THE GIANT CLAW -- IN COLOR!

Mara Corday and Jeff Morrow

THE GIANT CLAW (1957). Director: Fred F. Sears. Colorized. 

"I don't care if that bird comes from outer space or Upper Saddle River, New Jersey!"

Pilot and engineer Mitch MacAfee (Jeff Morrow), mathematician Sally Caldwell (Mara Corday), Lt General Considine (Morris Ankrum), and General Buskirk (Robert Shayne) are understandably alarmed when an unidentified flying object turns out to be a gargantuan bird from outer space that is snatching airliners and military planes out of the sky. Worse, the bird has an anti-matter shield that protects it from missiles, bombs and bullets. As MacAfee and Dr. Noymann (Edgar Barrier) try to come up with a method to get through the monster's shield, the bird snatches trains and autos off of the earth after all planes are grounded. Then Mitch and Sally come across the creature's nest -- and an egg!

The big bird takes Manhattan!

Apparently there was talk of Ray Harryhausen being called in to provide a stop-motion monster for this movie, and one can only imagine how exciting the picture would have been had the producers been able to afford him. Instead they came up with a cheap little puppet that is somewhat creepy but also rather comical, making the movie hard to take seriously. That's a shame, because The Giant Claw has a good and disquieting premise and several decent sequences. 

The big bird protects its offspring

There's the attack on the nest, which also involves a French-Canadian named Pierre (Louise Merrill), who thinks the bird is a horrible supernatural creature and predicts his own death. The climax when Mitch frantically struggles to complete the machine that will dissipate the anti-matter shield as the bird rapidly pursues their plane is quite suspenseful. And then there are those poor scientists who wind up caught in the bird's mouth and get swallowed up like worms. There's lots of stock destruction footage from such as Earth vs. the Flying Saucers (also directed bn Fred Sears) and other monster movies, along with stock music from It Came from Beneath the Sea and other productions. None of this matters because The Giant Claw is a lot of amusing fun. While it may not make the monster look any better, the colorizing process works well for the movie. 

Verdict: A hoot and a holler! ***. 

GOG

Richard Egan and Herbert Marshall

GOG (1954). Director: Herbert L. Strock. Produced by Ivan Tors. 

Two scientists at a top-secret underground research facility in the desert are horribly killed in their lab when locked into a chamber with a freezing gas. Security man David Sheppard (Richard Egan) is called in to investigate the murders and other incidents of sabotage. Old girlfriend Joanna Merritt (Constance Dowling) is on hand and is also an undercover security agent. Their suspects include virtually everyone in the complex, such as Dr Elzevir (Philip Van Zandt) and his wife (Valerie Vernon); radiation expert Dr. Carter (Byron Kane); and Dr. Zeitman (John Wengraf), who is in charge of the computer, NOVAC, which runs the complex, as well as the two robots, named after the biblical legends Gog and Magog. Project head Dr. Van Ness (Herbert Marshall) tries to help Sheppard and Merritt figure out what's going on before there are even more murders. 

Gog has an excellent premise but the execution is far from perfect. Herbert L. Strock both directs and edits and does a mediocre job in both instances. The first half of the film is much too talky, with a lot of lectures, although it eventually has several exciting scenes: a laser attack on Mrs. Elzevir, and a scene when a spinning contraption in a pressure chamber runs amok, as well as the robotic attack at the climax in which the whole place is nearly blown to smithereens. Egan and Marshall, romantic heroes, at first seem out of place in the film but are assets to the production, as is Constance Dowling, although this was her last theatrical feature (she had two more TV credits than retired when she married Gog's producer, Ivan Tors, with whom she had five children. She died young at 49.) Michael Fox and William Schallert have smaller roles. 

Verdict: Despite the clumsy direction, this does work up some suspense and is entertaining and well-acted. ***. 

THE PREMATURE BURIAL

THE PREMATURE BURIAL (1962). Produced and directed by Roger Corman. 

Convinced that his own father suffered from catalepsy and was buried alive, Guy Carrell (Ray Milland of The Sea Serpent) has a morbid fear of the same fate and takes elaborate steps to prevent it. His wife, Emily (Hazel Court), father-in-law Gideon (Alan Napier), and friend Miles (Richard Ney) convince him to cast off his fears and live life on its own terms. His crypt, with a variety of safety devices should he be entombed while alive, is burnt to the ground, and he starts out on a new life. But he may find that certain forces could be conspiring against him ... 

Guy on the moors

The Premature Burial is one of the best of Roger Corman's "Poe"-influenced vehicles, although the screenplay -- by Ray Russell [The Horror of It All] and Charles Beaumont -- seems more influenced by Robert Bloch or Jimmy Sangster than Poe. Although at first Milland, filling in for Vincent Price, seems a bit stiff, he eventually settles in and gives a good performance, underplaying as if afraid of being too hammy as Price could be. (Originally this was not going to be released by American International, and since Price had an exclusive contract with AIP, Milland had to be hired -- then the film was released by AIP.) Court, Ney, Napier and Heather Angel as Guy's sister, Kate, all give notable performances, as do John Dierkes and Dick Miller (whom I did not recognize) as gravediggers. The moody film is well-shot by Floyd Crosby and Ronald Stein's score adds to the considerable atmospherics. Both gentleman also worked on Attack of the Crab Monsters. 

Verdict: Classy, well-acted, absorbing horror melodrama. ***. 

FLYING DISC MAN FROM MARS -- IN COLOR!

Walter Reed and James Craven

FLYING DISC MAN FROM MARS (12-chapter Republic serial/1950.) Director: Fred C. Brannon. Colorized.

Martian Mota (Gregory Gaye) has come to earth and enlisted a former Nazi scientist named Bryant (James Craven of The Purple Monster Strikes) to assist him in conquering the planet, something which Bryant seems eager to do. His chief opponents are Air Patrol security officers Kent Fowler (Walter Reed of Government Agents vs Phantom Legion), Helen Hall (Lois Collier), and Steve (Sandy Sanders). Since Mota's spaceship, or flying disc, has been destroyed, Bryant helps him construct what he calls a smaller "semi-disc" which is hidden inside a volcano HQ when it isn't in use. For twelve chapters Fowler and his associates do their level best to foil the dastardly plans of Mota, Bryant and their own associates, including Drake (Harry Lauter of It Came from Beneath the Sea) and Ryan (Richard Irving). 

The fabulous "seni-disc"

Fred C. Brannon had co-directed a number of Republic serials but eventually helmed the productions single-handedly and did just fine. Flying Disc Man moves at a swift pace and is colorful, action-packed fun. Fowler is one of the luckiest heroes in serials as on two occasions he survives falls from great heights -- in planes no less -- merely by landing on some bushes or a hay stack (this after falling through a bomb bay)! There are also exciting cliffhangers involving a train trestle, a fiery rag stuffed into a gas tank, oil from a rocket ignited by sparks, and others. The actors all go through their paces playing it in just the right note. 

Verdict: Even more fun in color! ***. 

ALIAS JOHN PRESTON

Christopher Lee

ALIAS JOHN PRESTON (1955). Director: David MacDonald.

Sally Sandford (Betta St. John), who lives with her parents in the staid British town of Deanbridge, is rather unsatisfied with her boyfriend, Bob (Peter Grant), even though he's felt they would get married ever since childhood. Into town comes the striking and wealthy industrialist John Preston (Christopher Lee of The Gorgon), who begins buying up buildings and businesses and sweeps Sally off of her feet. When Sally accepts John's proposal, the latter realizes that he needs to enter married life with a clean slate, so to speak, so grudgingly speaks to psychologist Peter Walton (Alexander Knox of Son of Dr. Jekyll) about recurring nightmares in which he murders a blond woman, Sylvia (Sandra Dorne), with the complicity of her jilted French husband (Patrick Holt). But are these really dreams, or is something more sinister going on? What do you think?

Patrick Holt with Lee

It's a good thing Christopher Lee wound up in Horror of Dracula or he might have been doomed to be in lousy movies like Alias John Preston for the rest of his career. Clumsily directed and edited, the film has virtually no suspense or excitement. Lee gives a good enough performance, as do most of the other cast members, but as a mystery -- if that's even what this is -- the flick is a stinker. Sally seems rather plain to be attracting so many men from the town and Bob turns out to be not so tightly wrapped. Lee has decided presence in the film, but even his participation can't save it. Another low-budget British misfire. Sandra Dorne and Patrick Holt appeared together in The Gelignite Gang. 

Verdict:  Stick with Lee in Hammer horror films where he really made an impression. *1/2. 

RADAR PATROL VS. SPY KING

Plane trouble: Jean Dean and Kirk Alyn

RADAR PATROL VS. SPY KING (12 chapter 1949 Republic serial). Director: Fred C. Brannon. COLORIZED.  

Franklyn Lord (Tristram Coffin) assigns two of his best agents -- Chris Calvert (Kirk Alyn) and Joan Hughes (Jean Dean) -- to track down the so-called Spy King, a man named Baroda (John Merton). Now that the war is over Baroda is trying to build an anti-radar device that he can sell to the highest bidder, and Chris and Joan -- along with Lt. Manuel Agura (George J. Lewis) -- are out to stop him. Baroda has several evil associates, the worst of whom is Nitra (Eve Whitney), although Ricco (Anthony Warde) is also pretty nasty. Along the way there are traps consisting of explosions, deadly gas, cars driving off of cliffs, and a closed laundry basket that rolls out of the back of a truck with Joan (supposedly) inside it. There's even a remote control truck with no driver. 

John Merton and Eve Whitney hold Jean Dean captive

Radar Patrol vs. Spy King is a lot of fun, moves at an extremely brisk pace., and has a great, exciting score by Russell Garcia and Stanley Wilson that embellishes each and every sequence. Alyn and Dean make assured and capable agents, and Joan can be as feisty as she needs to be, clobbering bad guys with her purse and shooting with the best of 'em. Although John Merton is rather colorless as Baroda, Eve Whitney makes one stylish and sophisticated she-spy. Five years later she sort of played herself as a model who comes to the Ricardo's home and inspires jealousy in Lucy and Ethel on the classic I Love Lucy episode "The Charm School." Actually this and Lucy were probably Whitney's largest roles, as most of her film appearances were uncredited bits. This is too bad, as Whitney makes a positive impression in Radar Patrol. Anthony Warde makes a highly capable gunsel as usual. The hideout used by Nitra and Baroda is a plane hidden in the forest. 

Colorized serials on youtube are hit or miss, as sometimes the original print is too poor to work well with the colorizing process. Fortunately, this print is pretty clear and very watchable, even if it isn't remastered. Although this print contains the entire serial, the credits -- aside from the opening -- have been edited out so the serial proceeds at a really rapid pace. 

Verdict:  Eve Whitney steals the show! ***

EASTER BUNNY MASSACRE

EASTER BUNNY MASSACRE (aka Easter Killing/2021). Director: Jack Peter Mundy. NOTE: Not to be confused with Easter Bunny Massacre: The Bloody Trail.  

A group of high school friends on a camping trip over Easter have to deal with the antics of "bad girl" Heather (Antonia Whillans), who is stabbed to death by someone wearing a weird rabbit mask. (Somehow blood spatter gets all over virtually the entire cast, something which is never explained). The rest of the group -- Neil (Tom Nyugen), Carl (Michael Hoad), Amy (May Kelly), Tom (Genna Lostkutnikov), and Jane (Sarah T. Cohen) -- decide to hide Heather's body and cover up the murder because it might prevent them from going to "Uni" (college) or something along those lines. A year later these people -- all of whom look like they are several years out of college let alone high school -- receive invitations to an isolated cabin from -- you guessed it -- Heather. Strangely, they all show up -- along with Amy's brother, Marty (Lee Hancock) and Neil's girlfriend, Maria (Beatrice Fletcher), who wants to know what the hell is going on. Then someone wearing a bunny fright mask starts stalking all of them ... 

Michael Hoad as Carl

While the plot is workable. the direction and editing of the film is off the mark. The characters are probably better developed than in other films of this nature, but the slow pacing may have you searching for the fast-forward function. There are also severe continuity problems, especially an attack scene that just seems to stop dead for no reason. The plot is an amalgam of I Know What You Did Last Summer with a solution that reminds one of the Scream movies, but Easter Bunny Massacre is in no way as entertaining or as slick as those movies. Surprisingly, the acting in this is uniformly good, better than the script deserves. A particular stand out is Michael Hoad as Carl, who has genuine screen presence. Antonia Whillans scores as the bitchy "tramp" who gets herself sliced, and May Kelly makes a positive impression as well. I must say that the furry bunny mask in which the murders are committed is much more creepy than you might imagine.

Verdict: Twisted British horror film with some points of interest but ultimately doesn't quite, ahem, cut it. **1/4. 

ABANDONED

Gale Storm and Dennis O'Keefe

ABANDONED (1949). Director: Joseph M. Newman. Colorized. 

Newspaper man Mark Sitko (Dennis O'Keefe) teams up with Paula Considine (Gale Storm) when the latter discovers that her sister is dead and her baby has disappeared. Meanwhile Paula is constantly followed by a corrupt private eye named Kerric (Raymond Burr). Kerric reports to a woman named Donner (Marjorie Rambeau) who is sort of in business with the nasty Decola (Will Kuluva) as babies are sold through illegal means. Now that Mark and Paula are learning more about this operation -- and have come to the conclusion that the sister was murdered -- their lives are definitely in danger, especially when they go undercover to get evidence to bring to Police Chief McRae (Jeff Chandler). 

Marjorie Rambeau and Raymond Burr

Abandoned certainly has an interesting cast. Playing a more or less serious part, Storm gives a good accounting of herself while O'Keefe displays his customary charm. As bad guys, Burr, Kuluva [Solo] and Rambeau adroitly emit varying levels of evil. Chandler is also adept, although he has little to do in the picture. Others in the cast include Jeannette Nolan as Major Ross of the Salvation Army, Mike Mazurki as a thug, Frank Cady as the city editor, David Clarke as itchy gunsel Harry, and Sid Tomack [The Kettles in the Ozarks] as a cop-bureaucrat. Clifton Young makes an impression in a brief bit as bartender Eddie. 

Storm and O'Keefe with Jeff Chandler in the background

Despite this cast, Abandoned didn't work for me at all. Maybe it needed more dynamic stars, a better script, or something, because the film seems to get duller just when it should be at its most exciting. There are certainly plenty of lively scenes -- for instance Burr and Mazurki getting into a deadly tussle -- but the movie just never becomes remotely riveting. Five years later Joseph M. Newman directed the much more entertaining science fiction film This Island Earth. The picture is generally well-colorized despite some glitches, such as O'Keefe's red nose on the left! 

Verdict: Just never gets out of the starting gate. **. 

SO SAD ABOUT GLORIA

Lori Saunders

SO SAD ABOUT GLORIA (1973). Director: Harry Thomason. NOTE: Some plot points are revealed in this review.

Wealthy Gloria (Lori Saunders) is released from a sanitarium and into the care of her Uncle Fred (Dean Jagger). Apparently she was traumatized when she saw her father die, although the details regarding this are never explained. She meets a novelist named Chris (Robert Ginnaven) and the two quickly fall in love. They move into a house where a young lady was axed to death (a bloody but not terribly graphic sequence depicted early in the movie). When she learns about the still unsolved murder, Gloria becomes a little unhinged, and keeps hearing music even though Chris hears nothing. When Chris goes into town to meet with his publisher, Gloria is left alone in the house as fate rapidly rushes up to engulf her ... 

Robert Ginnaven

The biggest problem with the clumsily directed and edited So Sad About Gloria isn't that you can see the twist coming from a mile away, but that the film leaves the viewer dangling. I have no problem in relating that the identity of the aforementioned axe murderer, who apparently appears twice, is never 

revealed. Although the big scene is the murder of the young woman, we never learn the slightest thing about her, not even her name! Aside from Dean Jagger and Seymour Treitman, who plays a sort of handyman, the acting throughout is too often very stilted and unreal. Furthermore, there are far too many annoying flashbacks showing an axe chopping at chains wrapped around a coffin, with no explanation for this forthcoming. To be fair, there are a couple of suspenseful sequences. Harry Thomason, who directed and produced this and other terrible films, fled to television where he produced Designing Women, The Fall Guy, and others. 

Verdict: Lowercase suspense film. **. 

OSS 117: MISSION TOKYO

Frederick Stafford and Marina Vlady

OSS 117: MISSION TO TOKYO (aka Atout coeur a Tokyo pour OSS 117/1966). Director: Michel Boisrond. 

Agent 117 (Frederick Stafford) figures out that a U.S. military base was wiped out by a miniature plane, so his next stop is Japan. In Tokyo he interacts with two women: Eva Wilson (Marina Vlady), who apparently gave away the coordinates of the aforementioned base; and adorable "hostess" Tetsuko (Jitsuko Yoshimura), who is actually a lieutenant who is working undercover. Wealthy entrepreneur Yekota (Valery Inkijinoff) has joined forces with shipbuilder Vargas (Mario Pisu) to blackmail the U.S. to pay them millions or else another base will be destroyed. Wanting to draw out the bad guys, 117 pretends to be Eva's husband until the real husband, John Wilson (Henri Serre), puts in an appearance. Is Eva being forced to work with Yekota and his associates because of her estranged husband, or is she doing this on her own? 117 will find out once he reaches Yekota's HQ on a huge ship on the ocean. 

Jitsuko Yoshimura with Stafford

In some ways Mission to Tokyo might come off like an inferior rip-off of You Only Live Twice, if it weren't for the fact that the Bond film came out the following year. Nevertheless the Japanese settings are telling. Not only is this not as good as the 007 adventure, it's inferior to Stafford's first 117 film, Mission for a Killer, even though Terence Young, who wrote and directed Dr. No and directed both From Russia with Love and Thunderball, "adapted" the screenplay for this picture. 117 has an amusing battle with a giant Sumo wrestler, and the production values are solid, but otherwise this is a fairly standard Eurospy film and no more. At one point 117 pretty much implies that he won't protect Eva unless she sleeps with him -- what a guy! In French with English sub-titles. 

Verdict: Watch You Only Live Twice instead. **1/2.