Below are all CLAWS & SAUCERS guidebook entries beginning with “cl” (for “claws!”). Find more entries on the Blog section of the website. All entries have the same format. FANTASY FILMS OF THE 1980s uses the same format too.
All entries beginning with ‘cl’ …
CLASH OF THE TITANS (Desmond Davis, 118 min, color, 1981)
What’s Happening: While the gods watch, Perseus must slay Medusa and rescue Andromeda
Famous For: One of best Greek Myth movies; last film with Ray Harryhausen animation
Neither critics nor fans were impressed when Clash was released. Personal computers, New Wave music, and video games were in. Stop-motion animation, not to mention Greek mythology, seemed foolishly old-fashioned. Even Harryhausen fans considered it a lesser effort. But as the years passed, both critics and fans gradually changed their minds.
No one considers this the best movie of its type (Jason and the Argonauts usually gets that honor), but everyone finds something to enjoy. In fact, everyone seems to have a different favorite moment from the film. VideoHound praises the climactic medusa sequence, calling it Harryhausen’s scariest sequence ever. John Stanley considers Burgess Meredith to be the standout. The Phantom likes veterans Laurence Olivier, Claire Bloom, Ursula Andress, and Maggie Smith as the Olympian gods. Many viewers remember Pegasus the most. Me? I liked the massive flood sequence toward the beginning.
Sadly, two obvious flaws drag this movie down from potential greatness. First, lead actors Harry Hamlin and Judi Bowker are boring and routine; neither has any screen presence. Second, the movie is too long and slow between action sequences, especially in the last hour. You’ll wish that Pegasus would fly faster. Another possible flaw is the campy owl which was probably unnecessary.
Although it is a belated entry in the Greek myth subgenre, it doesn’t seem to realize this. Because it shows no consciousness that it marks the close of an era, Clash of the Titans feels enviably innocent.
Action: 8. Gore: 6. Sex: 6. Quality: 7. Camp: 5.
Don’t miss: Calibos transforming
Quotable line: “There is sufficient cowardice, sloth, and mendacity on Earth to last forever.”
CLAW OF TERROR (Marc B. Ray, 86 min, color, 1973)
What’s Happening: Hook-handed youth kills men and women, imagining they are his parents
Famous For: A.k.a. “Scream Bloody Murder”
You get cheap unabashed exploitation, but with some admirable restraint – nudity partial and gore frequent but brief. The first half follows the one-handed Oedpial (but non-sexual) Matthew as he kills several men and women, including his own parents but also other couples he imagines are his parents. He kills the women only accidentally. The second half is less fun, as Matthew kidnaps an artist/prostitute and insists she pretend to be his mother.
In-camera effects and some surprisingly good camera angles make the killings and fantasies very entertaining. Matthew should have used his claw more often, but at least he uses it at the end. Many scenes are too long, and many conversations repetitive, but the exploitation elements are well handled. Recommended if you like Southern-type exploitation such as Axe or Evil Come Evil Go.
The actor who plays crazy Matthew is obviously an amateur, but he really does seem pathetically sweet one minute and pathetically violent the next. He has many funny lines including, before killing a housekeeper: “sorry, lady, I need the house.” Tom Willett, posting December 2008 on the IMDb describes the plot as “a hooker vs a hook.” Angus Scrimm, who shows up late in the film, was The Tall Man from Phantasm.
Action: 6. Gore: 6. Sex: 3. Quality: 5. Camp: 6.
Don’t miss: Art critic?
Notable achievements: “See what I do for you? I get groceries and clothes and art stuff, and kill people!”
THE CLIMAX (George Waggner, 86 min, color, 1944)
What’s Happening: Obsessed opera house doctor tries to destroy a beautiful young singer
Famous For: First Boris Karloff film in color; same director as The Wolf Man
Opera fans will find plenty to like here, but horror fans will not. It’s really a kind of alternate version of Phantom of the Opera, and in fact uses the same sets as the 1943 Universal Phantom with Claude Rains. Like the 1943 Phantom, emphasis is placed on costumes and romance. Horror is a distant third. In fact, only two or three scenes in The Climax might be horrifying at all.
Karloff gives a “one-note performance” (as the Phantom of the Movies puts it); this is partly his fault and partly the fault of the Curt Siodmak screenplay which does not make him sympathetic. Unlike the Phantom of the Opera who was legitimately wronged and legitimately in love, Karloff’s Dr. Hohner is merely a self-centered obsessive. His hypnotist scene is the highlight.
I believe, however, that the opera scenes are well done. I’m not an opera fan, but this is my educated guess. Any opera-loving readers who don’t mind a little murder and hypnotism with their dances and arias should check the film out. Also worthy of attention is Turhan Bey (Amazing Mr. X) who gives a wonderful performance, sweet and energetic, as the hapless diva’s fiancee. Bey, more than Karloff, is the film’s focus.
Finally, mention should be made of the film’s beautiful color print – gorgeous Golden Age Technicolor, where every costume and interior is crisp and full, where every hue has a kind of slight warm antique tinge. I thought of 18th-century painters like Thomas Gainsborough or Francois Boucher. I was also reminded of The Red Shoes (1948).
Action: 5. Gore: 4. Sex: 5. Quality: 5. Camp: 2.
Don’t miss: Tasty libretto
Notable suggestion: “Your voice will no longer answer your brain.”
A CLOCKWORK ORANGE (Stanley Kubrick, 136 min, color, 1971)
What’s Happening: Gang leader undergoes experimental mind-control therapy
Famous For: Same director as 2001:A Space Odyssey
As with 2001, Star Wars, and a few other movies in this book, the comments have been so copious and the praise so plentiful over the years, that I simply cannot add anything new. I will offer a bit of background and history here.
Anthony Burgess wrote the Clockwork Orange book in 1962 partially to help himself deal with a savage beating (not a rape, as Guttmacher and other sources incorrectly claim) that his wife had experienced during World War II at the hands of AWOL American soldiers. The book was told from the protagonist’s point of view, with cynical, amusing, half made-up slang “nadsat” words, some of which were incorporated into the film. The title phrase apparently refers to a Cockney expression, “as queer as a clockwork orange” to denote something natural yet also bizarre.
Kubrick read the book half a dozen times before starting the film. Kubrick made the gang older than in the book, and gave them their weirdly stylish white uniforms, codpieces, and black hats. He cast Malcolm McDowell after seeing him in If…. (1968). Both Burgess and Kubrick wanted to portray the importance of – but also the dangers of – freewill.
Note how the film depicts a realistic world and not a typical future dystopia. The Pavlovian “Ludovico” mind-control techniques are straightforward rather than mysterious. Note also how Alex is evil and predatory, yet possessing of an intelligence and charm that is hard to resist. Like most viewers, I hated him… but not completely. Both the film and book are clearly sympathetic to him.
The harsh, violent, and yet funny film caused a critical and popular sensation upon release, and apparently inspired copycat crimes in England, where it was banned until the 1990s. If anyone wished to claim it as Kubrick’s best, I would not argue. Of my guidebooks, John Scalzi’s provides the most substantive commentary.
Action: 8. Gore: 8. Sex: 5. Quality: 10. Camp: 4.
Don’t miss: Many great moments, including a face like Beethoven’s
Quotable words and phrases: “Droogs,” “The old in-out,” and many more
THE CLONE MASTER (Don Medford, 92 min, color, 1978)
What’s Happening: Scientist clones himself while conspirators try to steal his secrets
Famous For: One of the best TV sci-fi films of the 70s
TV sci-fi from the 70s ranks far below TV horror in both the number and quality of films. But The Clone Master almost ranks with the horror films for fun and excitement. Accept that it may be telling the wrong story: it’s structured mostly as an espionage thriller rather than a sci-fi drama. Then sit back and enjoy the ride.
Veteran TV director Don Medford (“Deaths-Head Revisited” and other Twilight Zone episodes) gives us a lot of action, especially considering all the dialogue. He seems to have instructed the actors to speak extra loudly or emotionally. While at times the direction is overdone (e.g. unnecessary voice-overs at 44:00 and 53:00), it ensures that the movie is never boring.
Art Hindle (who also played a duplicate of himself in Invasion of the Body Snatchers) is believably rational, determined, and kindly. In one composite shot (at 80:30) there are seven Hindles on screen! There are 13 clones total. Ralph Bellamy (Dr. Sapirstein from Rosemary’s Baby) is Hindle’s aggressive partner. He gets dropped from the story a little too early, but the father/son relationship between the two biochemists is interesting. Hindle isn’t simply a lone rogue.
The underground lab looks surprisingly up-to-date, and not old fashioned like the labs from Westworld or The Andromeda Strain. The bubbling incubation tanks make us want to peek inside. Almost all the scientific explanations are believable.
Note that I said “almost” all. The biggest misstep comes shortly after the clones are awoken, around the hour mark. Here’s a MINOR SPOILER: it turns out that they’re telepathic. They can sense our hero’s thoughts, as they sense each other’s thoughts. They can (apparently) travel around the world and yet still see what each other sees, hear what each other thinks, continuously.
I know that back in the 70s, many people believed that psychic powers such as telepathy were real. But even on these terms, the new concept dilutes the original concept of cloning. Telepathy should have been treated in a separate screenplay, a separate TV pilot.
Had this pilot turned into a series, we would have doubtless gotten much more about the clones’ psychology, how they feel about each other, whether they would collaborate or compete, and whether some of them would develop imperfections (like Six, dealing with denial). Other “clone” movies also fall disappointingly short in addressing these questions: The Clones, The Boys from Brazil, Final Eye, Parts: The Clonus Horror, and Anna to the Infinite Power.
Yet viewed as an espionage thriller in the James Bond vein, The Clone Master is great fun. Almost no character is what he or she first seems. It’s also remarkable that cloning is presented as a wonder rather than a menace.
The word “clone” goes back at least to 1963. The first genuine clone is considered to be Cornell University’s carrot from 1964. Dolly the sheep (1996) was the first creature cloned from adult rather than embryonic cells. See also Embryo or Moon (2009).
Action: 7. Gore: 4. Sex: 4. Quality: 7. Camp: 4.
Don’t miss: Watergate
Notable realization: “You could make 50 Robert Redfords!”
THE CLONES (Lamar Card/Paul Hunt, 90 min, color, 1973)
What’s Happening: Scientist on the run realizes he is one of many clones
Famous For: Early feature film with a “clone” theme
“Theme” might be overstating it. It has a clone premise, but within 20 minutes the film becomes a chase thriller, with a couple of government assassins on the trail of our angry scientist-hero. Cloning (“genetic twins”) is discussed piecemeal starting around the halfway mark. Like Parts: The Clonus Horror, it’s basically a B-movie thriller. Also like Parts, The Clones assumes that human cloning is a menace. The best clone movie of the era, and one which remains open-minded, is The Clone Master.
How is The Clones as a thriller? It’s a noble attempt, with LOTS of camera movement and odd angles to satisfy our eyes. Action makes up most of the running time. Handsome cars make the road chases exciting, and it’s only 33 cents per gallon for gas. Some shoot-outs, even the contrived one at the roller coaster conclusion, are fun. The canned cops-and-robbers music is decent, though the canned sad or romantic music is almost always misplaced. A split screen effect during the titles, and a later split screen during a solarized kung-fu interlude, are good ways to suggest duplication.
Two things would have helped The Clones be a much better thriller. First: the protagonist should have been sympathetic. As it is, we barely get to know the guy. Plus, the actor (Michael Greene from This Is Not a Test) is very annoying. He never seems like a real scientist. Second: the two assassins should have been funnier, ribbing each other like John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson in Pulp Fiction.
You could watch for camp, but you could also watch for a sense of 70s pessimism. Besides the usual fears of a government conspiracy, The Clones also offers an uncomfortable comic relief scene amidst hippie druggies driving an Amigo trailer. The counterculture isn’t much better than the establishment.
MINOR SPOILERS AHEAD. Little by little, our hero learns that he and three other scientists have been cloned 52 times to work in special weather stations around the world. Why? Because “one good tidal wave is worth two or three hydrogen bombs.” So it’s a government conspiracy for military power. It comes to an appropriately downbeat (and darkly comical) ending.
Action: 6. Gore: 5. Sex: 2. Quality: 4. Camp: 5.
Don’t miss: Phone Freak
Notable hope: “Will the real Jerry Appleby stand up… and be shot!”
CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND (Steven Spielberg, 137 min, color, 1977)
What’s Happening: Aliens cause strange disturbances worldwide… are they friend or foe?
Famous For: With Star Wars, one of the crowning achievements in 70s science fiction
Close Encounters was too dramatic and mature to have an immediate emotional impact on nine-year-old kids like myself. It was Spielberg’s E.T. exploring similar themes five years later that really got us. Nonetheless, Close Encounters was unforgettable – the type of movie that left a good feeling behind, the type we rented years later and finally understood, and loved. Every scene stands on its own both visually and thematically. Every scene contributes to the whole. Douglas Trumbull’s effects seem flawless, even 30+ years later.
MINOR SPOILERS AHEAD. Most viewers, myself included, find Close Encounters to be a gorgeous, moving, hopeful, and affirming vision of an extraterrestrial visit to Earth. But some hardcore science fiction fans find it hokey and naive. With the exception of Ray Bradbury, “old guard” SF writers such as Isaac Asimov and Harlan Ellison lamented the film’s wish-fulfilling sweetness. Harry Harrison (in his foreword to Brosnan’s Future Tense) even called it cynical and anti-science. Among critics of my generation, John Scalzi calls it “a fuzzy-headed New Age mess.”
But I respectfully disagree. Why shouldn’t we have a positive and reassuring portrayal of a close encounter? There have been plenty of nasty invasions, plenty of hideous space monsters. Why not admit a happy story into our canon? I find Spielberg’s portrait of the close encounters to be brilliant. The use of music as a universal (literally!) language makes perfect sense: it is the most timeless of art forms and the only intangible one. The aliens can be mischievous or careless, and while their actions seem quasi-random to us they are also obviously planned and purposeful.
If anything about the film struck a discordant note with me, it was the meticulous nature of the operations at the landing site. In an early-80s conversation with my family about this movie, I remember my Uncle Lenny perceiving something “fascistic” about the matching red uniforms and the straight-line march of the volunteers who will board the mother ship. I didn’t understand him at the time, but I understand him now. The “authorities” cook up a scare-story to keep the civilians away so that only the Right People will be allowed at the site.
But who are the right people? Who would I trust to greet the extraterrestrials? The US government? The President? Senators or Governors? I can think of few authorities who could represent humanity with dignity, tact, and honor. Scientists? Perhaps, but many of them lack social skills, imagination, or romance. I also dislike the pervasive atheism of scientists. Would I trust artists and poets? Perhaps, but many of them are self-indulgent and therefore out-of-touch with the greater bulk of mankind. Who would I trust? Would I even trust myself?
At any rate, Spielberg seems to be criticizing the governmental/military takeover of the landing site. The Francois Truffaut and Bob Balaban characters voice their discontent. And when Richard Dreyfuss’s “Everyman” does get to make the journey, he looks conspicuously different from the government-bred crew. Overlook credits the movie with “the most gloriously optimistic ending in the history of the science fiction film.”
Action: 7. Gore: 4. Sex: 4. Quality: 10. Camp: 3.
Don’t miss: Mashed potatoes
Notable justification: “They were invited!”
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