The Giant Claw

Infobox Film | name = The Giant Claw


caption = Poster for the film "The Giant Claw"
director = Fred F. Sears
producer = Sam Katzman
writer =Paul Gangelin, Samuel Newman
starring =Jeff Morrow
Mara Corday
music = Mischa Bakaleinikoff
cinematography = Benjamin H. Kline
editing = Anthony Dimarco, Saul A. Goodkind
distributor = Columbia Pictures
released = June 1957
runtime = 75 min
language = English
budget =
amg_id = 1:19707
imdb_id = 0050432

"The Giant Claw" is a 1957 sci-fi film about a giant bird ("It's as big as a battleship!") 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 of 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 but are forced to take his story seriously after several other planes disappear. A gigantic bird, purported to come from an antimatter galaxy, is responsible for all the incidents. Mitch, along with his mathematician girlfriend Sally Caldwell (Mara Corday), Dr. Karol Noymann (Edgar Barrier), and generals Considine (Morris Ankrum) and Van Buskirk (Robert Shane), 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.

Shortcomings

The Giant Claw has gone down in history as one of the worst movies ever made, [ [http://www.badmovieplanet.com/3btheater/g/giantclaw.html Bad Movie Planet] Retrieved 2008-09-08] [ [http://www.monstershack.net/shack/reviews_index.php The Monster Shack] Retrieved 2008-09-08] [ [http://www.bmoviegraveyard.com/reviews/G/GiantClaw/ B-Movie Graveyard] Retrieved 2008-09-08] mainly because of its terrible special effects. The bird in particular is considered one of history's worst movie monsters, being an unconvincing marionette puppet with a very odd face. The film is 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, left the theater early, embarrassed that anyone there might recognize him. [ [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0050432/trivia "The Giant Claw" on imdb.com] ]

Trivia

A character in the film mistakes the bird for La Cargagne which is, in fact, an actual 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.

References

External links

* [http://wtf-film.com/wtffilm/?page_id=8 Film Review] at [http://www.wtf-film.com/ WTF-FILM]
* [http://wtf-film.com/wtffilm/?page_id=38 DVD review: ICONS OF HORROR COLLECTION - SAM KATZMAN]