaker 1: they acknowledge that that these wasps are really at the
Speaker 1: top of the heap and not the tarantula, because I
Speaker 1: felt like they might have been tempted to edit things
Speaker 1: so that they just position the tarantula as more fierce
Speaker 1: than it actually is. Well, let's see what they do say,
Speaker 1: because we learn a lot of things from this film strip.
Speaker 1: So we learned the following. Okay, are you ready, let's
Speaker 1: do it. Tarantula's have eight legs. Correct, they can move
Speaker 1: faster than you think. Depends on what you think. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: They say this assures him of a long life, the
Speaker 1: scientists disgustingly saying him of the tarantula. I don't know
Speaker 1: why this assures him of a long life. Sometimes twenty
Speaker 1: five years. Okay, don't I don't know that. Maybe I
Speaker 1: don't have the facts the keyed up on that. Uh.
Speaker 1: They say the spider wasp is the tarantula's deadliest enemy.
Speaker 1: Strong case to be made for it. Okay. From here
Speaker 1: we go to tarantula does not know the meaning of fear. Well, yes,
Speaker 1: that's probably true. Uh, he'll back down a rattlesnake if
Speaker 1: he has to. Well, we are given the cinematic evidence
Speaker 1: of this. Uh. Quote their flesh eaters, these are John
Speaker 1: Agar's words, and desert beetles are their usual diet. Okay,
Speaker 1: we have more footages provided, so we buy this. Okay.
Speaker 1: Their jaws are powerful enough to pierce a man's finger,
Speaker 1: so they say it could be the case. They pre
Speaker 1: digest their food by flooding the wound with a powerful
Speaker 1: solvent so that the flesh can be sucked into the body.
Speaker 1: And then John A. Car says that would account for
Speaker 1: the bones um. But then finally the scientist says, fortunately,
Speaker 1: the venom of a tarantula is no more dangerous to
Speaker 1: a human than a hornet sting. And he tells John
Speaker 1: Agar He's solemnly looks at him and says, we must
Speaker 1: accept them as we do the rest of God's creatures.
Speaker 1: What a strange thing to say. It's just like, I
Speaker 1: know you don't like it, but you have to accept it.
Speaker 1: They are part of nature. By the way, if anyone
Speaker 1: out there is wondering what it might be like to
Speaker 1: be eaten by a giant spider, we we have an
Speaker 1: episode in the vault somewhere that we devoted to the
Speaker 1: very question that one was fun Um. Yeah, So the
Speaker 1: scientists like, look, you know, they're just part of God's plan. Uh,
Speaker 1: you got to accept them. And he says each animal
Speaker 1: as a function within its own world. And then John
Speaker 1: Agar is like, yeah, but what if one got really big?
Speaker 1: And then the scientist says, then, and this is a quote,
Speaker 1: then expect something that's fiercer, more cruel, and deadly than
Speaker 1: anything that ever walked the earth. Cut straight to giant
Speaker 1: tarantula walking through the desert, knocking down telephone lines and
Speaker 1: power cables. Yeah, and it is just upsettingly big at
Speaker 1: this point. It's it's like it's big enough at this
Speaker 1: point that you're it's how many people would it take
Speaker 1: to feed this thing? It's how many horses, how many cattle?
Speaker 1: It's just way too big. Somebody needs to do something
Speaker 1: about the spider. So we see the spider out in
Speaker 1: the in the desert in the middle of the night.
Speaker 1: It eats a couple of cowboys who are sleeping out
Speaker 1: under the stars. This is that classic trip that we've
Speaker 1: talked about before when you have new characters suddenly introduced.
Speaker 1: This late in the Monster movie. Oh it's not looking good.
Speaker 1: They are food. Yeah, But John Agar gets in touch
Speaker 1: with the sheriff and he's like, okay, time to arm
Speaker 1: everyone called the state police meet me at the Deemer place,
Speaker 1: and the sheriff reluctantly believes him. But but here's where
Speaker 1: we get the attack on Maracorda in the Deemer house,
Speaker 1: so that the tarantula creeps up on the house. Uh,
Speaker 1: this is the scene where we see the tarantula peeking
Speaker 1: in through the window. Yeah, and um it's it's a
Speaker 1: creepy scene. That big tarantula pumpet with his big eyes.
Speaker 1: Very effective, I thought. And this is just the beginning
Speaker 1: of a full on attack on the house, which is
Speaker 1: an exciting sequence with lots of cool effects and uh
Speaker 1: special effects, big spider parts ramming in through the walls
Speaker 1: and so forth. Yeah, it attacks the house. It bites
Speaker 1: through the roof. It's fangs are coming into Deemer's room.
Speaker 1: I think it. I think it eats Deemer owen Deemer
Speaker 1: full pajamas by the way, glorious. Yeah, full pajamas with
Speaker 1: the stripes and that. Yeah, he's going. Um. Steve escapes
Speaker 1: instead of running into the basement, though she runs outside.
Speaker 1: Luckily for her, John Agar is just then arrived being
Speaker 1: to pick her up in his convertible, and the tarantula
Speaker 1: chases the cars. It speeds down the highway, and I
Speaker 1: love how they don't even talk about it. You know
Speaker 1: that she gets in the car they drive away. She's
Speaker 1: not like giant spider. That was weird, huh yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: But the rendezvous with the police and then every the police,
Speaker 1: everybody now sees the spider. So there's no more debate
Speaker 1: about whether there's a giant spider. We're all on the
Speaker 1: same page now, all of humankind must span together to
Speaker 1: annihilate it. Uh. And so this part they get like more.
Speaker 1: Corda and John Agar get into the police car and
Speaker 1: ride off, and then we see two cops approaching the
Speaker 1: spider with guns drawn. I was like, what okay, And
Speaker 1: I guess they just needed to be doomed. But then
Speaker 1: it gets even weirder when I see okay, no, they're
Speaker 1: not just randomly walking at the spider pointing guns at it.
Speaker 1: They were going to get John Agar's car. So the
Speaker 1: premise of this scene is that this classic convertible is
Speaker 1: worth at least two human lives. Well, I remember correctly,
Speaker 1: it was a sports car. Like, this is a new car.
Speaker 1: This is a nice car. They're like, it's our duty
Speaker 1: as law enforcement officers to make sure the spider doesn't
Speaker 1: eat this fine automobile. Yeah, but unfortunately the spider eats
Speaker 1: them instead. Uh So, John Agar and Mark Corday ride
Speaker 1: back with the cops and they're all on the radio like,
Speaker 1: get us all the dynamite you can find, and get
Speaker 1: napalm too. And we've seen the sheriff saying dog gone
Speaker 1: and I wish I had some nitro. And they set
Speaker 1: a big trap for the spider on the highway. They
Speaker 1: lay out all this dynamite. They really use a lot
Speaker 1: of dynamite, but it doesn't work. No, no, no. Also, okay,
Speaker 1: here's a question that's come up in recent episodes. Why
Speaker 1: is John Agar in charge here? Biggest shoulders. Once again,
Speaker 1: this is what was the movie where we were talking
Speaker 1: about this problem of movies where suddenly a random civilian
Speaker 1: is allowed to be involved in police business, or even
Speaker 1: in charge of police business. I guess just because they're
Speaker 1: the hero. Oh, it shows up all the time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: where it's someone's a photographer, but somehow they're in every
Speaker 1: scene of the investigation, like they're suddenly co lead detective
Speaker 1: or something. Yeah. So like basically John Agar's character gets
Speaker 1: to call in an airstrike. Yes, I get why he's
Speaker 1: John Agar. I guess, yeah, Oh it was an atragon.
Speaker 1: Remember it was those those photographers, Yes, I do now, Yeah,
Speaker 1: like all of the military leaders are listening to what
Speaker 1: these sleazy photographers are telling them to do. You know.
Speaker 1: I guess it comes down in an emergency situation, like
Speaker 1: somebody needs to to take the lead and tell people
Speaker 1: what to do and uh. And so it holds true
Speaker 1: in any emergency situation, including giant spiders. Okay, but so
Speaker 1: the dynamite trap doesn't work spiders coming toward town. I
Speaker 1: guess they're only hope at this point is the air force.
Speaker 1: And again, this is such a nineteen fifties movie because
Speaker 1: it literally just ends with the military coming in and
Speaker 1: destroying the monster and it works and that's it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So like the Clinting Eastwood flies in in a jet
Speaker 1: with a few other jets. They dropped napalm on the
Speaker 1: spider and then the spider catches on fire and it
Speaker 1: actually looks very brutal. Like you said, they had some
Speaker 1: kind of puppet that they set fire too. I felt
Speaker 1: bad for the tarantula. And then that's just the end.
Speaker 1: Just that's straight to the end title card Monsters on Fire.
Speaker 1: Nobody has anything to say about it. The end a
Speaker 1: universal international picture. Why did so many movies of this
Speaker 1: period end exactly like this? I'm sure you know what
Speaker 1: I'm talking about, Like, no additional character resolution, no day Newmont,
Speaker 1: the monster is dead, there's no comment on it. Film
Speaker 1: ends immediately. Yeah, they wrap it up in a nice
Speaker 1: tight bow. They get the movie, uh, you know, in
Speaker 1: under time. And I have to say, sometimes I kind
Speaker 1: of missed this. I feel like modern films, especially, they're
Speaker 1: always trying to play like for d chest with their endings,
Speaker 1: and sometimes I just want to say, look, it's okay
Speaker 1: if you just blow up the monster and in the movie,
Speaker 1: you know, we literally like you see the monster splatter,
Speaker 1: it's clearly dead. And then just the end, Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's it's okay if like the military just shows up
Speaker 1: and blows up the monster and we can just imagine
Speaker 1: how these characters interacted thereafter. We don't need thirty more
Speaker 1: minutes of the movie, okay. But to counter this, what
Speaker 1: if it ended with a stinger, which is okay, you know, uh,
Speaker 1: John Agar and Marcorda, They're like, well, we're in love now,
Speaker 1: we're gonna have a happy life together. But then in
Speaker 1: the background you see a giant guinea pigs stampedeing over
Speaker 1: the mountains. Well, obviously I would love that, uh setting
Speaker 1: up the sequel that never was um any of the
Speaker 1: giant animals coming back, that would have been good or
Speaker 1: the same. By the naming convention, though it would have
Speaker 1: to be tarantula to col and guinea pig. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: the guinea pig is it's still the size of a
Speaker 1: police thought. And then because that's a that's the one
Speaker 1: question you have to ask. So different animals grow different
Speaker 1: in different ways. So and clearly we've already established the
Speaker 1: nutrient affects people in different ways as well, Like it
Speaker 1: doesn't seem to be making fifty foot tall humans. It's
Speaker 1: just um, you know, killing humans over the course of
Speaker 1: like four days. Meanwhile, the spider keeps growing and growing.
Speaker 1: What happens to the guinea pig? Does I think they's
Speaker 1: blowde Does it just stay the size of a police dog?
Speaker 1: Or does it become enormous as well? Well? To side
Speaker 1: a little bit of biology, I am pretty sure that
Speaker 1: there are stricter size limits on arthropods than there are
Speaker 1: on mammals. I think presumably you could actually get a
Speaker 1: bigger guinea pig than you could get a big spider.
Speaker 1: Because spider, what are the reasons? I know we've talked
Speaker 1: about this before. I have something to do with respiration
Speaker 1: that like arthur pods, like insects and spiders, they have
Speaker 1: to uh like do gas exchange through their skin And
Speaker 1: if you just get a certain amount of volume, you
Speaker 1: can't do enough of that with the outside surface. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And plus he goes without saying for for many for
Speaker 1: most animals, you would be can asking this question about
Speaker 1: you can't just scale it up because the things are
Speaker 1: gonna happen, like the legs are going to just snap
Speaker 1: underneath its weight. It's it's like that body size is
Speaker 1: not meant to be scaled up to the size of
Speaker 1: a skyscraper. It's just not going to support that creature anymore,
Speaker 1: so it could potentially just fall apart. I think it
Speaker 1: also affects stuff about body heat and cooling and all that.
Speaker 1: So yeah, anyway, yeah, yeah, the square cube law comes
Speaker 1: into play and so forth. But I guess what we're
Speaker 1: trying to say is that this can't happen. This didn't
Speaker 1: really happen Tarantula fictional film. We we are like Mr
Speaker 1: Drysdale in the thing, saying, see, let me educate you
Speaker 1: about how they're not there are not in fact whale
Speaker 1: size spiders. Um. Fun kind of tie in for this movie.
Speaker 1: So I watched this film the other day. In a
Speaker 1: few days prior, I saw the new Jordan Peel movie
Speaker 1: Nope Um over the weekend. And I'm not gonna share
Speaker 1: any spoilers on Nope other than to say it's it's fun,
Speaker 1: fun flick with a lot of surprises in it. But
Speaker 1: uh Nope. Takes place in the California desert, with scenes
Speaker 1: of some sort of a lurking threat being present and
Speaker 1: also scenes of horses. Uh So, while again, while this
Speaker 1: movie Tarantula was set in Arizona. It was filmed in California,
Speaker 1: and it features what feel like some of the same
Speaker 1: sorts of rolling hills and places as well as cattles
Speaker 1: and cattle and horses. Um, so I was looking this up,
Speaker 1: I was just like, I wonder how close the settings were. Well,
Speaker 1: Tarantula was filmed in Lucerne Valley and Pivotal Nope, scenes
Speaker 1: were filmed in Santa Clarita, and those are about a
Speaker 1: hundred miles apart. So, um, you know, still same neck
Speaker 1: of the state to at least a limited extent. Maybe
Speaker 1: our local Californian listeners can chime in on the differences,
Speaker 1: please do. All right, Well, that's that's Tarantula again. Nine
Speaker 1: film and probably one of the probably one of the
Speaker 1: more entertaining giant animal films of the era that you
Speaker 1: could seek out. I agree this one is a lot
Speaker 1: of fun. I think it's just the right combination of
Speaker 1: um brisk pace, great absurdity, and uh genuinely good special
Speaker 1: effects for the time. It's it's a lot of fun.
Speaker 1: All right. Well, we'll hope you'll join us next time
Speaker 1: with this this uh, these episodes Weird House Cinema they
Speaker 1: published every Friday, and the Stuff to Blow Your Mind
Speaker 1: podcast feed and normally where a science podcast with core
Speaker 1: episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but on Fridays we set
Speaker 1: most of that aside and just talk about a weird film. Uh.
Speaker 1: Two websites of note for Weird House Cinema. There's some
Speaker 1: mut music dot com, which is just a blog where
Speaker 1: I'll do some blog posts about these episodes and include
Speaker 1: things like the trailer and related video or audio if
Speaker 1: it's applicable to the film that we're featuring. But also
Speaker 1: weird House has a Letterboxed account that's U l e
Speaker 1: T T E r b o x d. Our user
Speaker 1: name there is weird House. It's a fun website. It's
Speaker 1: really really I have more and more I'm using Letterboxed
Speaker 1: to help research films. Uh. They have some wonderful interface options, like,
Speaker 1: for instance, you can go to our list under weird House.
Speaker 1: We have a list of all the episodes we've done,
Speaker 1: and you can do things with like quick drop down.
Speaker 1: You can see like which movies we've done from the
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties, which movies we've done from the nineteen sixties, etcetera,
Speaker 1: which we can separate them by genre and so forth.
Speaker 1: So it's a really fun website that that I'm I'm
Speaker 1: having I'm having a great time using and we're on there,
Speaker 1: so if you're on there, follow us. We'll all have
Speaker 1: a good time watching movies together. Huge thanks as always
Speaker 1: to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you
Speaker 1: would like to get in touch with us with feedback
Speaker 1: on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic
Speaker 1: for the future, just to say hello, you can email
Speaker 1: us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of I Heart Radio.
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