Today I purchased Tarantula on Dvd for $12.90 [australiAn]. That's roughly $7 U.S. Anyhow, It's been about 15 years sinCe I last saw this classic movie on tv. And I really enjoyed seeing it again. In my honest opinion. It is the definitive giant spider movie. Love it. I took this screen shot of cLint in his first movie role. Go Clint!
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I bought it yesterday for $15 in JB Hifi in Sydney. I'd never seen the film before but really enjoyed it.
I'd read Clint was in the finale. It was cool to see the great man!
Thanks for that.
shareYes, but if you didn't know Clint was in it, would you really have recognized him in this uncredited bit, with an oxygen mask concealing most of his face? Now be honest!
And if you could go back in time and tell the cast that one of them would become this huge star and award-winning director, who among them would have picked Eastwood as that talented and lucky guy? Life is a blast!
Hiya, escalera!
Greetings, hobnob!
Wasn't it Clint Eastwood that played the cornerman in one of Abbott and Costello's Buck Priovate movies?
Going off one a sidetrack -- there are other actors who started out in bits that went on to greater things. Even names! Remember Raymond Burr's character in "Godzilla -- King of the Monsters" ?
Hi escalera,
No, Clint was never in an Abbott and Costello movie. He was only 10 when they made "Buck Privates" in 1941 and 16 when they made the sequel "Buck Privates Come Home" in 1947. Interestingly, he signed as a contract player at their studio, Universal, and made his film debut in 1955, they same year Universal ended its relationship with A&C, so while there might have been a brief window of opportunity for him to appear in one of their last films at that studio, it never happened. They made tens of millions for Universal, really kept the place afloat in the 40s, but when their appeal waned the studio kicked them out as soon as their contracts were up. But they threw out Eastwood after only two or three years, long before he hit superstardom. It's probably poetic justice that he ended up making most of his movies (and most of his money) for another studio, Warner Bros.!
But you're right, there are lots of major actors (not as many actresses, for some reason) who started out in bits...Alan Ladd, Rock Hudson, Tony Curtis, James Dean, James Cagney, Gary Cooper, Clark Gable, Tyrone Power, many others, and even some current actors such as Daniel Day Lewis and Liam Neeson. I think women are more often promoted into bigger roles fairly quickly for sex appeal, regardless of acting talent, whereas male actors are favored by Hollywood and so often start out in smaller roles because there are so many male stars already. One bit-part actress who did make it big was Ava Gardner, and Lana Turner had a similar trajectory, though she started out in better roles than Ava. Betty Grable was another. But I can't think of too many who made it big after starting out in monster movies! Raymond Burr was one, but he had been a busy supporting actor, usually a villain, for a decade by the time he made the Americanized version of "Gojira" ("Godzilla"). And of course he made it big on TV, not movies.
Did you ever see "Them!"? Leonard Nimoy had a bit part there as an army sergeant, a dozen years before he made it big on "Star Trek". James Doohan, who played Scotty on "Trek", can be seen in miniscule parts in "36 Hours" and "The Satan Bug" (both 1965), with one line in the first and none at all in the second, though he has much more screen time. Cool finding future stars like that!
Always a bit of a surprise to see big stars during their salad days.
Clint Eastwood may have been a corner man in one of the Francis the Talking Mule pictures. It has been years since I saw one of those, some of them were very funny.
In "Godzilla --King of the Monsters", Raymond Burr's character was named Steve Martin. In "Phantom from 10,000 Leagues", Kent Taylor identifies himself as Ted Baxter (later identified as Ted Stevens by the G-Man). Ted Baxter on "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" was the played by Ted Knight who was the prison guard at the end of Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho".
There's a shock!
Abbott and Costello's story with Universal is a sad one. Thanks for bringing it up, hobnob. When I lived in Los Angeles and visited Universal Studios, I can't say I ever saw any tribute to that great team. The Three Stooges were also treated poorly by Columbia.
Back to Universal and "Tarantula", that was one movie I only saw maybe all the way through just once when it aired on L.A.'s weekday afternoon movie presentation "The Fabulous 52". Consequently I have little memory of it. I'd seen many stills of the titular monster, the deformed assistant and the very disturbing one of Leo G. Carroll, with a melting face. I still have trouble with TV's "Topper" and "Man from U.N.C.L.E." top dog, Mr. Waverly, in that role. Yow.
Thanks for squaring me on Clint Eastwood.
You're right, one of Clint's first roles at Universal was "Francis in the Navy", as a sailor. Gotta start somewhere. I always remembered Donald O'Connor's line about why he finally quit the Franics series -- "When the mule gets more fan letters than you, it's time to go!"
Wow, if you haven't seen "Tarantula"in all those years you've got to catch it again. It really is a very good film of its kind. Unfortunately the ever-uncooperative Universal only released it to DVD in a box set with four other of their 50s sci-fi films, which was on the market only briefly the other year (through Best Buy exclusively, then for a very short time through other outlets, before being pulled). I got a copy but I understand that the sets were so rare that they fetch $300 or more apiece on ebay and Amazon (vs. a $19.95 original price). The same thing just happened with their sci-fi box set #2, only that one hasn't shown up anywhere outside of its one or two months at Best Buy. The studio did release a VHS of the title but I guess that's long gone now too. They're very bad at their DVD releases.
Speaking of which, and Abbott & Costello, apparently Universal must have let the copyright lapse on one A&C film, "It Ain't Hay", from 1943, because it's the one A&C Universal title that was never released by them on VHS or DVD. I did see a tape release from an independent company years ago. MGM and Fox also failed to renew copyrights on a number of films from the late 40s and early 50s, some of them fairly major productions, and so they fell into public domain -- although that doesn't prevent the original studio from putting out its own DVD of the film. I can't understand how studios can be so careless. It's costing them money!!
Yes, I love it when you find a character's name in some movie that turns out to be someone's real name, or another, more famous character name, years later. (I have the same name as a film and TV actor, spelled slightly differently -- hint: check the first three letters!) I'm also into politics and found it funny that the phony American name Cary Grant briefly assumes in Hitchcock's "To Catch a Thief" was 'Conrad Burns', which was later the name of a three-term senator from Montana (1989-2007). I was also always intrigued by the weird coincidence in the novel and film "The High and the Mighty" -- one of the characters, and this was written in the early 50s, bears the name of two men who would become Vice President of the U.S. in the next decade -- 'Humphrey Agnew'! I wonder how many monkeys had to sit at how many typewriters to come up with that one!
And lastly, did you know that Leo G. was the most frequent actor in Hitchcock's American films? Six: "Rebecca", "Suspicion", "Spellbound", "The Paradine Case", "Strangers on a Train" and "North by Northwest". I guess Hitch liked him, the tendency of his face to melt notwithstanding!
What a great reply. Thanks for the laugh of the day.
Insofar as "Tarantula", I must say I surely like Jack Arnold's stuff. It was alwys very moody, humorless -- anyway, not any intentional humor, nothing overt -- my favorite being "It Came from Outer Space". The Glen Campbell song "Witchita Lineman" always reminds me of that movie ever time I hear it.
I suppose I like the open spaces of his movies but also the solitude. In "It Came from Outer Space", he does such a good job of filmmaking, I can almost feel the warm wind on my face.
Someone said that Jack Arnold always made the same movie over and over. I don't have any of his pictures in my home library so I can't compare one with the other and, consequently, can't tell if the person who said that was being small-minded or if it is an acurate statement.
In reading many of the posts on IMDb, I often read that Black and White movies
"suck" or worse. I cetainly disagree, but maybe that is Universal's conclusion as well and don't believe there is an audience for their old B/W classics.
Also, I've seen many different companies distribute Abbott and Costello's "Africa Screams", usually for a buck. That must have fallen into the Public Domain. It is a very good movie, too.
I'll work on cracking the code of your name.
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I got this in a boxset with a few other bw sci-fi films. On the extras for Creature from the black lagoon, there's a nice docu about the films/creature and it covers that other early Clint appearance in the sequel (as a lab assistant). The docu also has footage of A&C with the creature, but I wasn't sure if that was a film or not?
I was looking at the wiki page for this film earlier and there's a section down in the trivia that talks about the posters for both films and the line from Marty in back to the future about Clint etc. Surely they (the makers of the film) KNEW Clint was in both films, hence the cheeky reference? The Wiki page makes out it's some sort of co-incidental irony.
Clint was in Revenge of the Creature (1955), the second of the three "Creature" films, and Eastwood's film debut.
The Creature from the Black Lagoon was about the only Universal monster Abbott and Costello never "met" -- the first film came out in 1954, and the boys left the studio the following year, so there really wasn't any time for them to have been cast opposite the Creature. I never saw any footage or photo of A&C with the Creature, so I'm surprised they ever posed with one another, unless it was for a studio publicity campaign. But it seems odd that Universal would have put two of its top attractions together just for a piece of publicity when it had no intention of putting them in a film -- though such a film could have been more fun than some of the monsters they did meet, such as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
I don't remember the line said by Marty McFly in whichever Back to the Future movie you refer to, or what the Eastwood connection is you're speaking of. What is it?
Sorry for the late reply.
I think they showed A&C with the Creature as part of some Christmas special or something. I'll see if I can find the thing and throw a cap up.
re: Back to the future - I think it's the 3rd one (?) There's a scene where the theatre is showing both this film (Tarantula) and Revenge of the Creature, Marty makes a comment about Clint Eastwood and Doc says "Clint who"..to which Marty replies "oh that's right, you haven't heard of him yet". Obviously with all 3 films being Universal, it's a clear in-joke...I suppose it's lost on a lot of people as he's uncredited (or at least was before the invention of iMDB!)
Yes, it's always been a bit annoying to me that studios relentlessly plug their own films (current or classic) in their other films. One advantage, of course, is that Universal doesn't have to pay itself royalites for showing the name of, or clip from, another studio's film. (But sometimes they do use other studios' films -- as in Warner Bros.'s L.A. Confidential, where Russell Crowe and Kim Basinger go to see Roman Holday, and in another shot a theater marquee announces When Worlds Collide, both Paramount pictures.)
Though, as to Tarantula, I wonder how Marty McFly would recognize Clint in the first place -- his face is completely covered by an oxygen mask and helmet, and as you say, he's uncredited in the film. Somehow Marty didn't strike me as the type who'd watch or know much about 50s sci-fi movies!
Colgate Comedy Hour:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-j-VlKTIRo
Wow! Five years later and you still remember this thread! I'm impressed, Orbtastic.
Thanks for the link.
See you in 2020!
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Don''t forget, he was in Revenge of the Creature that same year!
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