ARNOLD, Jack

(1916-1992)

   US film-maker who made a number of sf films during the 1950s. In WWII, while in the Army Signal Corps, which was producing training films, JA found himself working with the great documentary-maker Robert Flaherty and received an invaluable crash course in film-making. After WWII he made several successful documentaries. This led to an offer from Universal Studios to direct feature films, beginning with Girls in the Night (1953). In 1953 he directed his first sf film, IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE, based on a treatment by Ray BRADBURY. His other relevant films are CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON (1954), REVENGE OF THE CREATURE (1955), TARANTULA (1956), TheINCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN (1957), MONSTER ON THE CAMPUS (1958) and TheSPACE CHILDREN (1958). In 1959 he made the Peter Sellers comedy The Mouse that Roared, the last of his sf-oriented films. His MONSTER MOVIES, several of which make excellent, moody use of their cheap desert locations, have other moments of beauty, as in the underwater ballet of Creature from the Black Lagoon, when the Creature mimics the movements of the woman swimmer, unseen by her, with a curious, alien eroticism. His sf masterwork is The Incredible Shrinking Man, a surreal classic of sf cinema, with its tragic, suburban hero going mad, like some King Lear on the blasted heath of his own menacing cellar. JA was a genius of B-movies. Further reading: Directed by Jack Arnold (1988) by Dana M.Reemes.

   See also: CINEMA.