Friday night at the home drive-in: The Giant Claw (1957)

Poster for The Giant Claw (1957)The Giant Claw (1957) by #FredFSears w/#JeffMorrow #MaraCorday

produced by #SamKatzman

A UFO turns out to be a giant prehistoric bird with an appetite for airplanes.

“Winged Monster from 17,000,000 B.C.! Big as a Battleship! Flies 4 Times the Speed of Sound! Atomic Weapons Can’t Hurt It!”

#Horror #SciFi
#NotQuiteClassicCinema
#FridayNightAtTheHomeDriveIn

The first thing that I noticed when I watched The Giant Claw (1957), is that it’s a lot like The Deadly Mantis (1957) – at least at first. So much so, that I found myself thinking “Didn’t I just write about this a few months back?”

Both movies sort of begin in Canada, at the DEW Line – or Distant Early Warning Line. This was a system of radar stations in the arctic that would be able to detect nuclear missiles (or any other attack) coming from the U.S.S.R. and heading for the U.S.A.. In both movies, the DEW Line seems to be manned by U.S. military people. In reality, I think it was a mix of U.S. and Canadian personnel, but I don’t really know a lot about it. Continue reading

Friday Night At The Home Drive-In: The Deadly Mantis (1957)

Poster for The Deadly Mantis (1957)The Deadly Mantis (1957) by #NathanJuran
w/ #CraigStevens #WilliamHopper #AlixTalton

When a melting iceberg releases a prehistoric giant praying mantis, a palaeontologist works with the military to kill it after it attacks scientific outposts on its way to Washington and New York.

“The most dangerous monster that ever lived!”
“A Thousand Tons of Horror! From A Million Years Ago…”

#Horror #SciFi #Giant #Monster
#NotQuiteClassicCinema
#FridayNightAtTheHomeDriveIn

At the risk of repeating myself…

Quite some time ago, I wrote about a TV show that I discovered when I was young. It aired late on Saturday nights and was called Not Quite Classic Theatre. As I said back then, “perhaps ‘show’ isn’t the right word for it. It was a time slot during which the TV station would air old B-movies.” I wrote that “watching those old monster movies inspired and excited me in a way that no other movies had. I loved them, and I loved that they gave me ideas and made me want to write.” Basically, watching movies on Not Quite Classic Theatre helped to make me into the person that I am today (for better or for worse). Continue reading