Forgotten Films: The Giant Claw (1957)

The Giant Claw

If only the creature in The Giant Claw was the one advertised on the poster.

By Scott A. Cupp

This is the 177th in my series of Forgotten, Obscure or Neglected Films

The other day on Facebook someone put up a picture that brought back interesting memories. The picture was a still from The Giant Claw.

I remember the events leading up to my seeing this film. I don’t remember the exact year. I know it was the summer of 1964 or 1965. My family was vacationing at the military park on Lake Texoma. We were visiting with my uncle Johnny and his family in the evenings and spending the day swimming at the lake. I am not a great swimmer and this may have been a reason why.

About ten in the morning, we were wading around in the water when my sister screamed bloody murder. She had stepped on a broken beer bottle and gashed open the sole of her foot. My mom grabbed a towel and wrapped up the foot. We got our stuff together and made the drive over to Perrin Field and the hospital. About an hour and a couple of stitches later, she was better.

We went back to the lake and had our lunch. In the afternoon, we went back into the lake (except my sister, who had a bandage on her foot). About 2 p.m. my brother stepped on a broken beer bottle and sliced open the bottom of his foot. Again, we grabbed up our stuff and headed back to town. I got dropped off at my uncle’s house, as sitting in the emergency room for the second time that day did not appeal to me. My cousin Ronnie was there. We were about the same age but of totally different temperaments.

While the family was at the hospital, Ronnie and I watched The Giant Claw. The family came back for me after about an hour and a half later and asked if I wanted to go back to the lake. I looked at my pale, flat and unscarred feet and said I thought I would stay at the house and finish the movie.

If you’ve ever seen The Giant Claw, you know what a hard choice that was.

Aeronautic Engineer Mitch McAfee (Jeff Morrow) is performing some tests in a jet when he witnesses a large shape coming toward his jet. He cannot make out the details but it is big and moving very rapidly. He narrowly avoids a collision and returns to the ground. Here, as he recounts his encounter, he is greeted with skepticism as the ground radar has not reported anything else in the sky. The military officer in charge threatens him over his prank. Even Sally Caldwell (Mara Corday), his girlfriend/mathematician, does not believe him.

Major Bergen (Clark Howat) is about to fight him when a call comes in about another sighting of a UFO and a missing commercial plane. Again, nothing else was seen on the radar, and the pilot had called in the sighting. Suddenly, Mitch and Sally are on their way to Washington. On their flight, the plane is attacked by the UFO and they end up in the area of the U.S./French Canadian border, where they are rescued by Pierre (Louis Merrill). When the authorities arrive, Pierre is outside and screams. He has seen la Carcagne, a French Canadian mythic creature, part woman, part giant bird.

In New York, the pair meet up with Generals Considine and Buslirk (Morris Ankrum and last week’s star of The Neanderthal Man, Robert Shayne). Mitch has found a pattern in the bird’s attacks, based on a giant spiral. More attacks are happening and they fit the pattern.

Up to this point, the The Giant Claw is a decent little B film. Then, we get to see the bird. Oh, my Lord! According to IMDB, Jeff Morrow stated that, up until the premier, no one in the cast had seen the creature. Morrow saw the film in his hometown and when the crowd started laughing, he got up and left, rather than be recognized for being in the film.

The producer ran out of money and contracted with a special effects group in Mexico. Their monster is one of the great laughing stocks in B movie history. The giant bird is a puppet with a deformed face. You can see the strings in a few scenes. It is unconvincing and horrid-looking and ruined what might have been a decent film.

Humanity wins against this extra-terrestrial being with an anti-matter screen which is bent on destruction. The method doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, but by then, you don’t care. It’s a sad finish to a ruined film that had potential.

It had been more than 50 years since I saw The Giant Claw the first time. I had hoped my memories were incorrect or hazy. They were but not in a good way. It will be at least that long before I attempt it again. Unless I have to show it to someone as a lesson.

Series organizer Todd Mason host Tuesday Forgotten Film reviews at his own blog and posts a complete list of participating blogs.  

Forgotten Films: The Neanderthal Man (1953) 

The poster should clue you in that The Neanderthal Man is standard B-movie fare.

By Scott A. Cupp

This is the 176th in my series of Forgotten, Obscure or Neglected Films

Sometime over the last year, I DVR’d a bunch of old movies I had never seen. I do this frequently. Sometimes I watch the films, other times I decide that my initial interest has faded and pass them up.

This last week, I was skinning through the recorded shows and I saw the title The Neanderthal Man and thought, “Why the heck not?”

It begins with Professor Clifford Groves (Robert Shayne, mistakenly credited as Robert Shane) living in the mountains of California, where he conducts experiments and formulates theories about Man’s ascent up the evolutionary ladder. He is working at home when he hears a loud noise and a crash. Something has happened in his laboratory.

Local hunter Wheeler is out looking for game and he runs across a saber toothed tiger, which he calls a “big cat,” even though it’s three times the size of a mountain lion and has tusks. Even though he is armed, Wheeler elects not to take a shot. Instead he goes down to Webb’s café and tells his story. No one believes him. Nola the waitress (Beverly Garland) is sympathetic but that doesn’t help. The local game warden George Oakes (Robert Long) decides to investigate and finds the spoor of something big. He makes a plaster cast of it. He takes the cast to Dr. Ross Harkness (Richard Crane), the zoologist at the local university. Harkness thinks it is a manufactured piece, rather than something authentic.

Professor Groves’ evolutionary chart shows Cro-Magnon man prior to Neanderthal and has the hoaxed Piltdown Man on the list. No wonder the local scientists group at the Naturalist’s Club thinks he is loony. And a mad scientist in the California woods is not to be fooled with.

Harkness is aware of some of Groves’ theories, having disputed with them in the past. He has a confrontation with him at Groves’ house when he brings the Professor’s fiancé, Ruth Marshall (Doris Merrick), up from the café where her car has broken down. Harkness is looking for Oakes, who parks his car at the Professor’s house since the roads end there. Groves throws Harkness and Oakes out when he confronts them. The two go out looking for the saber toothed tiger and find it. They kill the beast and go to get Groves so they can have another person verify the kill. They have to wait for Groves to emerge from his lab and when they take him to the spot, the dead body has disappeared. The Professor loses his temper over the wasted time and throws them out again.

Ruth notices changes between the man she fell in love with and the current Professor. And, no wonder! The Professor has run out of test subjects other than a small cat which he injects with an experimental fluid. We can now guess where the tiger has come from.

With his big cat dead, the Professor does what any sane man would do. He injects the serum into his own body. Within minutes he has grown lots of hair and bad teeth. He runs out into the woods and attacks Nola who is posing for photos with her boyfriend. The boyfriend dies in the scuffle.

I don’t think I need to tell you much more of the plot. You know the drill.

The Neanderthal Man is standard B picture fare, nothing startling, nothing revelatory. The acting is OK to poor. The special effects budget was somewhere between $5 and $20. The saber toothed tiger looks amazingly like a real tiger (occasionally on a not-unseen leash) though the tusks are only seen in close up shots. In other words, the saber toothed tiger walking looks like a tiger walking without the saber teeth. The Neanderthal make-up looks like it’s from a bad werewolf movie, replete with the time lapse fur-growing scenes.

But for 1953 drive-in fare, the movie is palatable. Robert Shayne overacts the mad scientist part quite well and slings erudite insults at his Naturalist Club members with ease. And, Beverly Garland is a young Beverly Garland and well worth the attention.

This is not a film to make great effort to see, but if you have 78 minutes with nothing better to do, you could do worse.

Series organizer Todd Mason host Tuesday Forgotten Film reviews at his own blog and posts a complete list of participating blogs.

Forgotten Films: Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-a-Rama (1988)

Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-a-Rama promises B-movie sex and violence — and it delivers.

By Scott A. Cupp

This is the 167th in my series of Forgotten, Obscure or Neglected Films.

It has been a while since I did a really bad B film. (Fans might remember the enthusiastic review of Zombeavers last August.) The other day, I was reviewing a DVD catalog and this film was available for about $7 and I knew I should see it. When it comes to horror movies, I’ve got a soft spot for so-called Scream Queens, and Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-a-Rama promised plenty. I’ve only ever met one Scream Queen — Jewel Shepard, when she was signing her book If I’m So Famous, How Come Nobody’s Ever Heard of Me? She was a very fun signer and I really enjoyed talking with her. Her book was a hoot and a half, too.

Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-a-Rama has, hands down, one of the great sleazy names for a B horror film (not that Zombeavers was any sort of slouch). It really tells you what your audience is going to be. You got college girls, horror, bowling and slimeballs. Well, in truth, you only sort of have slimeballs.

College roommates Keith, Jimmy and Calvin (John Stuart Wildman, Hal Havins and Andras Jones, respectively) are bored one night. Calvin’s playing a video game, Jimmy’s drinking beers and Keith wants one of the beers. Jimmy is not the giving sort, but Keith offers up that he knows where Delta Delta Delta sorority is doing their pledge initiation that night. The sorority, known as Felta Delta, promises to have some salacious happenings. So the boys go over to see what they might.

Pledges Taffy and Lisa (Scream Queens Brinke Stevens and Michelle Bauers, respectively) are on the wrong end of a sorority paddle and an aerosol whip cream attack from initiation masters and all-around bitches Frankie, Rhonda, and Babs (Carla Baron, Kathi O’Brecht and Robin Rochelle). Babs has some sadistic ideas for finishing up the initiation, when the boys are discovered inside the Delta house watching Lisa and Taffy shower. Soon, all six are sent off to the mall bowling alley to secure a bowling trophy. Babs’ dad owns the mall and they plan on doing some mean stuff to the group.

Inside the bowling alley, Calvin runs across punk thief Spider (huge Scream Queen Linnea Quigley) ripping off the gaming machines and register. He tries to pick her up, but she’s not having any of it. Eventually, though, she helps the group get into the area with the trophies. They steal a large one that’s 30 years old.

Unfortunately, they accidentally drop the old trophy, and out of it comes an ancient imp (voiced by Dukey Flyswatter). The imp is grateful for his release and offers each of the folks a wish. Jimmy orders lots of gold, but Calvin cautions that things might not be as good as they seem.

Keith wants to have sex with Lisa and Impy makes her amenable to the idea. Suddenly, Babs, Rhonda and Frankie interrupt things and we find out that Calvin was absolutely correct in not trusting the imp. Of the 10 main characters (the nine listed plus a janitor for comedic relief), eight are going to die. I hope I’m not spoiling it for anyone, but this one is nearly 30 years old and has been shown a lot. Just because I never saw does not imply that you did not.

We have knifings, smashed heads by bowling ball, flame thrower, deep fryer, decapitation, zombie-ism, Bride of Frankenstein-itis (for Frankie, of course), being pulled apart and more. The mayhem is handled very effectively. The budget was low but you can tell the movie makers put it all onto the screen.

All in all, this one delivers exactly what it promises: a B movie with sex and violence and some humor. If, like me, you enjoy that sort of thing, this movie is definitely for you. Be warned, though, this is not Akira Kurasawa or Citizen Kane, and if that’s what you want, well, to each their own. As I always say, your mileage may vary. I was glad to finally see this one. Maybe you will be too. If not, there’s always next week.

Series organizer Todd Mason hosts more Tuesday Forgotten Film reviews at his own blog and posts a complete list of participating blogs.

 

Forgotten Book: The Whispering Gorilla (1940) and Return of the Whispering Gorilla (1943)

Don't expect to use your logic muscles when you read the "Whispering Gorilla."

By Scott A. Cupp

This is the 157th in my series of Forgotten Books.

My love of the gorilla in prose and film has been well documented in the various Forgotten reviews that I have done. So, when Bill Crider reviewed The Whispering Gorilla a few months ago, I was intrigued. Particularly since the novel and its sequel were both readily available from armchair Press for a mere $12.95 with covers on both sides of the trade paperback, much like an old Ace Double, except the second novel and cover were not printed upside down.

Ace reporter, Steve Carpenter, is stepping on toes and receiving death threats. He is investigating the rackets and their possible ties to Nazis! Carpenter is sent by his boss to Africa to hide out and continue writing his stories. But the mob has a hit man who takes his job seriously and he manages to track down Carpenter in Africa.

Carpenter has found a refuge next door to scientist Dr. Devoli who is working on getting a gorilla to speak by modifying the voice box. The gorilla, Plumbutter, is responsive to the surgery. However, when Carpenter is killed, Dr. Devoli decides to go one further and transplants Carpenter’s brain into Plumbutter’s body.

The transplant works and now Carpenter wants to return back to the U.S. to continue writing his expose. To do this, he convinces a Broadway promoter to star him in a play as the most amazing gorilla actor ever. Everyone knows that he must be someone in a gorilla suit, because gorillas cannot talk. He never appears out of the “suit” which creates publicity and gets on the radio under the pseudonym “W.G.” Clever.

He fights the gangsters and the mob on the air and in the paper. He is once again a target but he is the 800 pound gorilla in the room. Gradually, he finds the transplant has some problems and Plumbutter’s body begins to invade his consciousness. With Devoli’s help, they manage to stop the Nazi threat.

This sequel and its predecessor offer simian pulp fun.

This first “novel” was written by Don Wilcox under the editorship of David V. Reed who worked hard with Wilcox in its construction. Later, Reed would write the sequel.

Carpenter is still fighting his gorilla nature. He and Devoli are working in Africa. However, the drugs necessary to keep Carpenter in control are becoming harder to obtain because the World War is going on and the sanity doses are becoming less frequent. Carpenter is in communication with the local gorillas, whom he can understand. He is called Ologwa the Strange One and he tries to teach the gorillas how to control fire and other human traits.

Since the World War features in here, we’ve got to have Nazis! And they show up with a beautiful girl in tow. They want Devoli to provide trained gorillas to pilot suicide mini-subs to throttle the Allies’ fleets.

Ologwa is having trouble with hisz reasoning abilities and starts to work with the Nazis, but he fools them at the same time.

This is pure pulp fiction. Logic is not going to work hard here, but I had fun. This has B movie written all over it and I am surprised one wasn’t made. It would have been great fun for America’s youth and the war effort.

You are not going to confuse these books with anything written later than 1945, but if you’re in the mood for some wild gorilla action, they fill the bill. Check it out.

Series organizer Patti Abbott hosts more Friday Forgotten Book reviews at her own blog, and posts a complete list of participating blogs.

 

Forgotten Films: Invisible Invaders (1959)

Who wouldn't want to witness a war-to-the-death of all civilization?

Review by Scott A. Cupp

This is the 127th in my series of Forgotten, Obscure or Neglected Films

Between 2011 and 2014 I produced a regular (mostly) weekly column of Forgotten, Obscure or Neglected Films as part of the Missions Unknown blog and as a part of a loose gathering of writers and fans coordinated by Todd Mason (there should be a link at the end of the review).

But the Missions Unknown blog got hit with some form of ebola or other disease and has not been revived for more than a year. I loved doing these reviews and inflicting my weird thoughts on folks so when Sanford Allen asked me to continue them, I was ready to continue. So check here each week for cinematic wonders and horrors alike.

That said, let’s go a film I saw as a child and had fond memories of – INVISIBLE INVADERS. The film starts with an annoying voiceover about nuclear experimentation and a quick explosion which kills Dr. Karol Noymann (John Carradine). His friend, Dr. Adam Penner (Phillip Tonge) decides to renounce the nuclear experiments. After giving Noymann’s eulogy, he is visited by the animated corpse of Noymann, possessed by invisible aliens from the moon. They have hidden bases on the moon and have decided Mankind is a pestilence and gives the Earth 24 hours to surrender or be destroyed. They plan a mass invasion to annihilate all Earth life. They have bases on the moon hidden by invisibility.

Earth, being what it is, decides not to surrender on the basis of one man’s word, no matter how renowned. When no surrender comes, the invaders animate corpses and attack the living. Their blank stares and zombie walk would make Tor Johnson proud. When the destruction starts, the Army assigns Major Jay Bruce (John Agar) to assist Penner, his daughter Phyllis (Jean Byron), and co-worker Dr. John Lamont (Robert Hutton). John Agar is his usual semi-wooden self as the military man out to help scientists solve the invasion problem,

It’s not an awful movie. It’s just not good. Script and acting are weak. Special effect rival early Dr. Who for crudity. Many shots just use stock footage. The music overpowers several scenes with terrible results. And that annoying voice over keeps on coming, telling us the story rather than having the script and actors show us the story.

But it appears that it might have had an effect on George Romero as several Night of the Living Dead shots seem to echo scenes from this film. Could be coincidence, but I wonder.

Some of the logic of the film seems to belong to current political debates, with as much logic. The invaders are portrayed with drag marks through sand. Overall, it’s just a mess. Fortunately, at 67 minutes, it’s not an interminable mess. It just seems that way. Watch at your own risk.

Series organizer Todd Mason hosts more Tuesday Forgotten Film reviews at his own blog and posts a complete list of participating blogs.