Perhaps the greatest pleasure to be had from June's drive-in film festival on The Greatest Cable Channel Known to Mankind was witnessing the esteemed (soon to be going on a brief sabbatical; boy, will we miss him) host Bobby Osbo discuss these B-movies.
Before the screening of 1957's "The Giant Claw" Osborne couldn't conceal his "Yep, this movie's crap," grin during his remarks, and really why should he? He pretty much said that the movie was best known for its goofy monster and that sometimes people might wonder about the appeal of this kind of flick...or something like that. Really, I wouldn't have taken offense had he just called it a piece of garbage. I watched the thing, and while it had its moments, those moments consisted of me laughing at the monster like everyone else.
A much better effort was "The Tarantula" (1955), which, though it had a pretty slow build (as many of those old monster movies seem to, come to think) featured some decent acting and story. However, I thought the picture was a tad on the dark side. I don't mean the movie was dark like, say, "Seven," but rather the print looked a bit darker than maybe it should have. It resembled what you'd get back in the day when you tried to dub a VHS that was Macrovision-protected, not that I ever did so.
My mind ran wild with the scenario of Turner Classic actually dubbing a DVD and somehow putting the result on the air; better still, Bobby Osbo explaining it to the viewers:
"Unfortunately, Universal wouldn't play ball with us and provide decent source material for a fair license fee, so we took matters into our own hands and burned a copy of their recent commercial DVD. The result is what you're about to see. If anyone at Universal has a problem with this, they're encouraged to e-mail our complaints department at BenMank@tcm.com. Here, then, from 1955, directed by Jack Arnold..."
If only! I DID think the movie looked a little murky, though...
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