The Giant Claw
| The Giant Claw | |
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 Poster for the film The Giant Claw |
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| Directed by | Fred F. Sears |
| Produced by | Sam Katzman |
| Written by | Paul Gangelin Samuel Newman |
| Starring | Jeff Morrow Mara Corday |
| Music by | Mischa Bakaleinikoff |
| Cinematography | Benjamin H. Kline |
| Editing by | Anthony Dimarco Saul A. Goodkind |
| Distributed by | Columbia Pictures |
| Release date(s) |  June 1957 |
| Running time | 75 min |
| Language | English |
The Giant Claw is a 1957 science fiction film about a giant bird that terrorizes the world. Produced by Clover Productions under the working title "Mark of the Claw" and released through Columbia Pictures, it starred Jeff Morrow and Mara Corday and was directed by Fred F. Sears. The film has been a staple of the bootleg video market, with only two official VHS releases (one in the USA through Goodtimes Home Video and the other through Screamtime in the United Kingdom) to date. Columbia Pictures finally released the film officially to DVD in October 2007 as part of the two disc four film set Icons of Horror Collection - Sam Katzman.
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[edit] Plot
Mitch MacAfee (Jeff Morrow), while engaged in a radar test flight, spots an unidentified flying object. Jets are scrambled to pursue and identify the object but one goes missing. Officials are initially angry at MacAfee but are forced to take his story seriously after several other planes disappear. A gigantic bird, purported to come from an antimatter galaxy (and then later from the year 17,000,000 B.C.), is responsible for all the incidents. Mitch, along with his mathematician girlfriend Sally Caldwell (Mara Corday), Dr. Karol Noymann (Edgar Barrier) and Gen. Considine (Morris Ankrum) and Gen. Van Buskirk (Robert Shayne), works feverishly to develop a way to defeat the seemingly invincible enemy. The climactic showdown takes place in New York City, with the bird attacking both the Empire State and United Nations buildings. It was defeated by a special type of isotope which was used to bring down its shield, allowing missiles to kill her as she crashed into the ocean outside New York City. The claw is seen before the bird sinks to the bottom.
[edit] Shortcomings
The Giant Claw has been mocked for the quality of its special effects.[1][2][3] The bird in particular is considered by many to be badly made, being a marionette puppet with a very odd face. The film is also riddled with stock footage, making continuity a serious issue.
Morrow later confessed in an interview that no one in the film knew what the titular monster looked like until the film's premiere. Morrow himself first saw the film in his hometown, and hearing the audience laugh every time the monster appeared on screen, he left the theater early, embarrassed that anyone there might recognize him.[4]
[edit] Production
A character in the film mistakes the bird for La Carcagne which is alleged in the film to be a monster from French Canadian folklore that resembles a giant woman with a wolf's head and bat-like black wings and which, like the Banshee, is a harbinger of death.[5]
[edit] References
- ^ Bad Movie Planet Retrieved 2008-09-08
- ^ The Monster Shack Retrieved 2008-09-08
- ^ B-Movie Graveyard Retrieved 2008-09-08
- ^ "The Giant Claw" on imdb.com
- ^ "Not So Scary... Top Ten Worst Movie Monsters!". BloodyDisgusting. http://www.bloody-disgusting.com/news/19353.
[edit] External links
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Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: The Giant Claw |
