| Author | Message | ||
     Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.161.253.10 |
Just watched Tarantula. Never really watched it before but it's ace - really good effects, a sense of dread whenever the monster appears (rare with big monster movies), and basically a really good monster. I watched Them! a few years back and the first half was great, but it sort of tailed off, and was a little dull when the ants weren't there. This film wasn't dull in the inbetweeny bits - Arnold has a good eye, I think. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.242.126 |
I love both of these films. Loved them when I was a boy and still love them now. THEM is one of the very few films I'd love to see remade - but only with the right team. | ||
| John Llewellyn Probert (John_l_probert) Username: John_l_probert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 90.199.0.130 |
Arnold is great - even minor pictures like THE MONOLITH MONSTERS (which is about monster rocks!) work well. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.161.253.10 |
Also watched They Came From Outer Space - on Sunday - always thought I'd seen it but mustn't have, instead seeing lots of lovely stills. What a sense of poetry the film had - no doubt thanks to Bradbury. The little scene with the lineman and his talk on 'I've worked out here fifteen years and seen allsorts of strange things. Heard them down the wires, too.' Lovely stuff, and rare. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.161.253.10 |
And forgot to mention, but blow me down if that Tarantula's maw at the window of that house didn't look like the biggest pair of beef curtains you've ever seen! | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.161.253.10 |
F*ck me! Think I need to - ahem - lie down for a while. http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=BdRFuhobdNw Bet the Amazon tills are ringing tonight after this clip... | ||
| Steve Bacon (Stevebacon) Username: Stevebacon Registered: 09-2008 Posted From: 90.213.27.228 |
Jesus, I only spotted the spiders the third time I watched that clip. Thanks for posting, Tony. I can't stop stratching now. | ||
| Steve Bacon (Stevebacon) Username: Stevebacon Registered: 09-2008 Posted From: 90.213.27.228 |
I meant 'scratching'. Damn that edit button. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.161.253.10 |
Yowser!http://www.imagesjournal.com/issue10/reviews/coffinjoe/ Ah, so 'scratching' is your word for it, eh? | ||
| Steve Bacon (Stevebacon) Username: Stevebacon Registered: 09-2008 Posted From: 90.213.27.228 |
My mamma used to say that if I scratched too much I'd go blind. I think I'll scratch until I need glasses. | ||
| Huw (Huw) Username: Huw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 218.168.185.235 |
I haven't seen Tarantula since I was a kid, but I have the DVD set (the one which also includes The Monolith Monsters, which I agree was fun). Tony, I remember the title They Came From Outer Space, but I can't seem to recall anything else about it - is it on DVD? Anyone remember I Married a Monster From Outer Space? It scared me as a youngster, and I've got the DVD now so I'm hoping it still holds up. It was a bit of a Body Snatchers clone, as far as I remember (which isn't very far, considering I saw it about 35 years ago!). I love watching these old films. | ||
| Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 212.121.214.11 |
And of course Tarantula was Clint Eastwood's film debut. He plays the pilot that blows it up in the lat 10 seconds of the film. | ||
| Huw (Huw) Username: Huw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 218.168.185.235 |
I'd forgotten that! I just checked IMDB, and it seems he had several movie appearances that year (1955), including 'lab technician' in Revenge of the Creature (sequel to Creature From the Black Lagoon). | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.161.253.10 |
They Came From Outer Space, Huw, was in a box set called 'Classic science fiction Films'. It has Shrinking Man, Thing from Another world, Creature from Black Lagoon, Island Earth and Invasion of the Body Snatchers (original) in it, too. It's fast becoming a fave, 'retrieve from burning house' collection, and only cost 17 quid. I liked I Married a Monster from Outer Space, too. Tom Tryon was in it, you know. One thing I remember is the inexplicable lack of night in the night-time scenes; oddly effective, and you went with it (I have a theory that a lot of great ideas like that can be found in bad cinema). | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.22.228.227 |
It's full of inanities, e.g. why would a giant spider insist on following a desert road with all that desert next to it? But the film works because they used a live tarantula walking on a glass plate. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.161.253.10 |
Maybe the tarantula senses movement on the road? I think that's likely. I for one would have liked to have seen the guinea pig escape... | ||
| Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 212.121.214.11 |
They also use a volkswagon beetle with a big false looking spider built on top of it at one poine. You can see whe wheels in one scene | ||
| Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 212.121.214.11 |
at one poinT even | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.242.126 |
Weber - you're thinking of THE GIANT SPIDER INVASION. A classic of bad movie-making. I bet JLP has seen it.  | ||
| John Llewellyn Probert (John_l_probert) Username: John_l_probert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 90.209.204.108 |
Of course I have! My dad took me to see Bill Rebane's THE GIANT SPIDER INVASION on a double bill with Paul Bartel's CARQUAKE (CANNONBALL in the US) when it came out at the cinema. It's supremely awful and does indeed feature the VW Beetle with legs - I had to watch it again on TV a few years later just to check | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.242.126 |
I saw that exact same double bill - I didn't even realise the other film was by Bartel until now. THE GIANT SPIDER INVASION is one of my absolute favourite bad films. The kind of film the pallid ARACHNOPHOBIA could never be, even in its dreams. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.21.235.77 |
TARANTULA must have been truly scary on the big screen, especially in the fifties. But THEM never worked for me. | ||
| John Llewellyn Probert (John_l_probert) Username: John_l_probert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 90.203.130.228 |
Zed my friend, such dross as ARACHNOPHOBIA can be flushed into the colostomy bag of 'waste-of-time' film-making when there are delights like SPIDER INVASION to be savoured instead. CARQUAKE was Bartel's follow-up to DEATH RACE 2000 and is one of those movies you rewatch as an adult (well you or I would but no-one else) and watch open-mouthed at the parade of drive-in veterans and horror movie stars you totally never appreciated as a kid - David Carradine, Mary Woronov, Belinda Balaski, &c &c. Worth another look. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.242.126 |
I rewatched DEATH RACE 2000 recently, and - you know what? - I still thought it was bloody brilliant. | ||
| Huw (Huw) Username: Huw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 218.168.191.52 |
Anyone seen the new version of Death Race 2000, simply titled Death Race? | ||
| John Llewellyn Probert (John_l_probert) Username: John_l_probert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 90.199.0.193 |
Haven't seen the remake. The original IS still brilliant, makes me very sad no-one makes stuff like this anymore (mind you, were they really doing it much even then?) | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.161.253.10 |
This stuff was very frowned on, wasn't it? Seen almost as evil (Ebert hated it, but I bet he'd get in now for instance). Satire's an odd thing. | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.159.152.164 |
I saw DEATH RACE 2000 at the cinema on its original release - don't recall any fuss about it but I'm sure there must've been. Margaret Hinxman probably got a bit upset... | ||
| John Llewellyn Probert (John_l_probert) Username: John_l_probert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 213.253.174.81 |
I remember there being quite a hoo-haa (never written that word before) about it when it came out - talk of it being banned locally because of its subject matter, but I was only 8. [Sorry Mick] | ||
| Thomasb (Thomasb) Username: Thomasb Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 69.236.173.147 |
Just watched the "This Night . . . " clip; a brave bunch of women; I hope they were well-paid. You sure couldn't pay me. |