Tarantula is a 1955 science fiction film directed by Jack Arnold, and starring John Agar, Mara Corday and Leo G. Carroll. The screenplay by Robert M. Fresco and Martin Berkeley was based on a story by Arnold inspired by Fresco's teleplay for Science Fiction Theatre, "No Food for Thought", which was aired on May 14, 1955.

Although the film is set in Arizona, it was shot in California, with locations for the desert scenes in Apple Valley.

The Plot:
A man with a strangely misshapen face wanders out of the desert near a small town and falls to the ground dead. The county sheriff (Nestor Paiva) tentatively identifies the dead man as Eric Jacobs, a laboratory assistant to Professor Deemer (Leo G. Carroll), a research scientist living a few miles out in the desert. But there's something strange about Jacobs; his facial features and bodily extremities are distorted to a point where he's barely recognizable....