The Giant Claw (1957) [REVIEW] | Battleship Buzzard

You know we had to do this one eventually, as The Giant Claw’s titular monster is the stuff of b-movie legends, for hilarious reasons etching the movie in the history of monster movies with one of the most laughable creatures ever conceived and built.

And if you never saw it before, it was eventually released in the Cold War Creatures boxset by Arrow Video, alongside three other Sam Katzman produced films, The Werewolf, Creature With The Atom Brain, and Zombies Of Mora Tau.

A pretty good boxset that in the case of The Giant Claw contains extras such as a video essay by Mike White on Sam Katzman’s output and the theme of Cold War paranoia in his produced movies, alongside a theatherical trailer, the usual photo gallery and a condensed 8mm version of the movie.

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War Of The Colossal Beast (1958) [REVIEW] | Recasting The Giant

Last year we tackled The Amazing Colossal Man, so it just common courtesy to cover the sequel, War Of The Colossal Beast, released just 1 year after and again directed, written and produced by the master of rear-projection cinema, Bert I. Gordon.

And yes, this isn’t just a loose remake/redo that might or might not take place after the original, this is actually a sequel, which isn’t always a given for this kind of movie, even more since it wasn’t marketed as a sequel to The Amazing Colossal Man (hence the title that doesn’t include “colossal man” in it) and the cast is different. But like the first movie, it was originally released as a double-feature, this time with another Bert I. Gordon flick, Attack Of The Puppet People, which i already mentioned in the review for The Amazing Colossal Man (and has an amazing Rifftrax version out).

After an alarming number of food delivery trucks robberies in Mexico, Joyce Manning, the sister of lieutenant Glenn Manning, starts to investigate and believes his brother, mutated into the giant, actually survived being shot by a tank and falling off the Boulder Dam, as she suspect he might be behind the delivery trucks being robbed of food.

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Snowbeast (1977) [REVIEW] | TV Yeti Jaws

(This Is An Enhanced Rewrite-Revision)

1975. Jaws hit theathers, proving to be a massive success and establishing the idea of the “summer blockbuster film” for Hollywood and the big cinema industry at large, launching the career of Steven Spielberg and going down in history as one of the best “b-movies” ever made, inadvertly spawning the absurdity of what amounts to a full fledged subgenre now, the “shark movie” one.

Why i’m even talking about sharks when tackling a movie about yetis/sasquatches?

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Camel Spiders (2011) [REVIEW] | Not camels, nor spiders

Spiders: when you can’t afford sharks or giant reptiles for your creature feature.

And because many people do find arachnids in general to be quite disgusting, so it’s no wonder they’re a constant for b-movies since forever, especially if they’re of giant size.

This time we have Camel Spiders, one of the many late 2000s/early 2010s Roger Corman productions (sporting the “Roger Corman Presents” label on DVD releases), this one directed by Jym Wynorski… credited as Jay Andrews as usual.

For consistency’s sake, i guess.

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Alligator II – The Mutation (1991) [REVIEW] | Back To The Sewers

Another chapter in the accidental saga of Jaws rip-offs and their often interesting tales of genre producers basically kicking a young James Cameron out of the director’s chair, of people making movies about barracudas that actually just used them to trojan horse a completely different thriller plot, of alligators becoming giant in Chicago’s sewer system due to pharmaceutical experiments on dogs, and producers pestering poor Joe Dante into directing rip-offs of his own movies…

Once again we wander in the territory of “we wanna make another one and trick people into thinking it’s a sequel by slapping a number 2 and a subtitle on the title”, but i struggle to even justify this one’s existence. Sure, the first one ended with another baby gator being flushed down the same sewer, but usually you’d want to cash-in into a movie like this right away…. not 11 years later.

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Python (2000) [REVIEW] | ….and all i got was this lousy t-shirt

There was a time before we got for granted monster movies about giant hybrid animals, but still after the 70s and 80s brought along any kind of killer animal, even slugs.

It was the new millenium, the 90s just ended and what that meant for b-movies is that now it’s fairly cheaper thanks to computer graphics, not that it’s necessarily that easier, but for the cheapo companies that banked on pumping out crappy monster movies for the TV or home video markets, it meant not having to bother anymore with animatronics or puppets or that much more in the way of practical effects for the monster or animal you wanna make the movie about.

Not that you couldn’t use both practical AND digital effects for the creature, but it was never much of a concern anyway for movies like these and the companies that made them, which – let’s be honest about this – gladly welcomed the new, cheaper tools now available, as they meant larger profits to be made.

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It’s Alive (1969) [REVIEW] | Farmers and Fishmen

Enough with the regular kind of crappy B-movies, let’s crank it up to uber shlock, with the misleadingly titled It’s Alive, not a Frankenstein style crap-fest like The Body Shop, it’s actually more a 50s style B-movie about a couple that runs out of gas in a remote rural town, and stumbles upon a crazy farmer, his imprisoned “wife” and his private zoo, which also includes a Gillman style monster.

I did watch it on Amazon Prime Video, which has the 2020 restored version, i can only imagine how worse the more common prints of the movie are. I truly can, it’s a cheap made for TV monster movie that seems to stem from a 50s script, but was clearly shot in late 60s /early 70s. Dat film grain, though.

Now, the question is: how bad does the monster look? Like the mermen with mouth-tentacles that look more like hot dogs from Horror At Party Beach?

Worse than Monster Of Piedras Blancas?

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