Dr. Matt Hastings, a doctor from the nearby town of Desert Rock, Arizona, is called in by the sheriff to examine the body.

In his home and research laboratory in an isolated desert mansion, Deemer keeps rabbits, white rats, hamsters, and a tarantula, all of enormous size, some as large as Golden Retrievers.

At the mansion, they encounter local journalist Joe Burch, who is asking questions about Jacobs's death, but getting the runaround from Deemer.

Deemer tells Hastings and Clayton that the fire was caused by an equipment malfunction, all the test animals were killed, and Lund has left his employment.

Deemer explains his work - the use of a radioactive element to produce an artificial super-nutrient, which once perfected, could provide an unlimited food supply for humanity.

Days later, the sheriff asks Hastings to accompany him to Andy Anderson's ranch as he investigates picked-clean cattle skeletons and large pools of a thick, white liquid.

The next day, at the scene of the wrecked truck, Hastings looks around at the request of the sheriff, and once again finds pools of the white liquid, of which he takes samples.

Real animals, including a rabbit and a guinea pig in Professor Deemer's lab, were used to represent their giant on-screen counterparts.

Shooting of miniatures was reserved for close-ups of its face and fangs and for the final scenes of the giant spider being set ablaze by the jet squadron's napalm attack.

[7] Additional footage was shot in and around the rock formations of Dead Man's Point in Lucerne Valley, California, a frequently used location for many early Western films.

While a radioactive isotope does make an appearance, it differs from most other 1950s big-bug features in having the mutation caused by the peaceful research of a well-intentioned scientist, rather than by nuclear weapons and/or a mad genius.

Director Jack Arnold used matte effects once again two years later to show miniaturization, rather than gigantism, in The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957), which also featured an encounter with a spider.

[9] The contemporary review in Variety indicated "A tarantula as big as a barn puts the horror into this well-made program science-fictioner, and it is quite credibly staged and played, bringing off the far-fetched premise with a maximum of believability".

Tarantula and lead actor Leo G. Carroll are referenced in the lyrics of "Science Fiction/Double Feature", the opening song of the musical stage production The Rocky Horror Show and its 1975 film adaptation.