The Giant Claw

The Giant Claw
Poster for the film The Giant Claw
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 (U.S.)
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.

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 over the loss of a pilot and jet over what they believe to be a hoax, but are forced to take his story seriously after several other planes disappear. A gigantic bird "as big as a battleship", 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, his mathematician girlfriend Sally Caldwell (Mara Corday), Dr. Karol Noymann (Edgar Barrier), Gen. Considine (Morris Ankrum) and Gen. Van Buskirk (Robert Shayne), work 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 is defeated by a special type of isotope which brings down its anti-matter shield, allowing missiles to kill her as she crashs into the ocean outside New York City. The last scene shows the creature's claw sinking to the bottom of the ocean.

Cast

• Jeff Morrow as Mitch MacAfee
• Mara Corday as Sally Caldwell
• Morris Ankrum as Lieutenant General Edward Considine
• Louis Merrill as Pierre Broussard
• Edgar Barrier as Dr. Karol Noymann
• Robert Shayne as General Van Buskirk
• Frank Griffin as the missing pilot

Reception

The Giant Claw has been mocked for the quality of its special effects. 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, including clips of the explosion of the Los Angeles City Hall from War of the Worlds and collapse of the Washington Monument from Earth vs the Flying Saucers during the bird's attack on New York City, 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 (he allegedly went home and began drinking).

However, despite all these shortcomings, James Rolfe of Cinemassacre named the Giant Claw as the number one greatest giant movie monster of all time due purely to the bird's sheer ridiculousness.

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.

See also

• List of films considered the worst
• Z movie
• List of Columbia Pictures films

External links

• The Giant Claw at the Internet Movie Database
• The Giant Claw at AllRovi