Background
Jack Arnold was born on 14 October 1916 in New Haven, Connecticut, United States.
Jack Arnold was born on 14 October 1916 in New Haven, Connecticut, United States.
Jack Arnold seemed to go cheerfully with whatever flow came along—Bachelor in Paradise is minor Bob Hope; The Mouse That Roared is a funny Peter Sellers movie (in which the Duchy of Fenwick declares war on the U.S.); Man in the Shadow is a melodrama in which Orson Welles and Jeff Chandler growl at each other; No Name on the Bullet is one of the better Audie Murphy Westerns; and High School Confidential (with marijuana threatening the young) has to be seen for a cast that includes Russ Tamblyn, John Drew' Barrymore, Mamie Van Doren, and Jerry Lee Lewis.
But Arnold is really treasured for still another genre: the fifties sci-fi warning story in which something in nature has gone awry. So Creature from the Black Lagoon is famous as the film Marilyn Monroe has been stirred by in The Seven Year Itch. But The Incredible Shrinking Man (from a Richard Matheson novel) is a genuine classic in homemade special effects that seem more frightening than what was done forty years later. Tarantula is also worth mentioning (what it says is what you get), the very clever It Came from Outer Space, and the unusual The Space Children.