(1957)
Directed by Fred F. Sears
Starring Jeff Morrow, Mara Corday, Morris Ankrum, Louis Merrill, Robert Shayne, Edgar Barrier

When I worked at a movie theater, we played It Came from Hollywood (1982), which featured hundreds of movie clips with popular comedians making fun of them, cracking jokes, pointing out flaws, all in the name of entertainment. Mind you, this was years before Mystery Science Theater 3000 made a career out of it. It was during that initial screening that I caught my first glimpse of the epic The Giant Claw (1957). though it would be some time before I actually knew what movie it was. Sure, it was silly and laughable at that time, with the creature looking more like some sort of sickly marionette turkey, but in those scenes where it is swooping down and chomping on parachuting passengers from the plane it just attacked, kind of creeped me out.

Years later, when I finally learned what the title was and found a copy, I immediately fell in love with it.

What? You think just because a movie is considered a turkey you can’t consider it a favorite? I often use this saying, which I still believe to this day, in that the only bad movie is a boring one. And The Giant Claw is not boring. It may suffer from a bad decision in creating the title beast, but the rest of the film is pure ‘50s sci-fi / horror perfection.

The film starts out with civilian electronics engineer Mitch MacAfee flying a plane to help the Air Force fine tune their radars. While on his last trip, he sees something in the air, something huge, like a “flying battleship”, even though it never showed up on the radar. After scrambling the fighter planes to investigate, nothing was found, though some of the jets never made it back to base. Nobody believes his tales of this giant “thing” in the air because everyone knows that if it was that big and fast, it would have to show up on radar. Even Sally Caldwell, the mathematician working on the radar project, pokes fun at him, which just irritates MacAfee even further. After being ridiculed and threatened, MacAfee is sent off on his way. But when the attacks continue, with other witnesses of a huge U.F.O., the Air Force starts to pay attention, getting both MacAfee and Caldwell back to Washington to help figure out what the hell is going on.

You don’t need more plot than that because it is a lot of fun to watch on your own. Before you scoff at the movie though, I think if you learn a little more about the actual making of the film, you might be able to see it in a different light, maybe understanding and being a little more forgiving about the turkey-bird than before. Yes, it still looks cheesy as hell, but hold those thoughts.

Sam Katzman produced this film, among many other classics in the ‘50s, such as It Came from Beneath the Sea (1955), Earth vs The Flying Saucers (1956), The Werewolf (1956), The Night the World Exploded (1957), among many others. In fact, in his 40-year career in the film business, he produced closed to 250 titles. That’s an average of 6 films a year. On that same note, the director was Fred F. Sears, who only worked as a director for 10 years before his untimely death of a heart attack, but in that decade, he averaged directing 5 films a year, many of them for Katzman. Keep that in the back of your head when you think of how many films most producers and directors make inside of one year.

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Jeff Morrow, best known for playing Exeter in This Island Earth (1955), plays MacAfee with such glee that we’re not sure if we’re supposed to like the guy or just see how big of a cad he is! Morrow really only appeared in a few genre titles, like Creature Walks Among Us (1956), Kronos (1957), and near the end of his acting career, Octoman (1971). No matter what science gibberish he’s spouting, Morrow says it which such conviction, as if he was reciting Shakespeare. The beautiful Mara Corday plays Sally, the mathematician. Kudos to the film’s creators to have a woman playing something other than the typical “damsel in distress” role. Corday also only appeared in a couple of titles in the sci-fi/horror genre, though both dealing with oversized insects, Tarantula (1955) and The Black Scorpion (1957). It’s a shame too since this former Playboy centerfold was always a treat on the eyes, but she was also a very talented actress.

One of my favorites of this sub-genre was Morris Ankrum, who plays Lt. General Considine. While he started out his career in the mid ‘30s, mainly doing westerns, it was Rocketship X-M (1950) that he started in the fantastic cinema genre! He would later appear in classics like Invaders from Mars (1953), as well as some lower budget pictures like Zombies of Mora Tau (1957) for Katzman and The Beginning of the End (1957) for Bert I. Gordon. He usually played authority figures, either a doctor or scientist, or someone in charge of the military, giving use of his serious eyes and commanding voice.

One might wonder how the main actors could take this job so serious when the beast they are in fear of looks so comical. That is because the first time they saw what it looked like was after the picture was already done and in the theater. Morrow tells of seeing it the first time at the premier of it in his own hometown. Once the bird came onscreen, Morrow sunk down in his chair and eventually snuck out hoping not to be recognized by anyone. But I think that is one of the reasons I really enjoy this film because outside of what the monster looks like, everyone is playing their parts completely straight and very serious. Even when the poor character Pierre is running from what he calls the “la Carcagne”, he plays it as if he really is terrified of this beast from the local folklore.

This was the ripe time of science fiction cinema when screenwriters could just make up the wildest of things and the audience would buy it, because these are “scientists” making these statements! Well of course there is “anti-matter” because they tell us a couple of times that it has already been proven! How can you argue those facts?

Ralph Hammeras, George Teague, and Lawrence Butler are credited for the creature, but the rumors make it a little muddled. Katzman originally wanted Ray Harryhausen, who he had worked with before on It Came Beneath the Sea and Earth vs the Flying Saucers, but he apparently it wasn’t in the budget. So as the rumors go, Katzman hired someone down in Mexico City to create it and it cost him $50. While some may say it looks like he still paid too much, I would like to say this flying turkey is a little more detailed than given credit for. I’m guessing there were at least two different birds, one for the flying shots and then one for closeups. During the scene where its egg is destroyed, there are some shots where you can see the mouth snarl a bit, and even the eyes moving. There had to be a little more work into creating this than most would think. Yes, it is still pretty silly looking, but let’s try and give a little bit of credit to it.

When it comes right down to it, if after the 75-minute running time is up, and you realized that you had either been laughing out loud or even chuckling to yourself, then it was entertaining. Sure, the creators probably didn’t want you snickering at it, but the end result is what matters. And if you had fun with it, then it was entertaining. And if it was entertaining, then it can’t be considered a bad movie, right? A turkey, sure. But not bad.

And if I’m alone in my defending this picture, then to quote Mitch MacAfee, “That makes me chief cook-and-bottle washer in a one-man bird-watching society.”