Foreign Exchange Blu received a package from Germany today containing a quartet of restocks: Gregg Araki’s “Smiley Face,” Anthony Mann’s “The Fall of the Roman Empire,” Michael Mann’s “Ali,” and Jack Arnold’s “Tarantula” (which, contrary to what the cover art might have you believe, doesn’t include an exclamation point in the title).
Arnold got his start as a documentary filmmaker (training under Robert “Nanook of the North” Flaherty during WWII), then made his way to Hollywood to work for Universal after earning a Best Documentary Oscar nomination for the union doc “With These Hands” in 1950. Though he made all sorts of movies for Universal, he is best remembered today for directing sci-fi pictures such as “It Came From Outer Space,” “The Creature of the Black Lagoon” (and its sequel, “Revenge of the Creature”), “The Incredible Shrinking Man,” and the aforementioned “Tarantula.” While he continued to direct features from time to time, Arnold worked mostly in television from the 60s on, directing episodes of everything from “Dr. Kildare” and “Perry Mason” to “Gilligan’s Island” and “The Brady Bunch.”