Mother May I - 50's Sci-Fi/Monster Movies For My Kids

The Thing from Another World

Being a parent for over 14 years now, I sometimes look back at the memorable heart-to-heart conversations I had with my wife about parenting. Many of the exchanges we had concerned the movie content I wanted to show my kids, not surprisingly. Movies that were perfectly okay to watch on TV when I was that age (the 3 - 9 year old bracket), now (in this century) had to pass through a parental high summit. Those closed door meetings between you-know-who and she-who-must-be-obeyed to hash it all out are now the stuff of legend. Think a super-power nuclear arms control negotiation that had a 'watch those pronouns' quality. More importantly, the thing holding the balance of the decision was one tangential quotient - your children's nightmares. Of course, it must be stipulated that I was not attempting to introduce my kids to the likes of 70's horror films (The Exorcist, The Hills Have Eyes, Texas Chainsaw Massacre etc.). I'm not the greatest parent in the world, but give me some credit. Please... I have enough judgment and discretion to know better than to show those to my children when they were that young. I'm holding those off until they're in their teens. [wife: "What?!?"]

This post has been updated and moved to my current blog, which can be found here.

"A website to the detriment of good film"

It's not always that I actually promote bad movies (heaven knows there are enough of them). But, in this case it's for entertainment value. The BadMovies.org web site goes out of their way to make sure bad movies and entertainment are synonymous. Their reviews are just this side of priceless (or at least for a chuckle or two). What other site would give the time of day to the unintentionally hilarious bit of celluloid masquerading as a 50's monster movie?

I actually remember The Giant Claw with similar fondness from my youth. I watched it on a black & white television at my grandmother's house one Saturday afternoon (sitting sideways on her living room arm chair, IIRC). And the BadMovies.org's review brought it all back (including my bad posture)--thank goodness I wasn't sucking one of those kid-size milk containers through a paper straw at the time or I would have really embarrassed myself!!! As each of them is, the review is sectional:

• a Character list with all sorts of keen individual insights: "Pierre - A Canadian redneck! He is amusing, what with his jug of moonshine and irrational fear of giant birds. Of course, his phobia is not so irrational in a b-movie. The Giant Claw eats the poor, screaming, partially pickled fool."
• a Plot description chock full of fine detail and note: "any movie bold enough to feature a GIANT ANTIMATTER SPACE BUZZARD is a movie worth watching."
• Things I Learned From This Movie section: "The French Canadians are deathly afraid of Mexican food."
• Stuff To Watch For: "59 mins (mark) - So Ford did try to design a flying car. Too bad that they based it on the Pinto."
• Quotes: "That bird is extraterrestrial. It comes from outer space. From some godforsaken antimatter galaxy millions and millions of light years from the Earth. No other explanation is possible."

Add to this eager information audio clips, images, and sometimes video clips from the film itself. See, I told you their reviews have it all, and a bad movie! Come to think about it, I need to show this movie to my kids! I've since bookmarked this into my browser.

p.s., I found this site while visiting Mr. Peel's review of the movie PROPHECY.

Image via Wikipedia

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