The Giant Claw

I used to think that the "best worst movie" ever was "The Tingler" from 1959. Starring Vincent Price as a doctor studying the psychological aspects of fear, what started as a rather interesting psychological thriller with some witty dialogue evolved into a bizzare monster movie; the tingler was, if I recall correctly, some sort of creation born in the spine when someone developed fear. Price's character somehow removed the tingler from someone's spine, and thus it was released to reek havoc. To its defense, "The Tingler" had some descent moments. There was the mentioned humorous dialogue, Vincent Prince, some clever and presumably expensive gimmicks (like placing electrical buzzers under the seats when the tingler escapes and planting "nurse" actresses to "faint" during some scenes). "The Giant Claw" from 1957 allows "The Tingler" to seem epically classic in retrospective comparison.

The opening of "The Giant Claw" involves some wonderful exposition from a narrator explaining to an audience about the "raed-ah" ("raed-ah" and other ridiculous jargon try to pass as authentic and authoritative science, even by 1950s monster movie standards). In the skies there is a UFO (that's "unidentified flying object," the narrator tells us, since we probably don't know). Jeff Morrow and Mara Corday play two officials (Morrow a radar expert and Corday a scientist) trying to explain to government officials the existence of some sort of flying monster from an antimatter galaxy--oh, who the hell cares?


This flying monster has the wings of a turkey, the neck of a brontosaurus, the face of the late ugliest dog on the planet, the hair of crazy Travis Bickle and the likability of Snooki. Even that description does not quite do it justice, so plenty of pictures are provided. Of course, missiles and even nuclear bombs cannot stop the monster, and it can't even be picked up on the rad-ah.

Director Fred Spears was no Ed Wood. There seems to have been no evidence of passion or dedication in the making of this movie. Spear's movie shifts from one annoyance to another. There's an actor with an accent changing from stereotypical French to stereotypical Mexican. This character is petrified, and the local sheriff explains to the two main characters that they must rush to make it to the plane, though he does have enough time to explain the legend of this creature--that the villagers believe that someone dies after seeing the monster. Of course, the French-Mexican has just seen the bird, but why should that stop story time?

A Vincent Price-like character (Edgar Barrier) is provided to throw out some jargon about antimatter. The Price character has maybe, at best, only seen some pictures and descriptions of the bird (and a feather, but "we don't know if it's a feather," he says), but he can issue some hypothesis, that the bird is extra-terrestrial, coming from a galaxy billions of lightyears from our own. "No other explanation is possible." There's other wonderful dialogue. A pilot, before he and the others are killed by the bird, jokes that he will "never call [his] mother-in-law an old crow again!" Someone else says, "I don't care if that bird came from outer space or New Jersey!" (Is there a difference? Please forgive me for such a predictable joke.)


Like in "Jaws" two decades later, there is a wait to see the monster, but the reward is almost equal, for obviously different reasons. In flight the bird is often out of focus (deliberate, you think?). When it is in focus, the breathing nostrils are clearly visible. Murrow claimed that the actors did not know what the monster would look like until they had to painfully sit through the screening and endure the snickering of the audience; he walked home drunk that night. I imagine that maybe alone in a dark studio at night; then, and only then, and just maybe, would this monster be a bit alarming. Instead, it might be one of the silliest things the movies have ever known. What inspires such a movie? Wouldn't it be great to read some long-forgotten documents about the making of this film? With all the things Obama has to deal with, maybe he'll also have to save us from a giant buzzard, and the media will criticize him for not being angry enough at the bird.

Bruce the Shark from "Jaws" recently turned up in a junk yard. Perhaps the Giant Claw will as well.

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A Simple Plan

It's all quite Hitchcockian. These are ordinary characters caught up in extraordinary circumstances. There are even symbolic black crows guarding a destroyed plane, a sort of Pandora's Box. Sam Raimi's "A Simple Plan," from 1998, does Hitchcock better than most other post-Hitch films.

The film reunites Bill Paxton and Billy Bob Thorton, who both starred in "One False Move" six years earlier. Paxton is Hank Mitchell, a working man and college graduate seemingly happy in love with a pregnant wife (Bridget Fonda). He is employed but of course faces not unusual economic troubles. His brother, Jacob (Thorton), is considerably less intelligent, rational, and respected in their Minnesota community than his younger brother. One cold, snow-covered day, the two venture into the woods during a hunting trip with Jacob's drunk friend (Brent Briscoe), who, like Jacob, is unemployed. They stumble upon a crashed plane with a dead pilot (black crows devouring his eyes) and millions of dollars in stolen money. While Hank is initially the calm Boy Scout, insisting the money be turned over to the police, he is eventually convinced into keeping the money. The three make a series of promises and missteps, all the while the situation and their chances of not getting caught deteriorate.

Thorton's performance is the great moral centerpiece of the film, as Paxton's character struggles but overcomes his sense of guilt. Jacob, unable to be analytical about such feelings and complex situations, cannot help but "feel evil." If "evil" is a word only best fit for fiction, then that is satisfactory for this man; any deeper evaluation would be too great.

"A Simple Plan" requires some patience, for some scenes are a bit annoying. Paxton's character acquiesces to the desire of money, the root of all evil, too quickly, while Fonda's character is so much Lady Macbeth that during her first moments with her new baby, she quickly but calculatingly insists that her husband set up one of the members of the trio. Still, one cannot deny how engaging it becomes as the stakes constantly rise. Here are characters trying to rationalize their irrational behavior, and the film has such terrific actors, some of whom (like Paxton and Thorton) have never really been given their full appreciation. And unlike Hitchcock films, there is a certain amount of Biblical symbolism here (the Biblical Jacob's brother, Esau, had a unique relationship with his brother, though the Biblical Jacob was the shy one).

This is a terrific movie. Danny Elfman's score, during a period in his career where he shifted away from comic book films and surreal fantasies to more dramatic films like this and "Mission: Impossible" and "Good Will Hunting," is spot-on. Raimi's direction is awesome, understanding perfectly how to set the mood and motivations of each moment. It is Hitchcockian without ceding too much to influence. "A Simple Plan" should be remembered for a long time.

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Outrage

There is a respectable person speaking about himself being so respectable in the opening moments of Kirby Dick's "Outrage." This "respectable person" "doesn't do those things." The respectable person is Larry Craig. Those things are gay things.

Larry Craig, in case one has forgotten, is the former senator of the state of Idaho (a state where, like Iran, there are no gay people). He had famously said that Bill Clinton during the Lewinsky scandal was a "naughty boy." Craig, despite having a solidly anti-gay voting record during his career in Congress and a preacher of all those family values things, was the man who was arrested in a Minneapolis airport for soliciting gay sex in a male restroom. Defending himself as having a "wide stance" to explain the way his foot stretched into the other stall to call for fun, he became partly a laughing stock, partly another sex scandal, but mostly the face of a disturbing hypocrisy among closeted politicians. The hypocrisy is obviously the call to discriminate against gay people and simultaneously lead a gay lifestyle.

Craig is the obvious target. Also discussed are Charlie Crist, Ed Schrock, David Dreier, Jim McCrery and Ed Koch. These are men who largely have refused to support issues regarding HIV/AIDS, hate crimes, gays in the military, gay adoption and gay marriage, among others. Crist is the example that is really troubling, particularly because of the Macbeth-style ambition of the man. Crist, of course, has been in the news lately--he is the sitting governor of Florida who is also running for the Senate. When it appeared that Marco Rubio, the Tea Party favorite, would defeat Crist in the Republican primary, Crist abandoned the Republicans (becoming more common among moderates these days) and created a three-man race. Crist had also apparently offered his endorsement to Rudy Giuliani for president, and then when it became likely that McCain would win Florida and the possibility arose for Crist to be a front-runner for the vice-president nomination, Crist changed his mind and endorsed McCain (and he didn't call Giuliani to let him know). Inconveniently, though, Crist was single, and of course a single man cannot make it to such a high position. The McCain campaign, according to the documentary, already with so many hindrances and distractions and shortcomings, could not afford to defend their man as a straight man (so they picked Palin, who was facing ethics violations and could barely make a coherent sentence). Conveniently but in vein, Crist married six weeks before the vice-president nominee was chosen.

Barney Frank points out in the film that in 1976, Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter were about even on gay rights. Since then, Democrats have gotten better (passing the Matthew Shepard Act and poised to repeal Don't Ask, Don't Tell) and Republicans have gotten much, much worse (leading calls of hatred to ban same-sex marriage mostly on the grounds of firing up their base). Former representative Jim Kolbe, a Republican from Arizona, is interviewed and discusses telling John McCain that he is gay, to which McCain immediately stated something along the lines of, "Jim, it's okay. I know. You're a good legislator, and it makes no difference to me." McCain, of course, is the man who said several years ago that he would support repealing DADT if the military approached him offering their support of the repeal. Now that the Commander-in-Chief (the commander of the military), the Secretary of Defense (who incidentally served the role in both a Democratic and Republican administration), and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff all have supported a repeal, McCain has for whatever lack of logic changed his mind.

Ninety percent of these cases are Republican, and a section of the film discusses Dreier, who was denied a leadership position in the Republican caucus of the House of Representatives because he was too "moderate." The famous Barney Frank quote goes that, "Yes, in the sense that I marched in the 'moderate' pride parade last summer and went to a 'moderate' bar." Washington in the film is called gayer than San Francisco, but much more in the closet.

But these discussions are sparked by the film but do not really offer an evaluation of the film, so here it is: This is a very good documentary. Dick, just as he did with his brilliant "This Film Is Not Yet Rated," is asking common-sense questions and being met with absurd answers and realities. The film's flaw is that it seems to be unbalanced in its emotions, such as when it provided a catharsis of gay politicians explaining the freedom of coming out, then shifting again to the hypocritical nature of those remaining in the closet.

"Outrage" raises the analogy of anti-gay bully who happens to be gay--he behaves this way to exemplify the image that he is obviously not gay, for no gay man would hate himself and those like him. As Bill Maher said, "hating yourself is the greatest love of all."

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