andrew8798
FANatic
on 24/7 this month
Posts: 106,210 
|
Post by andrew8798 on May 12, 2017 22:05:43 GMT -5
When people talk about Awesome bad movies this is one on my list. Saw it was on TCM this morning I made sure to watch it.
So many Battleship puns you could make.
Like James Rolfe said in his review of the movie I do wonder if the prop of the bird still exists
|
|
|
|
Post by Seth Drakin of Monster Crap on May 12, 2017 23:53:13 GMT -5
|
|
andrew8798
FANatic
on 24/7 this month
Posts: 106,210
|
Post by andrew8798 on May 12, 2017 23:55:44 GMT -5
Would have been a perfect fit on Monster Vision. For all I know it might have been on there
|
|
|
|
Post by bibboid on May 12, 2017 23:56:31 GMT -5
One of the earliest films that helped develop my love for "crap" movies. Was the bird terrifying or comical? It turns out the answer is yes to both.
|
|
Gus Richlen: Ruffian
Patti Mayonnaise
Metal Maestro: Co-winner of the FAN Idol Throwdown!
BAU BAU
Posts: 39,267
Member is Online
|
Post by Gus Richlen: Ruffian on May 12, 2017 23:58:10 GMT -5
Still the best thing is every instance of {Spoiler}  AS BIG AS A BATTLESHIP! |
|
andrew8798
FANatic
on 24/7 this month
Posts: 106,210
|
Post by andrew8798 on May 13, 2017 0:00:01 GMT -5
The best thing is that the actors didn't know what the monster looked like until they saw the movie
|
|
|
|
Post by G✇JI☈A on May 13, 2017 0:53:57 GMT -5
The best thing is that the actors didn't know what the monster looked like until they saw the movie It's trivia page in imdb has thankfully not been ruined by boring and useless facts.. this one is like what you alluded too with hilarious results: In an interview, star Jeff Morrow said that neither he nor anyone on the film saw the title "monster" until they went to the film's premiere in Morrow's home town. It turned out that producer Sam Katzman had contracted with a low-budget model-maker in Mexico City to construct the "Giant Claw" and no one in the cast or crew had any idea it would come out looking as bizarre and, frankly, laughable as it did. Morrow said that the audience roared with laughter every time the "monster" made an appearance, and he wound up slinking in embarrassment out of the theater before the film was over so that no one who knew him would recognize him. |
|
|
|
Post by Joe Neglia on May 15, 2017 20:29:16 GMT -5
Back in the 1980s, I used to love going to the Walmart about 30 miles away (I lived in the middle of nowhere) and spending the entire time there perusing the Goodtimes video display, chock full of cheap old movies. Built up quite a collection of them, everything from Creature to the Black Lagoon, Robot Vs Aztec Mummy and The Blob to Halloween With the Addams Family and public domain cartoon collections. I was a huge monster movie fan and I was the "know it all" about them with others, having read every book about them that my library had (most of them written by a guy named Daniel Cohen).
One day, there's a movie on the display I'd never heard of - the Giant Claw. I was super excited. A giant monster movie I was unfamiliar with? Hell yeah. Got it home, popped it in the VCR and...
I loved it. It was such a great little monster movie. I must have watched that tape a hundred times in the first year I had it.
Outside of the goofy monster, I really do feel the movie is excellent. Everyone in it is spot on in their roles and just a joy to watch. Morrow was such a great actor, and I'm pretty sure Mara Corday helped me kickstart puberty. All the way down to Pierre...poor Pierre. Everything about the film is rock solid...except that damn marionette.
At some point during my college years, when I thought I still had something of a pretentious filmmaker vein somewhere in me, I tried convincing some friends to help me reshoot the monster scenes with a cooler monster and edit them into the film. Sadly, it never went anywhere.
|
|
|
|
Post by prettynami on May 15, 2017 23:09:58 GMT -5
I have to agree with Madison here, when it comes to monster/sci-fi movies its really not that bad. MMaybe I don't have high standards but I feel that like most movies of the time, the special effects sequence are low in actual screen-time, so you can focus on the dramatic portions of the film and realize that in some ways they really aren't that bad. In fact the pacing of the dramatic sequences is better than a lot of its more praised contemporaries, so it at least has that going for it. Granted there are some plot points that make no sense, like how one figures out its flying around in an ever expanding circle from just a few dots I don't know... And then the creature doubles back anways when it eats that first set of people parachuting to escape... Thus negating the point of that "great discovery". However the acting was pretty good, and the Sci-fi elements about it being an alien life form that lived off energy was pretty interesting, if only the actually creature looked less like a giant dumb bird and more other worldly. Thinking back there are a few romance scenes that by today's standards are bizarre, like when he starts trying to make out with the love interest while she sleeps on the plane (Or at least I think I remember that happening)...
I first became aware of the movie on a VHS I had called "Fanatastic Dinosaurs of the Movies" or something, I still have laying around somewhere. Anyways, the VHS tape was a collection of trailers for movies that I wore down to death. Now, don't ask me how the Giant Claw was a dinosaur... Speaking of that tape there is one movie on it I've been trying to track down a copy of for the longest time and have never had any luck. Some movie called "The Loch Ness Horror" I believe. The trailer on the tape made it look amazing.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on May 16, 2017 9:53:50 GMT -5
Standard movie of the time - but Jeff Morrow is just great. He made another movie that same year - Kronos.....again, standard stuff (more impressive sfx, I think?) but again he knocked it out of the park and did a better job than you'd expect.
|
|
|
|
Post by Joe Neglia on May 16, 2017 10:33:22 GMT -5
Standard movie of the time - but Jeff Morrow is just great. He made another movie that same year - Kronos.....again, standard stuff (more impressive sfx, I think?) but again he knocked it out of the park and did a better job than you'd expect. I have yet to see a Morrow role that wasn't good. His role in This Island Earth was top notch too, played the balance of someone torn between saving his own people and the humans he had come to appreciate. Dude was just really, really good. |
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on May 16, 2017 11:51:00 GMT -5
Standard movie of the time - but Jeff Morrow is just great. He made another movie that same year - Kronos.....again, standard stuff (more impressive sfx, I think?) but again he knocked it out of the park and did a better job than you'd expect. I have yet to see a Morrow role that wasn't good. His role in This Island Earth was top notch too, played the balance of someone torn between saving his own people and the humans he had come to appreciate. Dude was just really, really good. I'm a Jeff Morrow appreciator because of THIS ISLAND EARTH - one of the precious few MST3k movies I've seen the original/full version of. Despite a growing appreciation for some of that decade's sci-fi, I'd probably have avoided GIANT CLAW and KRONOS entirely when the opportunities arose to watch them - but his name was single-handedly the draw on both, and they ended up being fun watches. |
|
