B to Z Movies: The Giant Claw (1957)

Here's yet another goody that I first learned of thanks to the VHS trailer compilation, Fantastic Dinosaurs of the Movies. I didn't actually see the movie itself until I was in my twenties, but I always remembered it because its trailer immediately followed the one for Godzilla, King of the Monsters, and also because of the Giant Claw itself. Seriously, who could ever forget that design? I had also become well aware of the its less than stellar reputation amongst movie fans long before I actually saw it and, after I'd matured beyond the wide-eyed innocence of a child and looked at the monster again, I could certainly understand why. But when I actually watched the movie, I felt, and I still feel, that if it weren't for the goofy-looking monster, it would've gotten lost among the myriad of giant monster and alien invasion B-movies in the 1950's. It's actually pretty standard for the genre: a giant monster suddenly appears, wreaks havoc, scientists and the military work together to find a way to destroy it, and they eventually succeed. Everything, from the plot to the acting and such, is so average that the movie, for all intents and purposes, should've been forgotten long ago. But because of that monster, it became a popular example of 50's sci-fi schlock and was a very sought after item on the video bootleg market before it was finally given an official DVD release in 2007, as part of a collection of films produced by Sam Katzman, and later on Blu-Ray, in Arrow Video's Cold War Creatures: Four Films from Sam Katzman set (that set is worth every penny, I might add). But as I've said, I personally don't feel The Giant Claw warrants its reputation because it's so run-of-the-mill, for the most part. When I first did this review back in 2013, it had 3.5 on IMDB, which was ridiculous. It's far more deserving of something like a 5.2.

In the midst of a test flight to calibrate a new radar station near the North Pole, civil aeronautical engineer Mitch MacAfee reports a UFO. Though nothing appears on radar except his plane, MacAfee insists it's there, and that it's huge. Several fighter jets are scrambled to investigate his claims, but when nothing is found, and one of the jets goes missing, MacAfee is admonished for his "hoax." MacAfee, however, is steadfast in his belief that what he saw was real, and while dressing him down, radar officer Maj. Bergen receives a call about an airliner that also disappeared after reporting a UFO. While MacAfee and mathematician/systems analyst Sally Caldwell are being transported to New York, their plane's pilot spots a UFO as well, right before they're brought down by an enormous force that kills the pilot. Crashing in the Adirondacks, MacAfee and Caldwell are taken in by French-Canadian farmer Pierre Broussard. Though MacAfee's claims are still not taken seriously, in the middle of a storm, Pierre becomes terribly frightened, claiming to have seen La Carcagne, a well-known creature in local folklore. Several more planes go missing and the Air Force is forced to take MacAfee's claims more seriously. Eventually, pilot descriptions of the UFO, as well as recently recovered photographs from cameras attached to observation balloons, reveal it to be a hideous, gigantic bird. After it attacks and destroys a squadron of fighter jets, and nothing in the jets' arsenal harms it, it's discovered that the bird comes from a distant anti-matter galaxy and is protected by an anti-matter shield that makes it both impervious to weapons and invisible to radar. While MacAfee and the Air Force work feverishly to come up with a way to destroy it, the monster begins terrorizing the world, attacking any movement on the ground and cities after all air traffic is halted. What's worse, MacAfee and Caldwell correctly theorize that the bird came to Earth to build a nest, and they must destroy the eggs before they hatch.

One of the sadder aspects of The Giant Claw's production is the unfortunate fate of its director, Fred F. Sears. A very prolific actor and director who had been working in the industry since the late 1940's, he ended up dying of a heart attack just five months after The Giant Claw's release, at the incredibly young age of 44. And yet, during the short amount of time he was active in Hollywood, he directed 54 films and TV series and acted in some capacity or another in over 70 (he's the narrator here); in fact, he made so many movies so quickly that five more were released after he died. He worked a lot with producer Sam Katzman, first on the 1952 serial, Blackhawk, and other movies such as The Werewolf the year before The Giant Claw and The Night the World Exploded, released on a double-bill with it. Most notably, he directed Earth vs. The Flying Saucers, featuring the stop-motion wizardry of Ray Harryhausen. In fact, Sears and Katzman wanted to hire Harryhausen for this film but the low budget wouldn't allow it (they did, however, manage to use some stock footage from Earth vs. The Flying Saucers that featured stop-motion). In any case, it's just a shame that Sears died as young as he did, as he was definitely a competent journeyman director, and in the case of The Giant Claw, managed to make a movie that, save for the monster, is completely respectable, if nothing else.

Someone else I feel bad for is Jeff Morrow, as he was a good actor, which you can see in other sci-fi flicks he appeared in at the time, like The Creature Walks Among Us and This Island Earth. As civil aeronautical engineer Mitch MacAfee, Morrow gives the best performance in The Giant Claw, managing to make MacAfee funny and charismatic, but also intelligent and steadfast in his assertion that what he saw in the sky was real, even if it didn't appear on radar. You really buy his frustration when the Air Force continues believing it's a hoax, even after his and Sally Caldwell's plane is brought down by a powerful force. He gets so frustrated that he angrily exclaims at the disbelieving General Van Buskirk over the phone, "What kind of an infantile jackass do you take me for?!", but Sally stops him before he goes on and says something he'll regret. He's also clearly shaken when the Giant Claw finally reveals itself and proves virtually indestructible. One of MacAfee's best moments comes after he, Sally, Buskirk, and Lt. Gen. Considine have heard the bird destroy a squadron of fighter jets. When the officials are distraught over how none of the jets' weapons did anything to it, MacAfee exclaims, "What are we going to do? Just sit around here and weep?!", and when they put him in his place over that remark, he says, "I'm not criticizing either of you, or the Air Force, or those guys who just died trying to shoot that thing down. I'm not being flippant, I'm not wise-cracking. I'm just scared. We all are, I guess. So let's face that and then try and do something about that bird!" MacAfee then becomes determined to use his expertise to find a way to destroy the bird, even though the creature's anti-matter shield makes it untouchable, and the Air Force basically tells him to mind his own business (which is dumb, because they obviously need any advice they can get). On top of that, when he realizes the bird's purpose in coming to Earth was to lay eggs, he takes it upon himself to hunt down its nest and destroy any eggs it has already laid.

Besides his serious and intelligent sides, MacAfee is also quite funny and charismatic. After Buskirk yells at him over the phone for his "practical joke" and "false alarm," he guzzles down the rest of a glass of Pierre Broussard's special brand of applejack and then comments, "This glass must have a hole in it. It keeps disappearing." He asks for it to be filled up again and when Pierre obliges, asking him if he likes the applejack, he says, "Ah, a perfect antidote for snakebite, thunder, lightning,

and disbelieving generals." After he's made it back to New York, only for a captain to then show up at his door, the exhausted MacAfee answers the bell,  and when the captain asks if he's MacAfee, he answers, "Or a reasonable facsimile thereof." He's then told that Buskirk wants to see him immediately and that it's urgent, to which MacAfee exclaims, "So's my sleep!" When the captain tells him adds he's been ordered to bring him even if he has to take him into protective custody, MacAfee

groans, "Okay, Captain, don't get in a tizzy. You keep your shirt on and I'll go get my pants on." When he's later told that three men have reported seeing the Giant Claw and two of them are now dead, MacAfee remarks, "That makes me Chief Cook and Bottle Washer in a one-man Bird Watcher's Society." My favorite moment comes near the end of the movie, after he's tried to fix a fault in the machinery he plans to use to destroy the

monster and it's blown up, leaving him unconscious for an hour and a half. When he wakes up and the others are trying to tell him not to feel bad because his efforts failed, MacAfee, not understanding that they don't know he actually succeeded, leans back in bed and says, "Oh, great! Now if somebody will just deliver the eulogy, the deceased may be safely laid away to rest. What's the matter with you? Are you all nuts or something?"

However, there are a couple of things MacAfee says and does that are more than a little... illogical, let's say. He's the first to compare the Giant Claw to a battleship when he glimpses it. According to the narrator, "Something as big as a battleship had just flown over and passed him," which starts a strange running gag, theme, motif, or whatever you want to call it, where everyone else refers to the bird as such. I'll go into more detail about this later on, but I have to wonder just what made him think

of a battleship when he saw it, as all he did see was a blurry shape. In fact, the nature of his comparison isn't consistent, as later on, when Sally is joking about his claim, he says, "I said it looked like a battleship, not that it was a battleship." What's more, MacAfee hits upon some theoretical pattern concerning the bird's movements. After he marks the spot on a map where he first encountered it, followed by where several other plans have

recently disappeared and crashed, he asks Sally if she sees the pattern. Not only does she not see it, but nobody in their right mind would... at least, not what he comes up with: an ever-expanding spiral that connects the dots. How in the hell did he come up with that?  Moreover, he calls it, "A perfect pattern in time and distance," to which I'm like, "Bullshit!" That bird must be as screwed up in the head as it is in the face to be traveling around in a spiral. And this "pattern" has so little significance that it could've easily been removed.

The rest of the cast is pretty standard for this type of film. Mara Corday, who appeared as John Agar's love interest in Tarantula a couple of years before, plays a fairly typical, and random, love interest for MacAfee as Sally Caldwell. At first, she isn't too impressed with his attitude, and she doesn't believe him about the "UFO," but if you're familiar with this genre, you know that they're going to get together, which, of course, they do. As also per usual for this type of film, it happens very inexplicably, given how they don't have much screentime together beforehand and their interactions, while not antagonistic, aren't exactly tender, either. Then, the next thing you know, when they're heading back to New York, MacAfee moves in on her, and even though they initially have a spat when she still disbelieves him, annoying the other passengers who are trying to sleep, they eventually end up kissing in the dark; from then on, they're a couple. Naturally, once the Giant Claw's existence is proven, Sally supports MacAfee for the rest of the film and helps him in developing something that will destroy it. What's more, Sally is shown to be an intelligent and practical mathematician, and unlike in Tarantula, the fact that she also happens to be a woman isn't brought up much at all, save for when MacAfee initially refers to her as "Mademoiselle Mathematician," much to her annoyance. She has some wit about her, too (although she's the one who refers to the UFO as a "flying battleship" more than anyone else and it does get old), and stops MacAfee from saying something he'll regret to General Buskirk over the phone. Most significantly, Sally is never a damsel in distress. In fact, she often accompanies MacAfee on some very dangerous ventures, including the climactic confrontation with the Giant Claw, and doesn't scream at all. She gasps when they see a closeup photo of the Giant Claw and even then, it's not melodramatic or laughable. Hell, she even helps MacAfee destroy the monster's eggs by shooting it with a rifle! You don't see many women in these types of movies do that.

Still, there are some sexual politics here that, as you might expect, definitely wouldn't fly today. At the very beginning, when Sally says MacAfee is acting like a three-year old whose mother hasn't spanked him yet, he replies over the radio, "Mother, dear, Mother! I'm ready if you are." But the most egregious moment comes when MacAfee goes in for a kiss while Sally is asleep on the flight to New York. She turns on the light to show he's been caught but, rather than be put off or incensed

by his actions, she comes off as playful and even intrigued, particularly by his use of a line from Shakespeare. When he says that kiss came from "left field," she uses baseball as an analogy for what he's doing, even calling him a quitter when he says, "Back to the Bush Leagues, finished," adding, "No fight! No spirit!" It's a harmless enough little moment in the long run, and Jeff Morrow and Mara Corday play off each other nicely, but it hasn't aged well, especially the end, where MacAfee recites, "Be plain in dress/And sober in your diet/In short, my deary/Kiss me and be quiet," and goes in for another kiss while turning the lights back off.

One character who I rather like, and who also manages to give the Giant Claw some mythic stature, is Pierre Broussard (Louis D. Merrill), the French-Canadian who offers MacAfee and Sally shelter after their plane crashes. At first, he's a rather jovial guy (if a bit stereotypical in his accent), pouring both of them some of his applejack, which he says is, "Fine for de snakebite," and being a hospitable host. But when he goes outside in the storm to see what's scaring his animals, he sees the Giant Claw and is, from then on, an emotional wreck, frightened to death not just by what he saw but what he thinks it means. He believes it's La Carcagne, a monster from French-Canadian folklore that, like the banshee, is believed to be an omen of death for anyone who sees it. This does end up happening later on in the film, when Pierre accompanies MacAfee and Sally when they go looking for the Giant Claw's nest. It seems as though they brought him along to help MacAfee shoot the egg, but Pierre runs off at the last minute, fearing its wrath. Sadly, this is what gets him killed, as the Giant Claw flies up in a rage after its egg is destroyed and attacks him after spotting him on the road below.

The character who ends up making the movie even harder to take seriously is Dr. Karol Noymann (Edgar Barrier), a physicist who discovers the Giant Claw's origins. Again, as is typical for this kind of film, Noymann not only tells the main characters everything they need to know about the monster but also helps MacAfee in coming up with a way to destroy it. What makes it unintentionally funny, though, is just how forlorn and gloomy he is in the scene where he tells MacAfee, Sally, Buskirk, and Considine about the Giant Claw's nature. Whether or not it's a huge threat to life on Earth, the goofy-looking monster makes Noymann's doom-laden explanation, which starts with a lecture about atoms and the concept of anti-matter, before going into what the Giant Claw is and where it came from, all the more absurd. Noymann is also one of the gloomiest scientists I've ever seen in any of these old monster flicks. When he's helping MacAfee and Sally devise a means to destroy the monster, he still looks and sounds as forlorn as ever. After MacAfee tells them that he managed to fix the machine and it now works, he attempts to smile and look happy, but still can't seem to shake the dour expression he's had on his face throughout the film. The same goes even during the climax, when they successfully destroy the Giant Claw's anti-matter shield and kill it; Noymann is still barely able to crack a smile.

The Air Force is, for the most part, made up of some skeptical, dismissive, and, sometimes, overly critical men. First you have Maj. Bergen (Clark Howat), who oversees the radar test at the beginning and is the first to give MacAfee a verbal beatdown for his supposed hoax. He tells him that, even though he can't arrest him because he's a civilian, he can report him and, "By the time I get through with you, Mr. Electronics Engineer, you'll be lucky if they let you test batteries for

flashlights!" However, he backs off when he learns of a missing airliner that reported a UFO, yet the radar picked up nothing. After MacAfee and Sally's plane crashes and the pilot dies, MacAfee gets the first of many angry criticisms from General Van Buskirk (Robert Shayne) over the phone. Buskirk is especially angered with how the pilot called in a UFO, same as MacAfee, and also because, again, nothing showed up on radar, and accuses MacAfee

of causing a false alarm. Eve after the Giant Claw is revealed to actually exist, Buskirk continues to jab at MacAfee now and then. For instance, when MacAfee is asked if he has any ideas of how to destroy it, Buskirk remarks, "Sure, electronic spitballs." He's often admonished for his remarks by Lt. Gen. Edward Considine (Morris Ankrum), but while Considine himself isn't quite as jerky and is a bit more understanding, he also has his moments, like when MacAfee is unable to explain why it's impossible for the Giant Claw to be tracked by radar. He remarks, "What you're saying in essence is that black is white and two and two  make six," which, not surprisingly, MacAfee doesn't take kindly to. He's also a bit annoyed when MacAfee contacts him about a possible way to destroy the monster, as he'd been told to keep out of it. But once MacAfee tells him that he believes he's found a way to destroy the Giant Claw's anti-matter shield, Considine becomes nothing but supportive, excitedly shaking MacAfee's hand and telling him, when he says they'll be able to hit the bird with everything but the kitchen sink, "We've got kitchen sinks to spare!" 

Sam Katzman was one of those producers who was well-known for spending as little money as possible and that's very apparent in The Giant Claw, even before you get to the monster. Like most 50's B-movies produced by the bigger studios, the film itself does look good when viewed in HD, and the sets are good enough to belong in an A-level movie, but location establishing shots, such as for the radar station at the beginning,

places like a public swimming pool in California and a street in London where civilians see the Giant Claw, are often done through grainy stock footage. It was common practice back then to use public domain archival footage in low budget movies (some of the stock footage at the very beginning was also used in The Deadly Mantis that same year), and here, it's sometimes intermixed with reaction shots from civilians that are of much

better quality. They also use what looks like actual wartime footage of planes crashing into the ocean for the fighter squadron's battle with the Giant Claw, which I find more than a little morally questionable. Like I said, there's also some footage of Ray Harryhausen's stop-motion work from Earth vs. The Flying Saucers seen during the climax (you can see one of the saucers if you pause the film at the right moment), as well as from other movies like It Came from Beneath the Sea, The

Day The Earth Stood Still, and The War of the Worlds, changed to black and white, all in an attempt to make the movie's scale feel much bigger than it is. At one point, they even use a stock shot of an actual bird high up in the sky to set up the Giant Claw's presence when MacAfee, Sally, and Pierre land in the Adirondack wilderness to search for its nest. Speaking of which, all of the shots with the actors in the French-Canadian wilderness were actually done at Griffith Park, and even there, it feels very constrained and small in scope. Amazingly, though, they don't seem to go for day-for-night photography, or if they do, the black-and-white makes it less obvious.

When you watch a number of sci-fi B-movies from this period, you notice that many begin with a narration, often with some sort of visual meant to represent the Earth, and/or some stock footage. The Deadly Mantis begins with a shot of a map of the entire world and, for the first few minutes, as the old footage plays, a narrator tells us about radar, to the point where it feels like an educational film, and then how the station which features in the

movie's first act was built; The Monolith Monsters begins with Paul Frees giving us a lesson in meteorites; Creature from the Black Lagoon has an opening narration over a dramatization of the Earth's formation, which eventually alludes to how the titular monster came to be; hell, even both versions of King Kong vs. Godzilla begin with a spinning globe and a narration of some sort, and while films like The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms

and The Incredible Shrinking Man don't begin with a shot of the world, they still have an opening narration, as do many others. Sometimes, these openings gel nicely with the movie's story, and other times, they make you feel like you're watching an out-of-date documentary; the one for The Giant Claw is a little bit of both. As the camera pushes in closer and closer to a spinning, and obviously fake, globe, the narrator begins the movie with this melodramatic soliloquy: "Once the

world was big, and no man in his lifetime could circle it. Through the centuries, science has made man's lifetime bigger, and the world smaller. Now the farthest corner of the Earth is as close as a push-button, and time has lost all meaning, as man-made devices speed many, many times faster than sound itself." He goes on to talk about the struggle to keep the country safe with radar, as the film transitions to stock footage and then to the installation where the story begins. Shortly

afterward, the narrator begins setting up the plot for us, describing the group of characters we're seeing as, "An electronics engineer, a radar officer, a mathematician and systems analyst, a radar operator, a couple of plotters. People doing a job, well, efficiently, serious, having fun, doing a job. Situation: normal... for the moment."

However, the narrator then does something I've rarely seen others do in these types of movies: rather than let the characters and dialogue do it, he spells everything out for us during the scene where MacAfee gets his first glimpse of the Giant Claw. As we watch all of this play out, with the characters' dialogue now muted, the narrators tells us: "Date: the 17th of the month. Sky cloudy, overcast. Visibility limited. Time: 13:32 hours. A

significant moment in history. The moment when an electronics engineer named Mitchel MacAfee saw something in the sky. Something that was almost the beginning of the end of life on this Earth. MacAfee reportedly instantly by radio the sighting of a UFO, an unidentified flying object. The radar operator replied that it was impossible. According to the radar scope, except for Mitch's plane, there wasn't a single, solitary object of any

nature whatsoever. Nothing in the sky for a radius of hundreds of miles. MacAfee didn't care what the radar showed or didn't show. He knew what he saw with his own eyes, and he was determined to get a better look. MacAfee turned, and so did the unidentified flying object, heading toward him. There was no mistaking the urgency in MacAfee's voice. Something, he didn't know what, but something as big as a battleship has just flown over

and passed him, at speeds so great he couldn't begin to estimate it [okay, so technically, the narrator is the one who first mentions a "battleship", but still, it was MacAfee who made the comparison]. In National Defense, it's better to be safe than sorry. The alert was sounded to scramble interceptors." Only Tsukioka's narration in Gigantis, the Fire Monster is more egregious than this, and the narrator returns in the scene where the CAB search plane encounters the Giant

Claw, going into much the same detail as the opening, only not for as long, and later when the Giant Claw makes itself known to the entire world and as they try to perfect the device to kill it. The latter aren't so bad, neither is an announcement by General Considine over the radio during a montage of the monster attacking stuff on the ground after all air traffic is halted (his description of it as, "A fantastic orgy of destruction," gives the narrator a run for his money when it comes to melodrama),

but I don't know why they felt the need to spoon-feed and spell everything out to us during that opening. It's like they intended it for any  blind people in the audience. Moreover, like Dr. Noymann, the narrator also ends up making the monster all the more difficult to take seriously because of how dramatic and doom-laden he's being (it's really bad when a movie's own director makes it into a joke so directly and yet, unintentionally).

Despite the melodramatic narration, the "flying battleship," and the ridiculous pattern that MacAfee comes up with, the first act, building to our first look at the Giant Claw nearly thirty minutes in, does manage to generate some suspense out of the notion that there's something enormous that radar can't track flying around and crashing planes. Even if you know what the monster looks like going in, it's still effective,

particularly the scene at Pierre's farmhouse in the Adirondacks. It's already kind of spooky with a violent storm raging outside (not to mention how they've got the pilot's covered body lying on a couch, which they're quite nonchalant about it), but then, Pierre goes outside to see what spooked his animals. There's a flash of lightning, the lights go out in the house, MacAfee and Sally hear Pierre let out a horrified scream, and find him lying

face-down in the front yard. They take him back inside, give him some of his own applejack, and, shuddering and in tears, he describes having seen La Carcagne. Though they assure him that he probably saw something else or just imagined it because of the storm, Pierre insists he saw La Carcagne, terrified at the death omen that comes with it. And as MacAfee and Sally are then taken to the airport by the police, we see an enormous claw mark nearby (something else this movie has

in common with The Deadly Mantis). And before we actually do see the monster in its introductory scene, we hear it making weird, echoing squawks and trills as the CAB pilot spots it, which are surprisingly eerie, followed by a glimpse of its talons and wing outside the cockpit...

...and then we see the whole bird, and everything changes. Although it likely wasn't the way they intended, this thing is most definitely among the most memorable movie monsters ever created. When we get our first glimpses, it's in the distance and out-of-focus, but when we do finally see it full-on, it's basically a giant vulture, but the head that sits atop its overly long neck, which has a big, fleshy wattle at its base, is why it's so laughable, 

with its big googly-eyes, flaring nostrils, an awkwardly-angled beak that's clearly made of rubber, and, of all things, a stringy Mohawk on the back of its head! It looks especially silly during its climactic attack on New York. As it sits atop the United Nations building and turns its head, the shape of the eyes is inconsistent: the left is half-closed and looks fairly normal, with the brows furrowed, whereas the right one is wide open, with no sign of the eyelid at all. It's very clearly a

marionette too, especially when it's flying. You don't need a sharp eye to see the wires, and while the way they maneuver it, as well as the wing movements, look okay in some shots, there are other times where it looks really awkward and stiff. Surprisingly, the flaring nostrils are the most expressive parts of the puppet, even if they do give away its rubbery nature. And the thing's constant squawking, a high-pitched, "Raaak! Raaak!" (a recycled sound effect from a serial), gets annoying very quickly. 

I will say this: even though the actors had no idea what the monster looked like and, like Jeff Morrow, who's said to have gone home and gotten drunk after walking out on the premiere, were no doubt embarrassed when they finally did see it, if I saw that thing coming down at me from the sky in real life, I would run for the hills! I also can't help but put myself in the shoes of the people who get eaten by it while parachuting or the main

characters when they get their first look at the bird thanks to a closeup picture of it; I think I would do more than just gasp, like Sally. But it's impossible to do that for the entire film, especially when the puppet's ridiculous nature and the shortcomings of the effects become very apparent. Even the poster artists had no idea how to market it, though that was because they supposedly weren't shown the puppet or anything else pertaining to the monster. I wonder if that's true, though. Since everything but

the monster's head is shown on the poster, and the body doesn't look like it at all, it makes me wonder if they actually did see it and, realizing they couldn't put that on the poster, purposefully cropped the head off the top.

As if the monster's look wasn't enough, they had to give it an outlandish origin: it's an alien creature from an anti-matter galaxy millions of lightyears from the Solar System. I agree with what James Rolfe, can you imagine that thing flying around the universe until it just happened to come upon Earth? There's no telling how long it took to get here and, as MacAfee himself comments, it must not be the least bit tired, as it's continuously flying around,

attacking anything it sees. You find out it came to Earth to lay eggs but this subplot is resolved so quickly after it's brought up, with MacAfee and Caldwell going back to Pierre's place, finding the nest, and destroying the one egg they do find, that it was ultimately just a means of padding out the movie. There's also mention of contacting the Air Force to search for more nests and eggs but it's never brought up again, so I guess there either

weren't any or they succeeded in finding them all. On top of it being from another galaxy, the bird is surrounded by an anti-matter shield that protects it from attack and also makes it invisible to radar; according to Dr. Noymann, it's able to open the shield to use its beak and talons as weapons. At one point, they bring up whether or not the bird actually eats in the way in which we understand. MacAfee notes how Dr. Noymann said it absorbs energy from everything it destroys in a type of

molecular osmosis, but again, we see the bird bite down on the fighter pilots, so it clearly does eat in some sense. Also, according to Noymann, several of the bird's feathers that were brought to his lab were so bizarre and powerfully alien in their chemical makeup that they destroyed some equipment that was used to examine them. However, for some reason, when Noymann holds up one of the feathers, he says, "At least we call it a feather. We don't know what it is; only what it

looks like." Um, dude, it's a feather, and the monster is a bird. Alien origin and anti-matter aside, it looks the way it does because that's what it is. This reminds me: the movie's own trailer got the monster's origin wrong, proclaiming it to be a prehistoric monster instead of an alien, with screaming taglines like, 17, 000,000 YEARS OLD!, and ICE-AGE KILLER.

Let's get back to the odd motif of comparing the Giant Claw to a battleship. Again, MacAfee starts it, as that's what he compares it to when he first glimpses it, and from then on, just about everyone else, especially Sally, takes that analogy and runs with it. It's uttered close to a dozen times throughout the film, and even one of the posters has such a comparison in its taglines. Mostly, it's compared to a battleship in terms of its size, but

there are other times when it's referred to as a "flying battleship" or as the craft itself, like when an attacking fighter jet pilot says, "It's like we're hitting a battleship with a slingshot!" It all begs the question, "What is it about this thing that inspires people to make such a comparison?" Again, to quote James Rolfe, I could understand it if they compared it to a jumbo jet or something else that flies, but a battleship? That's the last thing you'd think of were you to see that thing and yet,

because it's said so frequently, it's become forever tied to the movie. Like the monster itself, it remains one of the movie's most endearing quirks and it's almost impossible to talk about it without the battleship thing being mentioned at least once. I'm not going to lie, though, I don't get it.

By far the biggest mystery surrounding the movie is exactly how the Giant Claw came to look the way it does. After they were unable to afford Ray Harryhausen's stop-motion effects, it's been widely rumored that the filmmakers enlisted a low-rent special effects studio in Mexico City to make the monster, and if that's true, you have to wonder what these guys were thinking when they designed this marionette. Why did they think that silly-

looking face was the way to go? Was there a language barrier that caused some drastic miscommunication? Did the filmmakers not at least give them some possible concept drawings or something similar? Or did they just have a grudge against American filmmakers and movies in general and decided to screw this up on purpose as a big middle finger to them? It could also be possible that the story about the Mexican effects artists was just bluster on producer Sam Katzman's

part (Mara Corday once noted that Katzman claimed to have spent much of the movie's budget on the effects, but that's unlikely, given his well-known reputation as a penny-pincher). As Christopher Stewardson mentions in his ourculture article, In Celebration of The Giant Claw, the film's special effects are credited to Ralph Hammeras, George Teague, and Lawrence Butler, who'd worked on big movies like Casablanca and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Now, whether or

not they actually worked on the monster is unclear, as special effects credits at the time alluded to those actually done on the set, but it is worth considering. Whatever its origin, also like James Rolfe, I'm curious as to what happened to the marionette itself and if it still exists. It was likely junked, but on the slim chance that it wasn't, I wouldn't mind seeing it in person if it's still around.

The Giant Claw itself isn't the only source of questionable special effects. Some of the model airplanes that encounter the monster throughout the film are very fake-looking, and that includes, when it makes its first appearance. You're so distracted by the bird that you don't realize how bad the plane it's chasing looks as well. The same goes for when the bird picks up a train with its claws and flies away with it, especially in close-up. During the

climax, when the Giant Claw attacks New York, and the main characters' plane flies by to distract it, that model plane looks a little better, and they do manage to make the monster itself look fairly good (as much as they could, anyway) when it's standing atop buildings and taking chunks out of them, but it still leaves a lot to be desired for, regardless. That's not to say all of the effects-work here is bad. Along with some pretty poor rear-screen projection, there are also some decent examples, like when you see

the bird's claws outside the CAB plane's cockpit right before you first see it, and the shots of the bird coming right at parachuting pilots from behind (which do freak me out), followed by quick shots of it chomping down on them. The miniature buildings that the bird tears apart during the climax look pretty nice as well. And when you see the enormous claw-mark it left near Pierre's house, it's a pretty good matte painting. But, yeah, for the most part, the effects are just as bad as their reputation says they are.

So, how does the monster action fare? Well, it varies from scene-to-scene but, due to the low budget, poor special effects, and abundant use of stock footage, they're mostly rather "meh." The Giant Claw's introductory scene, again, starts out quite well, as he hear it before we actually see it, then those onboard the CAB plane look out the windows, and we see its claws and a bit of its wing right outside the cockpit. But then, we actually see the monster, as it grabs the plane in its beak and

those in the back promptly bale out. It sees them and, after they've all jumped, it drops the plane and swoops down at them, catching two of them in its mouth and chomping them. The scene then ends, though we learn from General Buskirk that it did, in all likelihood, get the others as well. Not long after that is the scene where the fighter squadron spots and attacks it. At first, the pilots make jokes at the sight of it, but that stops when they fire upon it and discover that their guns and missiles do

nothing. It grabs one of the jets in its beak and carries it off, as two other jets fire on it. It then drops that jet, which blows up in midair, and while the pilot manages to parachute out, like before, the bird swoops in and gets him. The squadron leader fires upon the bird but, again, nothing happens. It destroys another plane and drops its burning wreckage into the ocean below. Just as the leader calls off the mission and says they should head

back to base, he reports that it's now coming after him. As he and the others listen in, General Considine switches off the radio before the leader dies. This is where the lousy effects and abundant stock footage badly hurt what should've been an exciting sequence (and again, the footage of actual plane crashes feel in really bad taste).

After their meeting with Dr. Noymann, we get the montage of the bird revealing itself to the world, as the narrator chimes in: "Up to now, only one man had seen the bird and lived. Among those who knew of it, its existence was a closely-guarded secret. But even as arrangements were made for an emergency meeting of the President, the Cabinet, the National Defense Board, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, even then, the bird revealed itself to the world at large, and complacency quickly turned to

panic. Panic, terror, and horror. No corner of the Earth was spared the terror of looking up into God's blue sky and seeing, not peace and security, but the feathered nightmare on wings." We then see some people at a public pool see it, followed by a woman in London looking up and screaming, alerting those around her to it. People in a field see it and run for it, leading into stock footage of people clamoring on a hillside and in a city, with one shot of them gathered around near a large fire.

In the next scene, as MacAfee and Sally prepare to head back up to Pierre Broussard's place to search for the bird's nest, they hear an announcement on the radio from General Considine. He talks about how, with all air traffic suspended, the bird is now attacking any movement it sees on the ground, as we get another montage of people running, stock footage of wild horses running across an open plain, steers running about in their enclosure, a car

crashing through a fence and tumbling down the side of a cliff, a large fire, and the bird picking up a train in its claws, much of it with imagery of the bird superimposed over it. And once the montage is over, MacAfee and Sally look outside the window to the former's apartment and see the bird fly by.

MacAfee, Sally, and Pierre are then shown hovering above the Adirondack wilderness in a helicopter, when they're forced to set down when the bird spots and swoops down at them. It misses them and they land in order to look for the nest on foot. They quickly find it on a nearby ridge, but don't see any eggs. Just as they're about to go down to get a closer look, the bird comes in and lands in the nest. Moving a tree out of the way, it uncovers an egg, and MacAfee prepares to shoot it with a

rifle. But when Pierre runs away in a panic, Sally opts to shoot in his place. With just three shots, they manage to destroy the egg, but the bird, now thoroughly enraged, takes to the air and swoops directly above them, sending small branches falling onto them. They're unharmed, but Pierre, who's running down the road, isn't so lucky, as the bird spots him, then flies down at and kills him. Rather than risk getting attacked in the helicopter, MacAfee and Sally take Pierre's car to escape. That

night, they come upon some teenagers on a joyride. When they pass by them, MacAfee tries to warn them to get off the road, but they don't take the threat of the bird seriously, with a girl showing that they have a salt-shaker to sprinkle on its tail. The kids drive on ahead of them, continuing to mock them, when, naturally, the bird spots and comes down at them. MacAfee and Sally watch as two of the teenagers jump out of the car, while the bird

picks it up with the other two still inside. It flies up and then drops the car, which randomly explodes in midair. Though the two who were in it are obviously dead, MacAfee and Sally find that the others who jumped out are hurt but alive. They opt to take them to the hospital in the next town, before heading on to Washington.

Before the climax, as MacAfee, Sally, and Dr. Noymann work to create a device to bombard the Giant Claw with special atoms to destroy its anti-matter shield, we see it pick up an entire train and fly off with it (some of this was used in one of the montages earlier). Once MacAfee's perfected the machine, they're preparing to hook everything up and load it onto an old B-25, when Gen. Buskirk tells them the bird is heading for New York City. With no other choice, they have to connect

everything en route, with Buskirk and Considine flying the plane. As they head towards the city, the Giant Claw is perched atop a building and destroying its tip with its beak, ripping the entire top section off and dropping it, as people run in a panic in the streets below. When the heroes arrive, they find that the bird is now perched atop and destroying the United Nations building. Buskirk and Considine make a pass in front of the bird, trying to encourage it to chase them. At first,

it just watches them, but when they fly past it again, it takes to the air and chases them. Troops down below fire up at it but, of course, their shells are useless against its shield. At one point, it slams through the top of a building, sending chunks of debris down below and crushing some running civilians (this is where you get stock footage of stop-motion from Earth vs. The Flying Saucers). The bird is now closing in on the plane, as

Considine implores MacAfee to hurry up. They quickly finish the hook up and fire the device from the plane's tail. They hit the bird dead on with several blasts, and MacAfee tells Considine that it's now vulnerable. With that, he and Buskirk come back around, fly at the bird, and blast it with rockets. It dies immediately and crashes down into the ocean below. It seems as though the movie can't end quickly enough, as Considine tells MacAfee that they've killed the bird, he and Sally embrace, and we see "THE END" over a shot of its foot sinking down beneath the water. Decent enough monster action during this climax, but hardly amazing.

There's only a "music supervisor" credit here, as most of it consists of stock material. However, there was some original music created by Mischa Bakaleinikoff, and if it's the music I'm thinking of, then it's also very typical of these types of 50's B monster movies. The most memorable pieces of music, though, are both recycled from It Came from Beneath the Sea. The main one is an unpleasant, ugly theme that's clearly meant to be the Giant Claw's actual motif and, ironically, it does fit, given how hideous the monster itself is. There's another theme you hear near the end of the movie that, while not as nasty as the main title, is still rather urgent, with a horn section that goes something like, "Duh-duh-duh-duh-duh, duh", repeated several times before the music goes on. Unfortunately, those are the only pieces in the score that stick in my mind. The rest is just generic, bland, and quite clearly stock music, making it nearly impossible to describe in detail.

While The Giant Claw may be a beloved bad movie for many, I feel its only standout schlocky features are the silly-looking monster, the bad effects, and the abundance of stock footage. Other than that, it's a fairly standard giant monster movie for the time, following the typical formula, with some nice acting from some, like Jeff Morrow, run-of-the-mill acting from others, instances of decent effects sprinkled in with the bad, and music that is of the generic type you often hear in these movies. Even though I've had fun reviewing it, particularly in talking about the Giant Claw itself, it's not one of my favorite examples of the genre, nor one I watch that often. In fact, when talking about the movies it's grouped in with, while I like it more than Zombies of Mora Tau, I much prefer The Werewolf and Creature with the Atom Brain. However, if you're a fan of 50's sci-fi schlock and want a laugh, I would recommend it. Just don't expect anything awesomely bad all-around.