It Came From Hollywood

Cafe Society
1

A friend of mine mentioned the movie The Giant Claw and I said that I only know that movie from the clips in In Came From Hollywood. I hadn’t thought about ICFH in a long time but I realize just how influential it was on me. Little kid me loved nothing more than Genre movies (and books and TV) and comedy and this movie was filled with both.

It was on HBO all the time in the early eighties and I watched it every time. It put me down a rabbit hole that let to cheesy sci fi and horror movies, SNL, MST3K and a bunch of other stuff. Anyone else have memories of this one?

2

I remember seeing It Came from Hollywood around the time it came out. it brought up memories of seeing most of the featured movies earlier in life. TV was expanding rapidly in the early 80s so soon those and many other B-movies were being aired more often, sometimes satirically as the local horror movie shows would do and later with MST3K.

3

I saw it in theaters and Chong’s garbage can sized pop corn was almost meta. I suspect you won’t see it aired on TV or cable these days because an unsuspecting channel surfer could land in the middle of the mind-bogglingly racist dance number from the 1934 musical, Wonder Bar.

4

I was seven when The Giant Claw came out. I loved 'Monster Movies" and my Dad would take me to see any of them I asked for. I clearly remember that even as an idiot seven year old I thought the monster was hilariously stupid.

5

The Giant Claw is one of the most wonderfully awful giant monster movies of the 1950s. The very premise is pretty stupid, but it didn’t help that they ran out of money for the special effects and came up with the most embarrassing monster to appear in a monster film. The cast was appalled when they saw the final result. (Something similar happened with the 1979 John Frankenheimer movie Prophecy)

I’ve shown the film at an impromptu “Bad Film Festival” once, and it went over well.

I love It Came from Hollywood, despite its flaws (some of the “comedy” bits go on for too lomng, and they actually make fun of a few halfway decent films). It’s a great “gateway drug” to get people interested in parties where you make fun of awful movies. Another one is a straight-to-DVD creation called Zacherley’s Horrible Horror, which I highly recommend, if you can find a copy. It actually has outtakes of grade-Z movies like Killers from Space.

I was having Bad Film Festivals long before MST3K came around.

6

Heheh, I loved ICFW, and I too watched it on cable a lot. It did shape me some. If nothing else, it was where I first heard the “Martian Hop”.

7

Err, can’t edit. That should have been ICFH.