Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface
- List of Figures
- Part I Approaching the Genre
- 1 Horror
- 2 The Monster at the Bedroom Window
- 3 Fear in a Frame
- Part II Subgenres: The Book of Monsters
- 4 Monsters
- 5 Supernatural Monsters
- 6 Humans
- Part III Related Genres
- 7 Horror Comedy
- 8 Horror Documentary
- Notes
- Films Cited
- Selected Bibliography
- Index
2 - The Monster at the Bedroom Window
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 September 2020
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface
- List of Figures
- Part I Approaching the Genre
- 1 Horror
- 2 The Monster at the Bedroom Window
- 3 Fear in a Frame
- Part II Subgenres: The Book of Monsters
- 4 Monsters
- 5 Supernatural Monsters
- 6 Humans
- Part III Related Genres
- 7 Horror Comedy
- 8 Horror Documentary
- Notes
- Films Cited
- Selected Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Tarantula
Tarantula concerns the experiments of Professor Gerald Deemer (Leo G. Carroll), who with his late assistants has been developing a radioactive nutrient that has led to rapid development and abnormal growth in animal test subjects, notably a gigantic tarantula that escapes during a fire in the lab in Deemer's house in the desert. The isotope they added to their nutrient, Deemer says late in the film, “triggered” the nutrient into “a nightmare.” There are indeed many scenes in Tarantula that can remind one of nightmares, such as when two men are running from the spider at night and can’t get away, but one implication of Deemer's line is that the whole experience is comparable to a nightmare: that Tarantula's events are as frightening as those in a nightmare and could happen only in one (which lets the viewer compare the horror film to a nightmare) and that they have been overtaken by the equivalent of a frightening dream turned real, a horror that has erupted into the waking world with a monster that is, like the Monster in Bride of Frankenstein, “a nightmare in the daylight.” The use of the word “triggered” links the science fiction premise of the film to the 1950s’ fear of uncontrolled atomic technology. This monster movie has aspects of both science fiction and horror, but horror predominates.
Stephanie “Steve” Clayton (Mara Corday), a graduate student, becomes Deemer’s new assistant. One night she is studying in her second-story bedroom, wearing a robe. The tarantula approaches the house—perhaps, like the Frankenstein Monster, to find its creator. She closes her book and crosses the room, unaware that the tarantula is looking through the large window that faces the camera. The spider, whose gender we do not know, is looking straight into the room and appears to be looking at her; the centers of two of its eyes reflect light, making it resemble a two-eyed voyeur. When Steve turns out the light and starts to take off her robe and get into bed, the spider becomes agitated, as if excited to kill, or sexually excited (no matter how unlikely the attraction between species, for this is about the confrontation between a monster and a woman, a ritual union with its own conventions).
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- Information
- Horror and the Horror Film , pp. 20 - 31Publisher: Anthem PressPrint publication year: 2012