Monster of the Day #3251

Updated on August 17, 2022 By Ken Begg 7 Comments

So while the Shrew and Gila Monster posters were clearly artistic choices–if odd ones–here the odd framing of the art really call attention to itself. It’s mystifying, in fact. Unless you’ve seen the movie, and then you *completely* get it.

Again, a great double bill with this is Kronos. It’s really not that much better of a movie, and indeed they share leading man Jeff Morrow. But one has about the goofiest monster ever, and the other has a really neat monster. And therein lies the tale.

Pin It



Related Posts

  • It’s kind of an interesting comparison. Both deal with unstoppable alien menaces. Both of them are… let’s be charitable and say competently in their stories. Oh, The Giant Claw‘s script needed work, there’s problems with it the size of… some nautical vessel I’m sure will come to me, but it’s not as bad as, say Reptilicus. Another draft or three and you might have had something. But Kronos is hands down the better of the two films.

    Yet despite the cool monster and better over all script, I feel Kronos vanishes into the sea of other Sci Fi flicks with other decent enough stuff like Black Scorpion while Giant Claw does not, precisely because of its goofy charm. The very things that condemn it saves it;

    Destroyer! Size of a destroyer! Knew it would come to me.

  • To step on my joke a little bit, you want to see something depressing, do a Google search on Battleship and see what turns up first. The game is pushing a hundred years old, at least. It deserved better than… that.

  • Beckoning Chasm

    OT, but I watched “The X From Outer Space” in the very nice Criterion (Eclipse) edition. Being a philistine, naturally I watched the dubbed version. And boy, is that dubbing bad. The German lady came off especially bad.

    But it sounds as if someone dubbed the Monster as well. I could swear I heard “Huuuunnnnngggrryyyyy!” a couple of times.

  • Beckoning Chasm

    I haven’t seen it in years, but I recall the interesting thing about Kronos is that it is clearly the product of alien technology, but no Paul Frees-type voice ever makes demands of us puny humans or warns that our feeble efforts are futile. Instead, Jeff Morrow and George Jetson have to figure everything out.

  • When I heard they were making a movie out of it, I thought of this story line:

    The US is conducting some naval combat readiness exercises out in the Pacific. Chinese / Russian ships are close by, “observing”. During all this, an alien ship lands right in the middle of the “action”. By accident, a missile fired by an Earth ship hits the alien craft, and it starts shooting back (it’s weapons aren’t powerful or advanced enough to do serious damage, luckily). Alas, some sort of interference is messing with the Navy’s targeting computers, and they are reduced to taking pot shots at it. Is there a navy vessel in the area that *doesn’t* use all these advanced computerized high-tech targeting systems that could be brought into service rather quickly????

  • Gamera977

    I liked ‘Kronos’ except that bit about the lab mascot: ‘We call him neutron because he’s so positive.’

    Ummmmm, maybe someone should have gotten their hands on a third grade science textbook!??! Is ‘neutron’ being ‘neutral’ that complicated- it’s even right there in the frelling name!!!!

  • Beckoning Chasm

    “We call him Neutron because we had him fixed.”