pam-lunn

I must start off by saying I love "B" movies, but even if you aren't normally a "B" movie fan you will get a kick out of this 1972 American International Picture. This movie pairs Ray Milland as a bigoted doctor who is dying of cancer who has his head transplanted on to the body of wrongly confused death row inmate Rosey Grier. The whole movie is bizarre from start to finish. Watch the two head gorilla run amok in a grocery store! See Rosey and Ray on a motorcycle trying to outrun the fuzz! Whoever came up with the concept for this turkey must have been on crack cocaine or LSD. One has to wonder what made Academy Award winner Ray Milland to even consider doing this movie. He had to be drunk, completely broke or both to appear in this mess. This movie is so bad it's great! If you have never seen this movie I recommend that you rent it and then call over a group of friends, break out the beer and the popcorn and then sit back for a fun evening.

This little gem of a movie is actually better than it should be considering it is a Monogram picture with a low budget and unfortunate racial stereotypes which were typical for the early 1940's.

Mantan Moreland is the star of this picture. He was a great comedic actor who was stereotyped into playing the dimwitted servant in most of his movies, but he really shines in this picture. I laughed out loud when he tells his boss that he had been "zombiefied". Every scene he is in he steals. This picture was billed as a horror movie, but it is actually a comedy. There is nothing remotely scary about the plot, which involves a German doctor who has taken over an island and is turning the natives into zombies while trying to get classified secrets from a captured American admiral through the use of hypnosis. I really enjoyed this movie despite the cheap sets, silly plot and racial stereotypes. If you want a good laugh on a Saturday afternoon, then pop some popcorn and sit back and enjoy Mantan Moreland. He more than makes up for this movie's deficiencies.

What can you say about a movie that features as it's monster a giant cross between a buzzard and a turkey with ping pong ball eyes and a bad case of the mange? This is what you get with "The Giant Claw", one of the silliest of the 1950's drive-in sci-fi movies. I defy anyone who sees the bird for the first time it appears on the screen to not to die of laughter..it's hard to believe that the creators of this "monster" actually thought anyone would be scared by it. Mara Corday and Jeff Morrow, the two lead actors in this turkey (no pun intended) are stuck with a silly script and inane dialog...but hey, who cares? Watching the Giant Claw attack the toy airplanes and fly through the air screeching like it's in heat is so much fun that you forget how awful it all is.