Jack Arnold, A Giant In The 50s
From 1953 to 1958 Jack Arnold ruled the Sci-Fi cinematic world, he directed 6 major sci-fi features (and 4 episodes of the Science Fiction Theatre) Starting off in 1953 with the Bradbury story,
It Came from Outer Space.
In this classic a ship from another world crash land in an Arizona desert and when an amateur astrologist goes out to investigate he discovers the ship and some hideous creature inside, unfortunately, due to his reputation for being a 'nutter' no one believes him. However.. people in the town soon starts to act strange like they are not themselves anymore.. A classic based on a Ray Bradbury-story, so obviously it can't fail.
The year after he continued with legendary The Creature from the Black Lagoon where a scientific expedition searching for fossils along the Amazon River discovers a primeval creature with gills, living in the water. And in the water is where the creature first sees beautiful Kay, whom he kidnaps and take to his cave. This film is part of the prominent Universal Monster series, which I love. Universal will always have that to lean back on, the astonishing films that for me are and always will be, the ultimate horror-films.
The year after the Creatur, the sequel came, The Revenge of the Creature, where the Creature now is captured and transported to Florida for research, and again he sees a beautiful female scientist whom he kidnaps after he escapes. As all sequels are, this one is weaker than the former, however still worth seeing.
After the Creature series Arnold went on to directing 4 episodes of Science Fiction Theatre, all made in 1955, and in the same year he made Tarantula. In Tarantula, a spider, belonging to a lab who specializes on growth-hormones and giantism, escapes during a brawl between the head scientist Deemer and a researcher. The researcher who's gone mad due to a injection with this hormone, attacks Deemer and injects him with the same hormone, and soon he also starts to transform. The Spider, now rapidly growing in size, starts to make its presence known by eating cattle and soon terrorizing the citizens of Arizona. Well, bug films, what can I say, I have always loved bug films! The Birds, Them, The Fly and so on. So naturally I love this film, scary, well made with great special effects from trick filming which i SO prefer to CGI.
Two years later in 1957 Arnold directed the one that I almost..almost like more than The Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Incredible Shrinking Man. In this phenomenal film a man exposed to a radioactive dust while out sailing, starts to shrink as a consequence.. to the mere size that he eventually becomes a target for a cat who chases him down to the cellar where he gets stranded. Forced to turn to imagination to find ways to get back up to show his wife he is still alive. Here we see wonderful special effects, for instance the small stature of our leading man, this is a big part of why I like this one the best, all the little things that works so well of tricking the eye and letting us believe he is chased by a cat, using a pencil as a boat and massive drops of water that could almost kill him. I truly enjoy giant/miniature films like this one, land of the giants or Honey, I shrunk the kids, and a lot of the charm comes from the environments and the ways that it is shot, hence, all credit to Arnold in this film because it is fantastic!
In 1958 the Sci-fi reign of Jack Arnold was almost over and he made Monster on the Campus, another classic about a professor who gets exposed to blood from a primitive fish, transforming him to a primitive, bloodthirsty, prehistoric man. Not his best but certainly better than most of the sci-fi films of the 50s. So Jack Arnold created not only extraordinary films he actually established a place in history with his legendary films and creative special effects and cinematography.
