THE GIANT CLAW

1957/Director: Fred F. Sears/Writers: Paul Gangelin, Samuel Newman

Cast: Jeff Morrow, Mara Corday, Morris Ankrum, Louis Merrill, Edgar Barrier, Robert Shayne

The Giant Claw sports simply one of the worst, least frightening monsters in the history of movies. But don’t let that stop you from checking out this camp, schlock classic from director Fred F. Sears and producer Sam Katzman and starring Jeff Morrow and Playboy Playmate Mara Corday . The plot is not much different from the multitude of other big bug or animal movies coming out at the time. Mara Corday also starred in two other memorable big creature flicks, Jack Arnold’s Tarantula and The Black Scorpion (reviews coming eventually on both of these flicks). A bird as big as a “battleship” that comes either from the ice age of 17,000 BC or an antimatter universe hovers over the world and makes meals out of jets, airplanes and French Canadians. The giant “chicken” is one of the oddest looking beasts ever, and is simply a string controlled puppet whose wings always stay spread, even when it is nesting. My wife was utterly dumbfounded when she watched some of the film with me. I loved the movie and all its corniness and I am sure any regular reader of the Café will have a good time and more than a few unintended laughs at this movie full of quirky dialog and chessy special effects. One story tells of director Sears sneaking out of a screening of the film as the audience burst out in laughter each time the bird appeared on screen. The monster was added later and none of the cast had any idea what it was going to look like until they say the film themselves. Well we don’t watch this stuff to be wowed by the special effects or captivated by the story. I personally watch them to just escape and have a good time. And if you need a break from the routine I suggest you shake hands with The Giant Claw.

I am including here an audio sample I extracted for your entertainment of a classic scientific explanation of how to destroy the beast that all these old films seemed to have. This is one of the best I have ever heard. Also included along with my usually selection of images are some quoted from IMDB. I love quotes from old films and you will find them here as long as they are good and available. In the next post is a clip I put together on youtube with the trailer and a scene of the antimatter turkey attacking some reckless 1950’s style teenagers, who no matter how rebellious always look like Republicans by today’s standards. The video is in a separate post for technical reasons. The quality of the film trailer is not great but the best I could find, but the clip sample is pretty good. If camp is your cup of tea please check this one out.

A REASONABLY SOUND SCIENTIFIC EXPLANATION FOR A SURE FIRE METHOD TO FRY THE CHICKEN FROM OUTER SPACE (OR, MAYBE THE ICE AGE, WHO KNOWS).

MEMORABLE QUOTES FROM THE GIANT CLAW. ALL QUOTES FROM IMDB.

Mitch MacAfee: I know another poem. Be plain in dress and sober in your diet. In short, my dearie, kiss me and be quiet.

Gen. Van Buskirk: Three men reported they saw something. Two of them are now dead.

Mitch MacAfee: That makes me Chief Cook and Bottle Washer in a one-man Bird Watcher’s Society!

Narrator: Once the world was big, and no man in his lifetime could circle it. Through the centuries, science has made man’s lifetime bigger, and the world smaller. Now the farthest corner of the Earth is as close as a pushbutton, and time has lost all meaning as man-made devices speed many many times faster than sound itself.

Narrator: Something, he didn’t know what, but something as big as a Battleship has just flown over and past him.”

Sally: Well, flying Battleships, pink elephants, same difference.

Mitch MacAfee: I said it looked like a Battleship, not that it was a Battleship.

Sally: Oh, come off it, Mitch, you’ve done enough harm with your flying Battleship…

Narrator: An electronics engineer, a radar officer, a mathematician and systems analyst, a radar operator, a couple of plotters. People doing a job, well, efficiently, serious, having fun, doing a job. Situation: normal. For the moment…

Sally: Will it work, Mitch?

Mitch MacAfee: I don’t know. I honestly haven’t the faintest, foggiest idea. It’s one of those cockeyed concepts that you pull down out of Cloud Eight somewhere in sheer desperation.

Sally: Something that seemingly destroyed four planes and just missed you the first time. Something like your flying Battleship?

Sally: Oh, nothing so domestic as a flying saucer, officer. Just a flying Battleship.

Police Officer: Well, have a good time with your flying Battleship.

Sally: If felt like something collided with us up there!

Mitch MacAfee: Yeah, a flying Battleship that wasn’t there.”

Narrator: Once more a frantic pilot radios in a report on a UFO. A bird. A bird as big as a Battleship!

Sally: Did he say what it was?

Gen. Van Buskirk: Yes, he did. A bird. A bird as big as a Battleship…

Mitch MacAfee: You keep your shirt on and I’ll go get my pants on.

Mitch MacAfee: Now, I don’t don’t care if that bird came from outer space or Upper Saddle River, New Jersey; it’s still made of flesh and blood - of some sort - and vulnerable to bullets and bombs.

Maj. Bergen: By the time I get through with you, Mr. Electronics Engineer, you’ll be lucky if they let you test batteries for flashlights.

Lt. Gen. Edward Considine: It’s hard to come up with answers when you don’t even know what the question is.

FOUR FINE JUNGLE GIRLS BY DAVE STEVENS

Master illustrator Dave Stevens has a natural gift for drawing sexy women in classic poses and so the jungle girl genre suits his imagination just fine. In these four samples you can see he takes the whole thing to a level that is really unreachable by the guys that started all the Tarzan influenced jungle comics back in the 50’s and 60’s. His Sheena work is perfect and the drawing with the bare breasted girl in the tree at the bottom is so stunning in layout and rendering I just do not get tired of looking at it. In some cases I would say it lacks intensity due to the absence of a lush jungle background but here it works just right the way it is. Takes a true artist to so confidently handle empty space.

A SELECTION OF JUNGLE GIRL DRAWINGS AND COMIC BOOK PAGES

Of course the whole Tarzan concept alone required some suspension of disbelief in itself, mush less the white jungle girl theme. I am a big fan of the Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan films and you can expect to see posts on them in the future. But the reality is too intense for any of this to be true of course. I read a book recently on the jungle warfare that took place in Burma during WWII and some of the worst elements both the allies and Japanese had to deal with was the jungle itself… insects, leeches, disease, heat and cold, the foliage and terrain and it goes on and on. So it is crazy to see these gals all dressed in bikinis and not covered in mud and grime and insect bites. But I totally love it and it is one of my favorite comic book genres to look at for the quality of the drawings. I enjoy it for the detailed jungle art and crazy stories.

Note: The following comic book pages are not a complete story nor in any special order. I found loads of the stuff online and it is nice to look at on a good computer. Nothing like seeing the original stuff on paper I am sure, but I am content to settle for the digital substitute at this juncture.   They are posted to show just how good some of the jungle adventure art had become in its detail.

A SELECTION OF JUNGLE GIRLS IN BONDAGE COMIC BOOK COVERS

Subdued bondage of women was a recurrent theme in almost all comic book genres up until recent history. It does not appear often now except maybe in underground or adult titles. I do not know what the intent was but it has been a point of hostile criticism of comics in general from feminists groups and concerned parents. Well, we here at the Café not only do not see what all the hubbub is about but feel ourselves compelled to be purveyors of this sub-genre of comic book expression. There is a sort of humor or innocence about these covers when compared to what is being done now in comics or films. There is no doubt that the women are half naked and tied up, usually in these books by pygmies or cannibals, but it is all in good taste, we assure you. And if there is one thing we here at The Uranium Café know about it is …er… good taste.

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A selection of really nice pictures of saultry Tennessee girl Bettie Page (or sometimes Betty Page if you are searching the net). There were really two types of photos from Bettie and one was the cheese cake style that Bunny Yeager did and the other was the “dark” stuff by Irving Klaw that got her into a bit of trouble later on. Some fans are divided on which represented the “true” Bettie while I have always felt both did. I have to admit that I like the dark, bondage stuff with Bettie while I cannot say I usually prefer this style from that period due to the quality. Or maybe I do prefer it but worry what people might say about me behind my back. But some of the dark style images with her were simply great photographs and Bettie’s radiant personality comes out in all of them. Klaw was essentially a “noir” phogograher of sorts but could take good pictures. The bottom two pictures (above images) with the stuffed leopard are from Yeager I believe while the others are from her infamous New York City work. She is simply too sexy for words and it is easy to see why she was 2nd only to Marilyn Monroe in the 1950’s as the most photographed model the US. Below is a link to her really excellent looking and easy to navigate webpage. It has improved vastly since the last time I checked it out.

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http://www.bettiepage.com/

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Also included are links to pages for Irving Klaw and Bunny Yeager to show the diversity of their work and how they both saw Bettie from different angles that helped create her angel-devil mystique.

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http://irvingklaw.com/

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http://www.bunnyyeager.com

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BETTIE PAGE BY HAROLD LLOYD

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A THUMBNAIL COLLECTION OF

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SHAPELY BETTIE PAGE

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A simple photo tribute to the sexy and statuesque Julie Newmar. I suppose by today’s near anorexic requirements for sex goddess status she may be too flawed but she is perfect in my slim book of requirements. I am not familiar with her work really outside the Batman TV series and the Gregory Peck film Mekenna’s Gold but she was impressive in both of those. She radiated self confidence and it was no doubt boosted by her personal interest in martial arts like Judo and Akido. There are other posts dedicated here at the Cafe if you care to search for them. Have fun.

A Thumbnail Collection of

Julie Newmar Images

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I cannot see the insides of these mags and will base my assumption on boyhood memory that the contents were probably mostly black and white on a pulpy paper similar to comic book paper. There may have been a few pages stuck in the middle in color that featured the cover girl or some other nubile tart. The stories were men’s stories of the time: detective tales, how to be a better lover, exposes into the world of crime or drugged up hippies and such. Scattered through the mag were really cool advertisements for all sorts of strange things and I am researching the net trying to find good scans of some of these ad pages. It is not easy. But I will not give up.

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I guess these gals are not as smolderingly perfect as the vixens that grace contemporary erotica (aka porn) but there is some quality I really find alluring about them. They are not skinny nor do they look like meth or heroin addicts. More the gin and tonic type with some barbiturates once in a while for a socially acceptable nod time. I really like the first picture of the girl on the European looking sports car. What a great magazine title: Scamp. It is simply a good photograph and she looks really coquettish and demure in a naughty fashion. And I want to read that article about how to get flabby without really trying. In fact, I think I did read it!

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The next two books do not even have cover teasers to lure you into their pages with promises of exciting reading material. I like the design on these books though. I am sure zebra skin is going to make a come back as a sofa pattern for bachelor’s apartments again pretty soon. I really dig that jazzy font for Vivid Tales. That girl is a real down to earth party girl I think. The kind your mother would like. Well, that my mother would like anyway.

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All the Adam magazines had these vibrant covers with contrasting lines of color and the models were more times than not in some outfit that made it all vibrate and shake more, like some Victor Wassily painting. I have more Adam covers in albums in the thumbnail gallery in the next post if you are curious. And why wouldn’t you be? So go on, take a look big boy. You know you want to.

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A THUMBNAIL COLLECTION OF

SWINGIN’ SEXY GIRLIE COVERS

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BARBARELLA

1968/Director: Roger Vadim/Producer: Dino De Laurentiis/Writer: Jean-Claude Forest, Roger Vadim, Terry Southern Cast: Jane Fonda, John Phillip Law, Anita Pallenberg, David Hemming. Marcel Marceau

Barbarella was never a movie I was thrilled with although I’ve seen it a few times simply because Jane Fonda is so blasted sexy in it. While I am not disappointed with the sets and visuals and even the soundtrack, I just never cared for the story line which is based on the character created by French cartoonist Jean-Claude Forest. The film was directed by Roger Vadim and Fonda would marry him during production. Her character was patterned (legend has it) after Vadim’s previous wife Bridgett Bardot. Who is this guy? I would be honored to tie his boot laces though I am not worthy. I assume the story was supposed to be more tongue in cheek than it comes off as and I always felt the movie unintentionally took itself too seriously. It bombed critically and at the box office when it was released but has garnered and maintained a strong following on home video.

The story is not much really and has a comic book feel to it that works enough times to keep you waiting until the next sexy scenes comes up, and they usually involve a young and stunning Jane Fonda before she was demonstrating against the US in Hanoi. A couple of the most famous sequences involve her undressing in zero gravity and being tortured in an orgasm producing machine. John Philip Law ( from Bava’s Danger Diabolik, also a comic book adaptation) is some blind, angel with a broken wing character and Keith Richard’s common law wife Anita Palenberg also appears in the film.

The film has had a substantial influence on pop culture, one of the more famous being the naming after a character from the film of the 80’s MTV band Duran Duran (who I could never stand). Seems a remake is getting nearer to actually beginning and Desperado/Sin City director Richard Rodriguez is slated to over see the project. He is pushing the studios to have his other half Rose McGowen play the lead and is having a slight tug of war with the studios over this, but lets see what happens. But in the end this is one of those roles that can never be matched by anyone but the original star. Imagine someone else playing the Man with No Name other than Clint Eastwood. Jane Fonda IS Barbarella. I welcome a newer version of the film with better effects and some sort of story, but no one can have multiple orgasms the way she did.

FROM THE BARBARELLA COMIC BOOK BY JEAN-CLAUDE FOREST

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