Tarantula (1955, dir. Jack Arnold)

This entry in the “Science Gone Horribly Wrong” genre is mainly notable for the giant, rampaging mutant tarantula, young Clint Eastwood’s brief appearance as a napalm-dropping fighter pilot, and special effects good enough to traumatize arachnophobic viewers.

Grant Williams in The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957, dir. Jack Arnold), the story of a man who starts shrinking after he’s exposed to a radioactive cloud.

To film a scene in which Williams battles a tarantula, Arnold filmed a real Panamanian tarantula. He put the film of the tarantula in the ground glass of the camera, moved Williams into a matching position on oversize sets, and then had him count to the beat of a metronome to match his movements to those of the tarantula.

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