The Giant Claw

1957 giant bird movie

Rating: 5/20

Plot: A troublesome alien bird that is "as big as a battleship" is on the rampage, wrecking airplanes and destroying buildings. Electronics specialist Mitch MacAfee tries to figure out a way to stop it before the hand of the person operating the beak gets tired.

You might think that a movie that Fred F. Sears (that second F. probably stands for Fred, too) made only a year after Earth vs. the Flying Saucers wouldn't be so bad, but you'd be wrong. No, this is impressively inept filmmaking, a science fiction movie that would probably offend most scientist. Or maybe just confuse them. The bird is described as being made from antimatter, and I guess that makes sense. It all sounds really scientific, and we kind of have to believe the character because he's got a giant model of an atom. You've also got to appreciate when these 1950's B-movies explain what a UFO is to the audience. Maybe the acronym wasn't widely used back then? The story is dull, and the acting is bad. So dull and bad, that they must have felt like they needed to go a little crazy with the amount of bird scenes. In some movies, they save the monster and the big special effects for a little later in the film. With The Giant Claw, it does start out as a fuzzy blob during some initial scenes, but you still get to see the monster early on. Early and far too often, especially since the monster looks like this:

Now I know what you're thinking--that looks realistically terrifying! I'm actually thinking my mother must have seen this still from the film and that it's the reason she refuses to fly. The obvious-toy plane crash is as realistic as "obvious-toy plane crash" might make it sound. None of that's as terrifying as the police officer played by Robert Williams, a gravedigger in Hang 'Em High. He's a cop who can't keep his hands off his own belt buckle, and gets superb lines like this one: "If you see this big bird, it's a sign that you're gonna die [dramatic pause] real soon." Louis Merrill acts squares around the rest of the crash as "Pierre," a French character played by a man who is definitely not French and who's probably never heard the language spoken. Pierre's cool because he's got Eraserhead hair. That hair might be the best special effect in this entire film actually. It's definitely not the child's Play-doh globe at the beginning of this thing, an image followed by a film strip I think I might have seen in my 8th grade science class. But none of that's important, readers, because the giant antimatter bird is coming right at you in 2-D!

You really need to imagine that with the incredible sound effects, my favorite being the chomp-chomp sound that you can apparently hear whenever a bird "as big as a battleship" makes when eating a paratrooper. The Giant Claw is nearly entertaining for the duration. And hey, if you get bored, you can play a drinking game where you drink a shot every time you see a wire to help the bird move or the toy airplanes fly around. It all builds to a stunning climax during which the monster destroys New York City, including a scene where he's perched on the building doing his best King Kong impression. Or maybe he's impersonating that Korean ape from A*P*E. I wouldn't put it past him. Anyway, it's the most damage a puppet has caused since. . .well, I thought I had a joke there.