The Giant Claw (1957)

One of the first collabs of the season and we landed an absolute winner with Jonathan North, I was first put in touch with Jonathan via Trivial Theater who’s good friends with Jonathan and has appeared on his channel multiple times reviewing family friendly cult classics. Obviously given the nature of my content, I didnt want to scare the guy too badly with ‘Wicked World’ or ‘The Corpse Grinders’ So I thought i’d have him on to talk about a movie thats been on my ‘To Cover’ list more or less since I started the channel!

I love ‘The Giant Claw’ I unapologetically love it, its cheesy, goofy, easy on the gore but surprisingly violent and the titular Giant Claw doesnt get nearly enough credit for being as interesting a creature as it is.

While I dont think I won Jonathan over totally, he was kind enough to invite me onto his channel over Christmas 2022, which was very nice of him. and I of course would love to have him back some day.

Easily one of those films where the poster is doing a HELL of a lot of heavy lifting here.

Earth Vs The Flying Saucers (1956)

I’ve been meaning to cover a classic 50’s or 60’s B movie since the year started but honestly, between the restoration work and the lockdowns I just havent found the time to really truely knuckle down and get one sorted out. That was until the Horror channel in the UK decided to run a “Sci-Fi weekender” 2 days of non stop science fiction movies, all of them pretty much classics (Either famously or infamously so) and pretty much all of them being ones I’d never seen before.

This was the first time I got to see movies like “The Giant Claw” (which honestly blew my mind and I cant BELIEVE it isnt out in the UK on DVD or Bluray) and The Incredible shrinking man. But this time I thought rather than going low. i’d try my hand at covering a RESPECTED B-movie classic (Oh I’ll never work in this town again…) and Earth Vs the Flying saucers was just the right side of campy but well made to fit the bill! While I havent covered a tremendously large amount of (what the public would deem) “good” movies on my channel. I think this is the first “Good” 50’s Bmovie I’ve covered. I was really plesently surprised by it for the most part, it’s a bit slow here and there, but my long term memory of it (I wrote the script for this episode back in April/May time) is a positive one (barring the ending)

This is another film that unfortunately doesnt seem to have an easily available release to watch in the UK outside of streaming. but if it ever does get a release I’d almost certainly look into picking it up. With that in mind I kind of realised this time around that I should probably look more into Bmovies of the 40’s to the 60’s as from experience they only ever tend to be one of 3 extremes: Out of the blue phenominal, Tray on head awful or so boring I welcome deaths sweet release…and with odds like that; why WOULDNT I wanna spin the wheel again?

There is a LOT going on in this poster. it’s dramatic, its got a nice vintage feel…but its a tad too busy for me.