Icons of Horror Collection - Sam Katzman (The Giant Claw / Creature with the Atom Brain / Zombies of Mora Tau / The Werewolf)
by Edward L. Cahn, Fred F. Sears
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Allison Hayes, Autumn Russell, Gregg Palmer, Joel Ashley, Morris AnkrumDirector: Edward L. Cahn, Fred F. Sears
Brand: Sony
Writer: Bernard Gordon
Writer: Curt Siodmak
Writer: George H. Plympton
Writer: James B. Gordon
Writer: Paul Gangelin
Writer: Robert E. Kent
DVD: Region Code 99
Audio: English (Subtitled); English (Original Language)
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 144 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2007-10-16
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: Sony Pictures
Movie Reviews of Icons of Horror Collection - Sam Katzman (The Giant Claw / Creature with the Atom Brain / Zombies of Mora Tau / The Werewolf)
Movie Review: Two Bs and Two More Bs
Summary: 4 Stars
There's no getting around it: the 1950s were not a great era for horror and science fiction films. Yes, there are a few excellent movies, but for the most part, the genre was relegated to B-movie status, and even there, it was rarely treated with much respect. Despite a lack of true quality, however, many of these movies can be fun to watch, even in a so-bad-it's-good sort of way. The Sam Katzman - Icons of Horror Collection provides four such movies.
Katzman was a B-movie producer and few of his films are really well-known. In an era when the studios produced a lot more movies, many were quite forgettable, and Katzman's movies fit into that category. Only a truly dedicated film fan would be able to recall the movies in this set.
Creature with the Atom Brain is one of the horror films with a little bit of everything: zombies, gangsters, radioactivity and Nazi scientists. Written by Curt Siodmak (who created the modern werewolf with The Wolf Man), Creature deals with a gangster out for revenge against those who forced him into exile. With the aid of the scientist, he is able to create zombie slaves of incredible strength. Richard Denning (from The Creature From the Black Lagoon) is the earnest cop/scientist who, pipe always in hand, is out to stop the threat. Although this movie has a little too much talk and not enough action, it does feature one of the most brutal murders of the Production Code era (and at the beginning of the movie, too).
You can literally see the strings in The Giant Claw, a giant monster movie with a enormous alien bird terrorizing the world. The science in this movie is around as flimsy as the effects, with the monster's invulnerability due to an antimatter shield and the eventual solution involving mesons (I won't spoil the ending in explaining how; actually I can't, since it is as ludicrous as everything else in this film.
Zombies of Moro Tau is the one truly supernatural movie, with the undead protecting a stash of diamonds that are at the bottom of a river in a remote jungle. Treasure hunters go after the gems, but nothing will stop these cursed creatures. In the pre-Night of the Living Dead era, this slow-moving film is around par for the course for zombie films (although there have been good ones such as White Zombie and I Walked with a Zombie).
The rather unimaginatively titled The Werewolf deals with a werewolf. In this case, the hapless soul who's turned into a monster is a nice family man who was transformed by mad scientists. He wreaks havoc in a small mountain town while the scientists pursue him; there's little in this film that hasn't appeared in dozens of other werewolf movies.
Whether you enjoy these movies or not depends a lot on your mood. If you like watching B-horror-movies, then these will fit the bill quite nicely; on the other hand, if you're looking for something scary, you'd want to look elsewhere. While I more-or-less had fun watching this set, I'd hardly call it essential viewing, even for fans of this type of film.
More Icons of Horror Collection - Sam Katzman (The Giant Claw / Creature with the Atom Brain / Zombies of Mora Tau / The Werewolf) reviews:
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1 2 3 4 5
Summary of Icons of Horror Collection - Sam Katzman (The Giant Claw / Creature with the Atom Brain / Zombies of Mora Tau / The Werewolf)
Studio: Sony Pictures Home Ent Release Date: 10/16/2007The four Sam Katzman films included in his Icons of Horror Collection stand as testaments to the American atomic age, reflecting public terror and awe towards 1950s technology and the accomplishments made in science and medicine. Sam Katzman, an incredibly prolific B-movie producer whose expertise in horror and sci-fi resulted in collaborations with Ray Harryhausen (Jason and The Argonauts), originally masterminded several wonderful thrillers, classic archetypal examples for later films on similar topics. In this DVD set, two of the four films are painfully slow paced, but contain horror scenes that vibrantly combine horror, sci-fi and film noir. Zombies of Mora Tau (1957) catalogues a researching team's attempts to confiscate a diamond stash lodged on an abandoned ship in a harbor guarded by the living dead. Some foggy shots of zombified sailors, eternally guarding the gems as a curse for stealing them, provide chills if even for a few moments. The Giant Claw (1957) introduces the viewer to the age of alien invasions and military paranoia. Opening with a great shot of an Earth diorama orbiting in space, the film chronicles Mitchell MacAfee (Jeff Morrow), an electronics engineer who reports from his aircraft shadows of a large bird dive-bombing his plane. Sally Caldwell (Mara Corday) stands by at home base, continually ready for action. When one does manage to see this elusive shadow, the viewer can almost make out the giant avian claw that looks like a chicken foot. The two films that really make the collection are Creature with the Atom Brain (1955) and The Werewolf (1956), which reinvent the Frankenstein story to chronicle humans-turned-monster in the name of science. In Creature, Dr. Steigg (Gregory Gaye) has reanimated dead men with atomic energy by injecting their brains with radioactive material that exponentially increases their strength to kill normal humans. Great sequences show Dr. Chet Walker (Richard Denning), the heroic scientist hired by police, using a Geiger counter at crime scenes. Live-dead men with stitched up heads wandering stiffly around as a monster mafia, giving hearty doses of humor to this fantastic film. Likewise, The Werewolf features awesome footage of star, Duncan Marsh (Steven Ritch), turning into a wolf while managing to keep his well-tailored suit clean as he runs through the forest. During most of the film, Marsh is fleeing a well-intentioned Sheriff Haines (Don Megowan), and two villains, Dr. Emery Forrest (S. John Launer) and Dr. Morgan Chambers (George Lynn), who accidentally turn him into a wolf when experimenting with radioactive injections that would protect humans from radiation. All four films have the look and feel of the epic Universal movies like The Wolf Man, and The Mummy, and give historical context to buffs researching 1950s monster films. -Trinie Dalton
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