Film review: Tarantula! (1955)

Triffids whetted Jami's appetite for 50s monster movies, and this one was the best one we'd never seen.  It's now more famous for having Clint Eastwood appear in the last 5 minutes (to drop napalm on the titular beast) but don't get excited because you can only see his eyes behind his fighter-jet mask.  The most recognizable face otherwise is Leo G. Carroll (in the hall of fame for "what else have we seen him in?" actors) who plays the nutrition scientist who is only trying to develop a nutriet that will feed humanity in this rapidly (in 1955!) overcrowding Earth.  The film opens very nicely (although not quite as well as the very similar Them! from the year before) with a hideously disfigured man (clad strangely in pajamas combined with smart shoes and socks) stumbling and then expiring in the desert.  He is soon discovered and the town sheriff gets our hero, the town doctor, to look at the body.  The sheriff thinks it's the man who's been working with Professor Deemer, but the doctor thinks it can't be because it looks like he's died because of acromegaly, but they'd both seen the man very recently and he seemed fine.  However, when Deemer is contacted, he confirms that it is indeed his colleague and that he did indeed die of acromegaly.  We then see Deemer return to his lab where he is working with giant guinea pigs and... a giant tarantula.  (The effects in the lab are very well done - no sign of obvious green-screening.)  But then he is attacked by another acromegaly sufferer, who clubs him unconscious, sets fire to the lab and injects Deemer with something, before collapsing.  We also see the tarantula escape and head off into the desert.  Deemer recovers, though, and puts out the fire and then buries his attacker (who, we learn later, was a graduate student assistant, who had joined the original acromegaly victim in trying out the nutrient on himself).  The rest of the movie is the tarantula getting bigger and bigger (and some pretty decent effects that are obviously an actual tarantula superimposed over the background, but it looks a lot better than it really should) going round eating cows, sheep, horses, old codgers etc.  Also our doctor hero is seriously hitting on Stephanie "Steve" Clayton, a sharp-dressed and sharp-eyebrowed young woman who has come to be another graduate assistant to the God-playing Deemer.  Oh, and Deemer succumbs to acromegaly himself, thanks to that injection.  It all builds until the tarantula attacks Deemer's house and our doctor hero rescues Steve and then the tarantula chases them towards the town and Clint and the bombers are called in.  A bit slow in parts, but surprisingly well put-together and serious for such an obvious B-movie.