You're having nightmares, doc. There's not an insect in the world with that much venom.
When it was announced that the theme for the Kryptic Army's March Mission was "Insects of the World Unite!" I knew right away it was going to pose something of a challenge for me. Not only have I already seen such classic bug movies as Them!, Phase IV and The Fly (both versions), but I've also been exposed to a lot of dreck like Beginning of the End, The Deadly Mantis, Empire of the Ants and The Giant Spider Invasion -- most of them courtesy of MST3K. Thankfully, in his wisdom, Jon Kitley has widened the net to include movies about spiders and other arachnids, which is why I borrowed Jack Arnold's 1955 film Tarantula from Plan Nine this evening.
Following the lead of Them! -- which was about giant ants created by radiation left over from atom bomb tests in New Mexico -- Tarantula is set in the deserts of Arizona, where nutrient biologist Leo G. Carroll is working on a serum that will relieve world hunger. (No points for guessing that the serum in question is radioactive and causes its test subjects -- rats, guinea pigs, tarantulas -- to grow to enormous size.) When it's tried on humans, though, it causes them to develop acromegaly in a matter of days and die a hideous death, which Carroll is in for when his disgruntled, disfigured assistant shoots him up with the stuff after destroying his lab. This, of course, allows his giant tarantula to escape and, through the magic of matte shots, ravage the countryside.
It might have been nice if the film had stayed with Carroll while he dealt with the onset of his condition (kind of like Jeff Goldblum in the remake of The Fly), but alas, the actual star of Tarantula is square-jawed John Agar, who plays a country doctor who's always on the go. In addition to being kept in loop by baffled sheriff Nestor Paiva (who played the boat captain in Creature of the Black Lagoon for Arnold the year before), Agar also makes time with Carroll's new assistant (Mara Corday), a graduate student who is on the receiving end of the traditional sexist remarks about a woman studying science. (How dare she?) And skipping ahead to the end of the film, when Air Force stock footage is flown in to combat the large, hairy menace, an uncredited Clint Eastwood is the jet pilot who drops napalm on the creature and kills it once and for all. So hooray for napalm!