The Gothique Film Society presents The Werewolf (1956) and The Giant Claw (1957)

About The Gothique Film Society presents The Werewolf (1956) and The Giant Claw (1957)

Founded in 1966, the Gothique Film Society specialises in double bills ‘for the connoisseur of the macabre’.

Tonight’s films bring to an end our ‘season within a season’ tribute to legendary producer Sam Katzman, who made hundreds of low budget films and serials from the 30s right up to the 60s.

Most of them were ‘cheap and cheerful’, but The Werewolf has a surprisingly literate script and is far from Katzman’s usual low budget hokum. Indeed, Steven Ritch was rightly praised for his tormented role as a man who is unwittingly injected with “irradiated wolf serum” by an unscrupulous, but oddly well meaning, doctor. You’ll never guess what happens to him!

The Werewolf has also been noted as the film in which horror, which had been largely moribund in the USA since the early 1950s, began to assert itself over science-fiction.

The Giant Claw is a fitting end to Season 60. It really is the mother of all monster movies: once seen, never forgotten!

A giant bird (“as big as a battleship”, characters keep telling us) arrives from an “anti-matter” galaxy to terrorise the Earth. With our bombs, rockets and guns useless, can it be stopped?

In a final nod to this season, the special effects were originally to be handled by maestro Ray Harryhausen, who we profiled in November. But, instead, they were contracted out to a model-maker in Mexico City, who charged producer Sam Katzman a mere $50. Even so, some would say he was short-changed!!