The Giant Claw (1957)

Such a frustrating disappointment

Powerful

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

Yeah, buddy, this review does contain spoilers. I had heard that this movie was beyond bad. But golly gee whiz, Oscar winner Ralph Hammeras worked on the visual effects. Well, friends and neighbors, those visual effects were not that special. The colossal birdbeast that was supposed to be ravaging New York City has a certain resemblance to a gigantic turkey. And it describes this movie. The critter is surrounded by an anti-matter shield that renders it undetectable on radar. It even picks up a passing train in its enormous beak like a normal bird picks up an earthworm in the same manner. Heroic scientist Mitch McAfee (played by Jeff Morrow) invents a mu-meson projector and kills the oversized tweety bird, thus making it unnecessary for Sylvester the cat to get the job done. Lots of stock footage are used, including THIRTY SECONDS OVER TOKYO (1944) for the B-25 bomber with the Ruptured Duck logo on the nose of the aircraft and THE WAR OF THE WORLDS (1953) for the scene where a building is blown up (it was a replica of the Los Angeles City Hall). There's a scene where a gigantic egg is turned into a scrambled mess (no, not a print of THE GIANT CLAW). The story goes that director Fred F. Sears had his cast members act frightened, and he promised that THE GIANT CLAW would have some excellent special effects. Well, what happened was that Jeff Morrow attended the movie preview and was sitting in the back row. The audiences laughed themselves silly and were rolling in the aisles. Jeff Morrow sneaked out before the movie ended, he was so mortified. You want a good laugh? Check out this movie. But if you want to see a much better movie about a colossal birdbeast on the rampage, watch RODAN. The cats at Toho Company did a far better job. There you have it. And thanks for reading this review.

The Giant Claw is "dated cheese" to the extreme, but highly quotable. Included here are some fine examples."The bird would be defenseless then except for beak, claws and wings, you could hit it with everything but the kitchen sink! / We've got kitchen sinks to spare son." "Hey man, who's afraid of the big bad bird!? / PUT OUT YOUR LIGHTS - GET OFF THE ROAD! / Don't worry about us we've got salt for it's tail!""Sure electronic spit-ball's / Close General, close, only not electronic spit-balls - atomic spit-balls!" Before there was Pete "Maverick" Mitchell, there was another rogue of reckless daring who flew by the seat of his pants, with his hair on fire, his name was: Mitch MacAfee! A fearless warrior of the sky, inspired inventor and gallant lover. But there's trouble ahead. Let us now enter the world of THE GIANT CLAW! The sky's are dark and turbulent and Mitch MacAfee is taking heavy flack from all angles - from a string of dutiful, but doubtful Majors and Generals, to the quick tongue of a beautiful, but skeptical mathematician...... but most fearful of all, a giant, extraterrestrial, force-field generating, bird that's the "size of a battleship"! With the cards stacked steeply against him and having ONLY 72 minutes to complete his mission, before the end credits are set to roll, the odds seem insurmountable! CAN Mitch MacAfee corral the Generals? CAN Mitch MacAfee defeat the forces of evil? CAN Mitch MacAfee "Ace of the Skies" save the world from THE GIANT CLAW!!!With all sarcasm and humor aside just what is The Giant Claw all about? It's about a giant bird from outer-space that's come to roost, but it has a hellish appetite for destruction and attacks anything that moves. Meanwhile jack-of-all-trades Mitch MacAfee, with the assistance of a beautiful young mathematician (Mara Corday) and some cantankerous old military officers try to uncover the mystery behind a sudden rash of mysterious airplane crashes. The military doesn't believe main-man Mitch's account at first, but after further quarreling with the military brass face-to-face and over the phone ("joke...false-alarm, look here General what kind of infantile jack-ass do you take me for!") he produces his theory of a spiraling flight path, that the mysterious winged menace is thought to be on course with. In short, the beast must be found and eradicated ASAP! This cheaply produced, black and white, sci-fi film from the late-fifties, clocks in at a mere 72 minutes in length and is for the most part brisk in pace and often looks down right stark and minimal in appearance, with no fancy sets our impressive art direction to speak of, no doubt due to it's minimal budget. Yes, The Giant Claw has all the tell-tale signs of a film that was "grinded out" quickly and cheaply, hence it's known as a "cheapie" and that fact is never more obvious then when you see the special effects that were used in this movie - they are unbelievably dated and positively riotous! The Giant Claw is a film that's composed of three easily discernible elements that are all represented in equal proportions, the movie is one third drama, one third action and one third unintended comedy. It's the films awesomely comical-looking effects, that make the movie for me and it's because of these effects, that the movie becomes something of an accidental comedy. From the outrageously ridiculous looking puppet used to represent the giant bird, to the cheap looking model planes and train-set's that were used, in which they typically emit smoke and sparks, this has a way of making these "vehicles" look more like fireworks. And when they were deliberating on just how to bring their "terrifying winged-monster" to the screen, the producer's, simply put, chose the most incredibly stupid-looking puppet imaginable. I think it has a lot to due with the large tuft of long stringy hair on the top of the puppets head, though it could be the whiskers (Yes, the It-Creature has whiskers!) or maybe it's the beady eyes, but more than likely it's all the above. Why this thing looks bad even for the primitive standards of the 1950's and I find it impossible not to laugh out loud whenever I see it, none more so than that magical first viewing of several years ago - this ridiculous flying contraption with set you on your ear! It's a thing of pure comedy and it's been said that when this film had it's premiere in 1957, it's audience could not stop laughing at THE BIRD!Of all that is cheap, dated, and simply bad, about The Giant Claw, there are precious few positives to mention. I can confidently say that the cast did a much better job, then the effects crew did, but that's not hard to do. The screen-writer obviously had a colorful mind, because there's some catchy dialog exchanged in several scenes throughout the movie. As far as the films jargon goes, it's flavored with a pinch of superstition, as well as a heavy dose of scientific psycho-babble and it pretty much seems as if their making up physics as they go, as you'll see near the end of the film; and take notice of just how quickly they design and build their one-of-a-kind ray-gun (where would a vintage sci-fi film be without ray-guns). Then about 57 minutes in there's this great scene, that involves a hot-rod convertible, which is brimming with a pack of rowdy high-schooler's, who are loudly and recklessly motoring down the road at night, despite the mandatory curfew and black-out precautions. This whole sequence packs a great authentic feel and sensibility and serves as a sort of miniature period piece, they even threw in a "Hey, Daddio!" into the scene, great stuff and very true to the time period.My advise is watch this simply for the laughs, because it offers little else.

This is one of those Sci-Fi flicks that is bad enough to be good. And this creature is so ugly. A large winged giant bird first believed to be part of a French-Canadian folktale turns out to be aggressively carnivorous and from outer space. This nail-biter is directed Fred F. Sears and part of producer Sam Katzman's legacy. Scientist Mitch MacAfee (Jeff Morrow) and the military represented by Lt. Gen. Edward Considine (Morris Ankrum)and Gen. Van Buskirk (Robert Shayne) must work feverishly to stop this bird from outer space with enormous beak and giant claws from continuous attacking planes, trains, boats, buildings and munching humans.Former Playboy Playmate Mara Corday is also in the cast. Rounding out the players: Edgar Barrier, Clark Howat, Louis Merrill, Dabbs Greer and Sol Murgi.

Near the beginning, the airplane in which hero Jeff Morrow and heroine Mara Corday are flying is forced down in the Canadian wilderness by some sort of UFO imperceptible to radar. They hole up in the cabin belonging to the heavily accented but affable Pierre Broussard, who gives them glasses of homemade applejack while they recover from the shock of the crash landing. The telephone rings. "Oui, this is the house of Pierre Broussard." A pause while the caller asks for Jeff Morrow. And the very French Pierre Broussard replies, "Ein moment," in German.I didn't mind. It was already clear that not too much directorial attention would be lavished on this story of still another flying monster appearing out of nowhere and bumping into airplanes and driving people crazy before eating them. If you want to see an outstanding spoof of the genre, try to catch "Q", with Michael Moriarty.The special effects could have been done by a child, but this is 1957 and it's Columbia Pictures with the stingy Harry Cohn in charge. One kind of airplane in flight may suddenly change to a different type. Footage is clipped shamelessly from earlier movies. When the monster eats someone, there is a crunch, as of a potato chip. Yet it's not that cheap a picture. There are several sets that are adequately done and enough extras around when they're needed. The dialog is straight-jacketed by the formula but it still shows a bit of originality, probably when the writers managed to slip it past the eyes of Cohn. Morrow even gets to paraphrase Shakespeare -- "Love sought is good, but given unsought is better." It's from "Twelfth Night" and not an old chestnut.Of course the UFO is a giant bird that attacks one airplane after another. Morrow plots out the attacks on a map but nobody sees any kind of pattern until he traces a spiral -- the bird knows Fibonacci numbers! And why shouldn't it? After all, the thing may be a bird but it's from outer space, and maybe we've been misapplying the term "bird brain" all along. I have a friend who holds deep conversations with his parrot, but the damned bird is a mind/body dualist and my friend is a logical positivist, so the parrot is more of an irritation than anything else. They argue so loudly and so frequently that it disturbs the neighbors.Soon enough, Morrow and Corday are working with the military, trying to figure out how this rubber chicken -- made of anti-matter -- could have gotten here and why. It seems to "absorb energy from whatever it destroys, buildings, people." How? "Sort of a molecular osmosis." It's finally destroyed with "mesic atoms" after Morrow discovers a way to make them last more than a few nanoseconds.It was a relief to see the thing flung into a tank of water by some guy off screen, not only because it saved the earth but because it saved the sanity of so many viewers.