The Giant Claw - 1957

We'd just had the internet restored, and it had been a long day. The perfect recipe for a monster movie!

I didn't know squat about this thing. I just threw it on. Between the name and the year, I was guessing it would be at least slightly entertaining, but I'd been fooled before...

A dude is flying a plane when he sees a UFO. To us, they show a flying fuzz. He refers to it as a flying battleship, and everyone thinks he's nuts since it doesn't even show up on radar.

Eventually, we find out what it is - an alien bird. For some reason, the cover says it's prehistoric, but it's an alien. Trust me. Then for some reason, we get into matter and antimatter? Anyway, amazing effects and loads of death, and we end on probably the best death scene I've seen in quite a while.

The people in this movie really suck, though. They "save" the one pilot, but then he's just magically dead. And how did he get all bloody? And then poor Pierre. Why did they take him out with them? And then the couple were like, "Oh well, let's go over here and kiss." Blech.

Anyway, I love this thing. I don't know who's responsible for the travesty that's the wire-work puppet, but I love them. I love whoever did the effects. I really do. They made my day. Good Movie! (for a certain section of people - those who love old monster movies with questionable effects).

 

4D Man - 1959

I love to pick random movies off Tubi. I've been "fortunate" to find some real gems, but I've also found a lot of "what the heck did I just watch." I randomly picked this one, because it sounded awesome.

Tony is performing experiments after hours when he accidentally sets the building on fire. Now that he's out of a job, he decides to visit his brother, Scott. After the reunion, he steals Scott's girlfriend. Later on, she says she doesn't love him, but it's still pretty cruddy of Tony to go around kissing and falling in love with the woman his brother loves. I mean seriously, Linda asked Tony if he loved her the day after they met! Maybe it wasn't the day after, but it really looked like it.

Anyway, Tony's experiment is piercing a thick piece of metal with a pencil. They're sharing atoms or something, so it's 4D. Once Scott finds out about his brother's betrayal, he messes around with the equipment and gets his hand stuck in a piece of metal. Later, we find out he did it by sheer willpower, and the whole force field thing wasn't even necessary. Scott's brain is just wired to be 4D I guess.

Now, here's the interesting bit. Putting your hand through things, and eventually your whole body, apparently ages you. Who knew? How do you fix that? You touch someone when your "powers" are active and steal their lifeforce! Duh!

So, now Scott is a fugitive. He's murdering people left and right so he can keep walking though walls. He does get revenge on a couple people, but when he's on the run, he takes out some random people to recharge. The end was super weird. Betrayed by a woman? No way! But...did Scott survive? Was he behind the Cargonite? Do I care?

There's one part of this movie I haven't mentioned yet, and that's the music. It's what I would call aggressive jazz. I swear, it was so loud at times, it was hard to focus on what was happening in the film. Other times, it didn't seem to match the mood. 

Overall, I have to say this wasn't the worst way to spend an hour and a half. It took forever for Scott to go 4D, and I wasn't fond of anyone in the film, but it was goofy enough to amuse me. If it didn't have the distracting music, I could see myself throwing it on for background noise while I did other things. Decent Movie!

Pyro...The Thing Without a Face - 1964

I got some internet back, but only on my laptop, so I headed to Tubi to see what nonsense I could dig up. And here it is!

Vance is in Spain working on a reservoir. He's obsessed with Ferris wheels and uses them in his work somehow. I never really saw anything but his model. While house hunting, he comes across a woman, Laura, working on burning her own home for the insurance money. He convinces her to sell him the house, and they start having an affair.

Eventually, Vance starts to feel bad since he has a wife and kid at home. His wife knows, and Vance decides to cut off Laura. She isn't happy about it, but she does get Vance to admit that he'd marry her if his wife and daughter weren't in the way. Her solution: kill them in a fire! Her plans go awry when Vance decides he didn't like that he argued with his wife before he left and comes home to the house ablaze. He runs in and burns himself to a crisp. According to the doctor, parts of his body have carbonized due to the fourth-degree burns, and something happened to his brain. He's solved the very hard mystery of who started the fire. I don't know much about arson, but I think with the amount of crap Laura did to that house, it would be obvious it wasn't a gas tank explosion. Vance the great detective is now bent on revenge.

I went into this with absolutely no idea what it was about. I just saw the title and was on board. I didn't realize that almost the first half hour would feel like an episode of House Hunters. Vance was really focused on finding the right house.

The end is also ruined because they show what happened in the beginning. Also, I'm wondering how/when Vance had the resources to make his super accurate face mask thing. When he took it off, the effects were pretty good, so props to them for that. All those good feelings leave when you hear the music. It doesn't match 90% of the time.

Overall, they shouldn't have ruined the ending. This movie was okay to pass the time after the first half hour. It was hard to feel any sympathy for the man who was cheating and then got upset with his wife because she was upset, and this was the one time he was telling the truth. I'll stay on the fence with this one. It wasn't quite good enough to push it over the edge into a good review, but it wasn't terrible.