The Giant Claw
           
Director: Fred Sears
Year: 1957
Rating: 5.0
Oh, Great Claw, you deserved better than being created in some Mexican sweat shop for the cost of a sombrero and a basket of tacos. I have watched a bunch of these 1950s Giant Monster films this past week and some before that – clearly a weakness of mine – and the prize for silliest monster goes to The Giant Claw. None of the others came close. Sure, the Giant Grasshoppers in the Beginning of the End were awfully done – but they were real grasshoppers so you can’t complain. But this is so hilariously bad that apparently the lead actor saw it for the first time in his hometown and had to sneak out among all the laughter in the theater. Claw is somewhere between a cartoon vulture and a depressed chicken – a little tuft of hair on its head, scrawny neck, long beak, crooked teeth and red from embarrassment. Too bad because it isn’t a bad story – or any worse than most of these - with an ok cast but every time Claw makes an appearance it is all you can do not to snigger. Sniggering is the worst sort of insult for a Claw. The producers had planned to use stop-motion but the budget wouldn’t pay for it and a man in a suit would have been ridiculous, so they farmed it out to Mexico and they came back with a puppet. In a way of course, all these years later, this makes the film memorable and it won’t be confused with any of the other Giant Monster films.



The narrator in this one – similarly to The Deadly Mantis – is bragging about what a great radar system the USA has built to stop the Commies – nothing can get by our radar. Except a Giant Bird as big as a battleship. The first person to spot it is Mitch MacAfee (Jeff Morrow), an engineer and pilot testing the efficiency of the radar way up in Canada. He sees something huge fly by, but when he reports it, they all think he is nuts. Even Sally, the female math whiz at the radar station. Good old Mara Corday once again. She thinks he is an ass playing tricks on the air force. Then on their flight home, they are attacked by something unseen and forced down. From there they take another plane to NYC and on the way she falls asleep only to be attacked by another monster, a creeping asshole – as Mitch decides to kiss her. Who does he think he is? A real-estate billionaire? Perhaps back in the fifties this was looked upon as ok behavior – maybe even romantic – not to be tried any longer if you treasure your manhood. But she returns the kiss. Yikes.



More reports come in of seeing the giant bird – and the audience gets their first look at him and the laughing begins. But don’t laugh too hard because he is a deadly bastard with an anti-matter shield around him that makes him impervious to radar and weapons. It goes on a trip around the world sowing destruction everywhere. Though I imagine the theater erupted in applause when the joyriding kids went for a ride of a different kind. Morris Ankrum as General Considine is ready to hit the bird with a nuke – don’t worry we will check to see which way the wind is blowing. He also played the general in The Beginning of the End who wanted to nuke Chicago to kill the grasshoppers. He must have been the go-to actor for Generals in the fifties who wanted to blow up the world. Of course, the only way to beat anti-matter is atoms so small that they can pass through it. Didn’t we learn that in high school? The fifties were a strange time - McCarthyism, Eisenhower, the Cold War, segregation, the fucking Yankees, censorship of comics – but a great time for small low-budget genre films like these.