REVIEW: THE GIANT CLAW
REVIEW: FRED F. SEARS [ 1957 ] 75'
REVIEW: COLUMBIA PICTURES / CLOVER PRODUCTIONS
CAST: JEFF MORROW, MARA CORDAY,
CAST: MORRIS ANKRUM, LOUIS MERRILL
PERSONAL RATING:
CRITICAL RATING:

"Date - the 18th of the month. Sky clear, light clouds. Visibility - unlimited. Time - 08:15 hours. A CAB plane flies to the site of the previous day's crash involving Mitchell MacAfee. On board: Four members of the Civil Aeronautics Board investigative team and a pilot. Time - 08:16 hours. . . another significant moment in history. . ."

The uncredited narrator for this film couldn't have known how right he was. . .

It's almost impossible for me to accurately account for the enormous impact this film had on me as a child - but I suppose I can give it a try anyway. My mother and her three sisters grew up watching this film throughout the late sixties and early seventies, during the heyday of television matinees, and had very fond memories of it themselves - particularly vivid was their recollection of the ending shot of the film showing a monstrous claw sinking slowly beneath the waves as THE END fades in over top of it. I, myself, grew up in the time when TNT's MONSTERVISION scifi and horror marathons were truly at the top of their game. Knowing already that I had an interest in like films, my mother spotted that THE GIANT CLAW was slated for an appearance on the aforementioned network and, even though it was playing late, insured that a tape was rolling in the VCR to capture it.

Something went wrong somewhere along the line, however, and the resulting tape only featured part of the film - roughly the last 40 minutes of it. My overwhelming sadness at the fact was quickly replaced with inane joy, however, when I realized that the tape had started just before the climactic aerial showdown that takes place a little over a half hour into the film. From the moment the stock music cue blared from the mighty monophonic speaker of our 80's vintage television set I was hooked. Thoughts were racing through my mind as to just what the titular beast would look like. . .

A quick glimpse of a blurry gray blip flying past the camera did nothing to help matters - my mind struggled to take everything in: the music, the stock footage, the dialogue. The suspense was building building building and I could hardly take the whole moments of waiting before the revelation of the. . .

And then it happened. The tenth shot of the scene came up and I got my first true glimpse of the monster.

At my young age I could hardly stop to be disappointed - the monster on screen was more than I could possibly have expected! A ferocious man-eating vulture - complete with huge sharp teeth, evil googling eyes, flaring nostrils, and a repugnant patch of hair tufted atop its otherwise bald head. My unsuspecting mind was in full sensory overload and I stared, my mouth agape and my eyes likewise peeled open to the point that I felt they'd burst from their sockets.

"This is it," I thought to myself in the six year old vernacular of the time, "this is the most amazing monster movie I've ever seen." I had reached paradise, nirvana, a level of heaven few could aspire to and even fewer could attain - I had caught glimpse of the greatest movie ever made and I was ready to die.

I soaked in every other remaining second of the film - absorbed it like a sponge. The monster, the military, the hero, the girl, the French-Canadian - all of it was taken up into my brain and stored like the most precious of possible cargoes. The tape, now long lost to the sands of time, occupied the most important of places in my fledgling video library - even the incredible PLANET OF DINOSAURS had to take a back seat to it. For years afterwards my sketch books were filled with random images of the monster - sometimes re-enacting scenes from the film and at others featured in my own fantastical sequels to the film. Imagine not one, but two of the titular beasties running amok through Europe and the Mediterranean, leaving the Leaning Tower of Pisa a pile of broken masonry and the Eiffel Tower a bit of twisted metal with a new monster bird nest at its top.

It was an idea spawned of pure genius, to be sure.

Even more important, potentially, than the initial and continuing impact the film has had and continues to have, is the fact that THE GIANT CLAW opened that proverbial floodgate for me - and in rushed more amazing cinematic spectacles than I could ever have dreamt of. IT: THE TERROR FROM BEYOND SPACE [1958], FROM HELL IT CAME [1957], and VALLEY OF THE DRAGONS [1961] were all seen as a direct consequence of it - I recorded all of them after another fateful showing on TNT. From the moment I first saw it I was a child of MONSTERVISION and I caught as many of the marathons as I could handle - I even headed over to TBS for their semi-annual broadcasts of AT THE EARTH'S CORE [1976], THE PEOPLE THAT TIME FORGOT [1977], and THE LAST DINOSAUR [1977]. Because of THE GIANT CLAW I was introduced to the genius of Harryhausen and the frugal magic of Corman, to GORGO [1961], THE BEAST OF HOLLOW MOUNTAIN [1956], and THEM! [1954].

In this respect seeing THE GIANT CLAW for the first time was a seminal moment in my personal history.

I've grown up since then - as all boys are destined to do - and my taste in cinema has become considerably more refined. Nevertheless, when it was announced that Sony/Columbia/Tristar would be officially releasing this film in the fall of this year [2007] the little kid in me came forth once more and excitement rushed over me in an awesome wave. It was then I also realized that I'd never even bothered to give the film that's probably singularly most responsible for the sequence of events that led to the creation of this site the honor of a simple review.

Well the time for making amends has arrived, my friends - I beg you to forget the fact that every B-movie review site on Earth seems to have taken a shot at it and let your inner monster-loving child out again as WTFFILM celebrates the greatest movie ever made.

"Once the world was big and no man in his lifetime could circle it. Through the centuries science has made man's lifetime bigger - and the world smaller. Now, the farthest corner of the Earth is as close as a push button - and time has lost all meaning as man-made devices speed many many times faster than the speed of sound itself."

The narrative of THE GIANT CLAW begins in very much the same way as THE DEADLY MANTIS - Universal's foray into giant monster cinema from the same year that manages to be inferior to this film in pretty much every regard other than special effects production - and with good reason. In 1954 and in response to technological advances by the Soviet Union, the United States (in conjunction with Canada) put forward a project to create the Distant Early Warning Radar System, or the DEW Line, in an area 200 miles north of Arctic circle. This project was completed in 1957 and was considered to be an engineering marvel - 63 stations (some manned, some not) stretching 10,000 kilometers from Alaska to Baffin Island. In a time when national pride was high and the good fight against Communism was at its zenith, it's no wonder that the project made its way into the scripts for the popular science fiction of the day.

Anywho, THE GIANT CLAW begins with the air force running calibration tests at one of the many manned stations in the Distant Early Warning system - up from the states for the job are two civilians; Sally Caldwell, the mathematician, and electronics engineer/ace-pilot extraordinaire Mitchell MacAfee. Mitch is busying himself with running a test flight while Sally is crunching numbers to see if there are any blind spots in the radar's scope. We're treated to some brief, but amusing, conversation, including Mitch's immortal line, "Mother, dear mother! I'm ready if you are!" in response to Sally's accidental on-the-speaker comment about how his mother should have spanked him. It's just one of many moments throughout the film where amusing sexual innuendos between the two of them crop up. Before any further banter can be heard, the narration kicks up again.

"An electronics engineer. . . a radar officer. . . a mathematician and systems analyst. . . a radar operator. . . a couple of plotters. . . People doing a job. . . well. . . efficiently. . . seriously. . . having fun. . . doing a job. Situation: normal - for the moment. . ."

There's certainly more to the narration here, as it goes on for some minutes more, but to give it all away would detract from the fun of hearing it for the first time yourself - and I certainly wouldn't want to be responsible for that. At any rate, the appearance of the narration is our cue that something important in the life of the story is about to happen - and without much waiting, it does. High in the sky, moving too fast to identify, Mitchell MacAfee spots what he can only describe as a UFO - though to us it looks like a supersonic bit of lint wooshing past an unfocused camera. He follows the object, which turns and swoops in at him again - MacAfee is understandably worried by the situation and, in response to his report, a flight of interceptors from a nearby airbase is scrambled to hunt the unidentified object down. The would-be excitement of this scene is tempered considerably by the fact that the narrator is present throughout it even though it's obvious that the actors were speaking their own lines during the shooting of it. It seems that Clover Productions was running a bit low on budget as far as overdubbing was concerned and opted for less expensive (and considerably less effective) narration instead. This is an issue that will crop up several times during the film but is never quite as grating as it is here.

During this scene we are also introduced to the film's most beloved metaphorical reference - one that's repeated so often throughout the film that you're guaranteed to remember it for the extent of your natural existence. Through this brief snippet of dialogue the film's most oft quoted bit is born: "Something, he didn't know what, but something as big as a Battleship had just flown over and past him at speeds so great he couldn't begin to estimate them." Unfortunately for Mitch the radar screens picked up nothing but his plane in the sky and Major Bergen, who's in charge of the base, is none to happy about it when the electronics engineer returns. At first the Major just seems peeved at MacAfee's lack of professional tact, but then the real reason is exposed - it seems that one of the interceptors sent out to hunt for the object never returned. Mitch's grilling continues until a phone call interrupts them - Bergen is considerably lighter on MacAfee afterwards as whoever was on the other line has reported a trans-polar airliner has disappeared as well. To make matters worse, the pilot reported a UFO. . . a UFO that didn't show up on any radar scopes. Mitch and Sally are allowed to go since Bergen has more important things on his hands and are put on a private plane to be flown back to New York.

It is in the following scene that another of the film's more delightful elements is exposed - that being Mitch and Sally's uncanny luck and seeming invulnerability to attacks by the UFO (we know what it is already, but I'll play the film's game for the time being) and how the complete opposite seems true for those who associate with them. The plane ride back to New York is starting out rather bumpily due to a storm front and Mitch requests that the pilot increase his altitude to avoid the turbulence - the pilot agrees, calls in the request and, after it's confirmed, climbs to a higher altitude. Not long thereafter he spots that pesky supersonic bit of lint and radio's in a report of it to the radar operators on the ground. He calls Mitch in to notify him of the situation - the engineer is less than happy to hear of another report of the object - and makes the mistake of uttering the fatal line: "I lost it when it got right overhead." As if by cue, something collides with the plane, sends the pilot flying into his controls and fatally wounding him, and sends the plane itself into a death spiral towards the Canadian countryside. Mitch bravely takes to the controls and manages a miraculous emergency landing on dry land - He and Sally, the dying pilot in tow, exit the plane, which is now burning, and manage to take cover just before it explodes (!). Luckily for our two protagonists - not so much for the pilot, given that he's died somewhere during the plane explosion - a stereotypically hysterical French Canadian farmer named Pierre Broussard is just steps away from them and able to take them back to his home.

What follows is one of the best scenes in the entire film, in which our two heroes get smashed on Pierre's homemade whiskey - which he refers to, lovingly, as his Apple-Jack ("I make it ma-self!") - in the aftermath of the fatal plane crash from the scene before. A storm has built up outside in the time between scene changes and the local police and an ambulance have arrived to take the body of the dead pilot away - Sally and Mitch, obviously not terribly effected by the preceding fatal plane crash, use their time to wisely banter about flying Battleships some more. Mitch does get in a good quip against Sally here, however. . . "I said it looked like a Battleship, not that it was a Battleship. I should have called it an overgrown adding machine - then at least you'd have believed me." Major Bergen, who has been mysteriously upgraded to General since earlier in the morning and is referred to as such throughout the following conversation, calls Pierre's home to give MacAfee what-for in response to yet another UFO sighting with no radar evidence to back it up - he, too, seems more concerned with what he sees as Mitch's foolishness than the fact that one of his pilots is dead due to the previous scene's fatal plane crash. Whatever. . . bring on the booze Pierre! "You like Pierre's Apple-Jack, oui?" No sooner has Pierre filled up Mitch's glass than his farm animals - indicated by the noises made by a few dogs and a couple of horses off screen - become frightened of something in the storm and out the door he goes. No sooner has that happened than the lights go out in the farmhouse and Pierre is heard screaming from outside.

Even though we don't see what Pierre sees, it has become obvious by now that Mitch, Sally, and the UFO seem to be compelled to be in just the right place at just the right time to always see each other - by now, after all, there have been no fewer than three incidents in the film involving the UFO and at least one of the main characters. Future appearances by the UFO throughout the film will follow this trend - and while I realize the importance of keeping your protagonists involved in the action of the film, THE GIANT CLAW truly takes the concept to ridiculous extremes.

Anywho.

Mitch and Sally drag Pierre in from the storm - it's clear from the start that whatever he saw in the storm has frightened him terribly. Right we are, and soon Pierre is spilling his guts about having seen something he refers to as La Cacanya. Apparently La Cacanya is ". . .a devil in the storm - with the head of the wolf and the body of a woman and wings, bigger than I can tell!" One thing that it doesn't look like, thankfully, is a Battleship. Mitch administers to Pierre some of his own prized Apple-Jack and a New York State Police car pulls 'round outside - the officer inside and his buddy are there to take Mitch and the missus to the airport (doh!) to get on a commercial airliner (doh!!) to fly (doh!!!) to New York. After the events of the past 24 hours, in which no fewer than three planes and countless people have gone missing due to a UFO that leaves no trace on the radar scopes, one seriously has to question the sanity of this decision. Mitch and Sally get their gear and are ready to go, but Sally simply must know why seeing La Cacanya is such a terrifying experience. Predictably, the knowledgeable local police officer knows precisely why and, right in front of the half-mad-with-fright Pierre, off-handedly remarks that, "According to the story they [the locals] tell, if you see this big bird it's a sign that you're gonna die. . . real soon." Christ man, have you no shame!? Pierre is left sobbing uncontrollably while our two protagonists get into the police car to go to the airport (doh!).

But wait, what's that!? No, not there, in the field behind Pierre's house. Why, it's a footprint that looks to have been left behind by a giant claw! Clever, eh?

Maybe not. At any rate, our two lovable heroes are off on a plane (doh!!) to New York City in no time - Sally is asleep next to Mitch so he does what any reasonable man would do, given that she's a future Playboy Playmate (Miss October 1958), and kisses her square on the mouth. She turns on a light, which leads to a weird conversation full of Shakespeare and comparisons between love and baseball, all leading to Sally mentioning something about a pattern. A pattern! Mitch has a moment of enlightenment and demands of his mathematician friend one of the many maps she totes around with her - while she's getting it out he notices a newspaper headline that confirms yet another downed plane, the fourth in that single 24 hour time period. Once he has the map in hand Mitch proceeds to plot random points on it before connecting all of them together with a relatively well drawn spiral - a pattern. . . ummm. . . Yeah, sure. Whatever you say, Mitch. Even Jeff Morrow can't help but look more than a little confused at the logic of this scene. Sally is, as usual, skeptical of the idea and proceeds to mock MacAfee and Pierre's sighting of La Cacanya - and here the saving grace of this scene occurs. All around Mitch and Sally throughout their conversation are a number of sleeping passengers. One by one they wake up and begin to look noticeably perturbed at their rather verbose co-passengers. At long last, one of them stands up and politely, but sternly, demands that the two of them shut their traps. Mitch and Sally realize they were being childish and, since they're both acting like adults again, shut off the overhead light and start making out.

The shot fades out and, when it fades back in, the most famous scene in the film has begun - that scene is, of course, the long-awaited revelation of the titular monster. Rest assured that you won't soon forget it.

The bit of narration from the head of this review alerts us of the date - time - place - and the fact that we are about to witness another important moment in history. A Civil Aeronautics Board investigating team is on its way to check out the area where Mitch's plane went down the day before in an aircraft amazingly void of windows or even a cockpit windshield. That alone should help to assure you that the coming scene will be special indeed. In no time flat the pilot is reporting yet another sighting of a UFO through the glory of narration - only this time the report is different. "A bird, a bird as big as a Battleship, circling and preparing to attack the CAB plane." The first establishing shot of the monster is generally well executed, showing the plane and frantic pilot in the foreground and the massive wings and claws of its adversary in the back. There's a brief cutback to the astounded - or at the very least confused - CAB investigators before monster is revealed in all her glory. In the brief moments between the first establishing shot and this one, the bird has maneuvered so that she is directly behind the plane as opposed to directly beside and above it - but that's of no consequence given her appearance. The beast possesses a ridiculously lengthy neck, the white puffy neck ring of a stereotypical vulture, and the aforementioned teeth, googly eyes, flaring nostrils, and tuft of hair.

And the sound, my God, the sound . . .

The bird reveals her size to be as ridiculous as her appearance, as in this initial shot she is clearly tens of times the size of the CAB plane. The bird grips the unfortunate aircraft in her mighty maw and tosses it about as each of the four CAB team members exits via the back door in an attempt to parachute to safety. They're just SOL, it seems, as the bird throws away the empty can of the plane and goes into a dive to catch the tasty morsels that have fallen from inside. One by one and with a mighty crunch, the bird gulps down the CAB team - it is revealed here that she can, among other magical things that are to be described later, change her size in order to accommodate whatever is going into her mouth/claws, leaving the investigative party to be tasty bite-sized snacks. Obviously happy with herself, the bird cackles satisfiedly and flaps herself off screen.

For most B-movie fans, this is the big payoff of the film - indeed, every moment of the above scene is positively magical. But the subsequent appearances by the bird each one-up the level of absurdity exhibited by the preceding appearance to such a point that, by the conclusion of the film, the final attack by the bird reaches an untouchable and, dare I say, transcendental level of befuddery.

In light of the most recent attack - and the new information on just what the UFO is - Mitch and Sally are both ordered in to see General Van Buskirk to discuss the problem. It seems that Mitch was really onto something with that pattern of his, as recent attacks by the bird all fit it "smack dab on the nose." Upon discovering that he's the only person to have survived an attack by the bird (two, actuality, with more to come in the future) MacAfee quips, "That makes me chief cook and bottle-washer in a one-man bird watching society." This time it's Sally's turn to have a 'eureka' moment, as she suddenly remembers that, before heading off to the Arctic with Mitch, she was doing Earth curvature calibration work - it seems that it involved the placing of cameras on weather balloons and sending them high into the atmosphere. Our characters completely ignore the fact that these cameras would have been facing in a generally downward direction and hastily collect them to see if any managed to snap a mug of the bird. Just three frames into their search the bird is spotted, at first from afar - but then she gets closer, and closer, until finally we see her in all of her magnificence as she gawks down into the lens of the camera. Having seen the horrific beasty for himself, Buskirk orders that the entire army be put on combat readiness alert and orders up a plane (doh!) to fly (doh!!) himself, Mitch, and Sally in to see General Considine in Washington, D.C. Brilliant.

General Considine gets a look at the images that were captured of the bird and, via intellectual prowess that I can't even begin to comprehend, concludes that the creature represented is, in fact, a bird. Buskirk and MacAfee waste no time before getting on each other's nerves - Considine wisely interrupts the tissy to inform Mitch that the air force has been given specific orders to find the birds and that hundreds of planes are on the hunt. Sally makes the comment, "And when we do [find it], General, then what?" Once again, as if by cue, the telephone rings and Considine is alerted that the bird has been spotted! He passes on the order that the bird is to be shot down with "no questions, no games, no stalling. . ." Given that we're nary even halfway through the film's running time there's really no way this could end well.

Considine turns on the radio so that the group can hear the battle as it happens and they all hunker down to listen. The pilots make small talk and a few jokes after spotting the bird - it seems the laugh is on them, however, as the bird proves totally impervious to their most modern of weaponry. Once again, their planes are picked up in her enormous jaws, turned momentarily into obviously toy planes of completely different design, and then dropped to the ground as flaming balls of wreckage. The battle continues like this for some time until Considine turns off the radio - just as the final pilot is about to be attacked. While the first appearance of the bird will probably live on as the most oft remembered of the film, this second attack is the first to truly showcase THE GIANT CLAW's outsourced special effects production in all of its asinine majesty. If rumors are to be believed, the special effects work for the film was put into the obviously incapable hands of a Mexican production outfit that managed to churn out take after take of the least effective puppetry and miniatures work ever to grace a major motion picture. The head of the larger model of the bird is actually quite articulate considering the time - capable of moving its eyes, flaring its nostrils, and opening and closing its mouth - but never has a chance of overcoming the fatal ineptitude of its overall design. As such, even audiences in 1957 greeted THE GIANT CLAW with equally giant guffaws.

After the failed attack Considine receives another telephone call, this time from Dr. Karol Noymann, letting him know that the doctor just might know what the bird is and where it came from. The Generals drag Mitch and Sally along for the science lesson, the results of which are listed below:

1: Atoms are the building blocks of all matter.

2: There is matter and antimatter.

3: The bird is extraterrestrial.

4: The bird is MaGiCaL.

By that last bit I'm referring to the fact that the bird, purported to come from "some god-forsaken anti-matter galaxy" is capable of creating an antimatter shield that keeps any unwanted weaponry from getting through but that it can also disengage when it needs to use its beak, claws, or wings. This antimatter screen somehow manages to keep radar scopes from being able to see the bird as well. Right. As Considine calls in to inform the powers-that-be of the new information he has learned, the narration kicks in again to alert us that something important is about to happen. Even as Considine attempts to hush-up any evidence of the bird's existence it reveals itself to the world by flying over Miami, London, and elsewhere and wreaking all manner of stock footage havoc on the populations of the world.

Back at home, Mitch is working on something unknown when Sally comes waltzing in. It seems she has an idea of her own as to why the bird came to Earth - her evidence (the claw mark in the field behind Pierre's farm) has led her to believe that the bird has flown alllll the way from "some god-forsaken anti-matter galaxy" to our own to build a nest. That's two to the lady for totally crack-pot ideas this go around, leaving Mitch trailing sadly behind. Mitch opts for caution and agrees to go back to Pierre's farm to search for the bird's nest and eliminate any potential possibility of there being offspring. Before they can leave, Considine comes on the radio and alerts the world of the attacks by the bird and orders that all non-essential traffic in the sky, on the land, and at sea be stopped. As if by cue, once again, the bird goes flying past Mitch's apartment on her way to who-knows-where. Doing what they always do best, our heroes take a plane (doh!!) to Canada and, from Pierre's farm, take a helicopter (doh!!!!) in search of the bird's nesting place. Pierre is noticeably shaken and doesn't like the idea of flying with a giant bird bandying about - I can't say I blame him in the slightest. The bird finds them, of course, but doesn't succeed in catching them. Mitch, Sally, and Pierre head off on foot to look for the nest and, nary two whole minutes into their quest, manage to stumble onto it.

And wouldn't you just know that moments later the mommy bird would come swooping out of the stratosphere to roost for a bit, leaving our heroes to witness the uncovering of a single gigantic egg. Mitch has brought along two high-powered rifles to destroy it with, but Pierre will have nothing to do with this scheme - "You shoot gun, it make big noise, La Cacanya come and we all die!" - and scampers off. Sally promptly picks up his gun, preps it for firing, and looks at a disbelieving Mitch and says, simply, "I'm from Montana!" The two take turns popping off shots at the egg and, after three, manage to explode it proper - the mother is none too pleased with this, of course, and takes to the skies. She sees fit to just bury Mitch and Sally with brush - Pierre, it seems, won't be so lucky. Remember that whole La Cacanya bit from before? Let's just say 'prophecy fulfilled' and move on. Sally and Mitch, having completed their mission, decide that, for once, it might just be too dangerous to fly and opt to head back to the States using Pierre's car instead - Mitch defends this thieving action by stating quite frankly, "He won't be needing it anymore." Undignified, perhaps, but inarguably correct. They drive with the lights off for added protection, but are soon pestered by a group of joy-riding teenagers who refuse to take their lives seriously. Predictably, the bird appears and scampers off with the car, killing one of the passengers and leaving the other two for Mitch and Sally to take to a nearby hospital.

In no time at all, Mitch and Sally are back at Dr. Noymann's lab - the Generals arrive, a bit perturbed by the fact that the three scientists have called them in for a meeting in the midst of a worldwide crisis. But no worries, Generals, Mitch and friends have a devised a plan to stop the bird that's so stupid it simply has to succeed! The scientific babble is ludicrous, but amounts to Mitch wanting to build a mu meson projector in hopes that the heavy mesic atoms produced will infiltrate the anti-matter shield the bird totes around with her, bond with it, and destroy it. The Generals are all on board, but, as the narrator explains, getting a mesic atom to survive for any longer than a single microsecond will be tough work indeed. Mu mesons (now called muons), first discovered in 1936, were a hot topic of the day as well - at least among the scientific community - with Hideki Yukawa having won the Nobel Prize in physics less than ten years previously for having predicted their existence. To that extent, it's probable that an amount of research went into this part of the script - but that doesn't keep it from coming off as ridiculous all the same. To drive home the point that mu mesons are hard to produce, and even more difficult to keep around, we are treated to a succession of tests performed by our three enterprising young heroes - complete with narration and all of which fail - meanwhile, the bird attacks a toy train and carries it off like so many link sausages.

Ho hum.

Back at the lab it's getting to be nigh-on time for something to happen - and sure enough something does. As Sally and Dr. Noymann lie in the office outside, asleep, an explosion rips through the laboratory. Mitch is left lying on the ground, nose bleeding and unconscious. He is taken to a hospital, where he regains his sensibilities and alerts Sally, Dr. Noymann, and the Generals that the accident in the lab really wasn't an accident at all - while the others were sleeping he single-handedly discovered the secret of producing longer-lived mesic atoms, hooked up the machine, tried it, and blew himself to kingdom come. That last part apparently proves, beyond a doubt, that the ridiculous contraption must work, so the whole party sets off to the local airbase to install the as-of-yet-un-patented mesic atom projector in the rear of a stripped-down B-52. The plan is to have Sally replaced with a different (Re: male) mathematician, then to take off, find the bird, get it to chase the plane, shower it in mesic atoms to eliminate the antimatter shield, and kill it. It's a good plan, I guess, but the bird forces it a bit ahead of schedule by making an impromptu attack on New York City, leaving the Generals with no choice but to put Sally on the plane with the rest of them. Considering that Mitch had just single-handedly discovered the secret of producing longer-lived mesic atoms, hooked up the machine, tried it, and used it, one has to wonder why, exactly, a mathematician is necessary in the least - in fact, why are any of the other crew members necessary? MacAfee is obviously an ace pilot as well, so installing the machine on a single jet aircraft and letting him have at the bird himself seems the safest of ways to handle the situation with the least risk of loss of life. But no matter. The B-52 takes off and is soon well on its way to New York - there the bird is perching on top of buildings and traumatizing the fleeing masses below with stock footage from films with better special effects production. The B-52 catches up with her as she's taking chunks out of the United Nations building, taunts her, and eventually gets her to take off in hot pursuit.

Suspense is simulated here by quick-editing a number of closeups of the incoming head of the bird with shots of MacAfee and his team working as fast as they can to finish up the internal work on the mesic atom projector - to hammer the idea that they're in danger home, General Considine waltzes to the back of the plane and stands around repeating over and over just how close the bird is and how fast the scientist-people have to work. Eventually the mesic atom projector is completed, of course, and the bird is showered with big poofy clouds of mesic atoms. The Generals turn the plane around and home in on the bird - rockets at the ready - until the moment is right. Then. . . fire! The bird is mortally wounded over the Atlantic Ocean and falls from the sky, landing upside down in the drink. The world is saved, MacAfee gets the girl, and the Generals and Dr. Noymann just kind of stand around looking pleased with themselves.

So ends the greatest movie ever made. Let's talk a little bit about why I seem to see it necessary to insist that title be thrust upon it. . .

Firstly, there is the insane correlation between the actions of Mitchell MacAfee and the actions of the bird and the extremely unlikely luck of the former in light of the latter. Mitch is the first to spot the bird - an encounter he quite obviously survives. When flying back to New York his plane is attacked and the pilot who spotted the bird dies as a result. Pierre spots the bird while MacAfee is in his home, rattles off an old wives' tale, and dies during his second encounter with the bird. Other examples throughout the film are really too numerous to elucidate. What's more, Mitch is relatively superhuman in his capabilities - he sights the bird, correlates the resulting attacks into an admittedly ridiculous but wholly correct pattern, successfully destroys the bird's egg while packing only a standard issue rifle on a hunch that the eggs don't have antimatter energy screens, comes up with the idea of the mesic atom projector, single-handedly perfects it, installs it, and uses it to kill the bird. It was certainly standard practice at the time to keep your protagonists inside the action of the film - the practice, while rarely logical in these sorts of films, made excellent dramatic sense. Apparently the writers of the film believed that increasing the amount of interaction ten fold would likewise increase the dramatic effect - the resulting film proves them quite wrong.

Making up for Jeff Morrow's character, fun as he may be, is Mara Corday as Sally Caldwell. While Mitch and Sally spend an inordinate amount of screen time together she's not the standard assistant-to-the-man that so many of these films tossed in. Instead, Sally is a successful career gal who, given her occupation and stature in the government of the time, had to have completed numerous years of post-high school education and worked her way through the ranks to become one of the best in her particular field. What's more, the film makers never let her slip into the stereotypical scream-queen that the vast majority of her scifi co-starlets inevitably became - instead she is allowed to make her own intelligent decisions, come to important conclusions that her cohorts would never have thought of otherwise, and even participate in the climactic action sequences of the film along-side the men with no hints of gender superiority (in the scene covering the destruction of the egg she proves herself to be much more of a woman than the cowardly Pierre is a man). The icing on the cake, so to speak, is that Mara was quite the beautiful gal at the time, as is attested to by her aforementioned appearance as the centerfold in the October 1958 issue of Playboy magazine. Corday consistently proved herself a stable performer throughout her career and is entirely convincing as the intelligent and forward-thinking young woman in the film.

There are very few other substantial characters in THE GIANT CLAW - only four come to mind: Generals Considine and Buskirk, Dr. Karol Noymann, and the ill-fated French-Canadian Pierre Broussard. The first three are all fairly standard characters - Dr. Noymann is the super-duper scientist who steps in when necessary to explain the unexplainable in hope of continuing that all-important suspension of disbelief - Edgar Barrier plays the role with enthusiasm but, given the nature of his lines, is never given an opportunity to become much of a real character. Sci-fi regular Robert Shayne does well as the more uppity half of the Buskirk / Considine military team, while Morris Ankrum appears for the umpteenth time in his lengthy career as the authoritative military leader. The most interesting character of the pack is really Pierre Broussard - played quite amusingly by radio talent Louis Merrill - who's hysterical dialogue and unnatural affinity for his Apple-Jack make every scene he's in a real treat to watch.

Fred F. Sears, who helmed the superiorly made but less entertaining EARTH VS. THE FLYING SAUCERS the previous year, manages to pull of a minor miracle with his direction of the non-monster portions of the film. Whereas the people-parts of the previous year's film tend to drag and drag and drag between exciting Harryhausen staged effects sequences, the same parts here are portrayed considerably more entertainingly. Also taking on directorial duties for the lesser known Clover Productions efforts THE WEREWOLF [1956] and THE NIGHT THE WORLD EXPLODED [1957], Sears creates in THE GIANT CLAW something that feels like the film EARTH VS. THE FLYING SAUCERS should have been - unfortunately for Fred, Harryhausen was nowhere to be found for this genre foray and budgetary constraints led to the special effects work for the film being outsourced to a Mexican production company.

The mind-bendingly awful original special effects footage utilized for the film is the one thing most will remember when THE GIANT CLAW comes up in passing conversation - and with good reason. First, and most notable, is the design of the bird herself. I can understand entirely that someone somewhere along in preproduction might have had the awesome idea that a giant vulture with sharp pointy teeth, flaring nostrils, and a crazy puff of hair sticking out of its skull might be a pretty crazy thing to build - what I don't understand is how any such thing was ever allowed to make it past the pages of the conceptual artist's portfolio. While the face of the bird puppet is well animated - as has been previously mentioned - the rest of the body fares considerably worse. Each flap of the wings jolts the body upwards and downwards in a cartoonish fashion and the wire-powered simulation of flight never achieves any of even the basest levels of realism. The miniature devices the bird encounters are likewise embarrassing - notable among them are the exploding hot rod (which looks to be nothing but a little box, four glued-on wheels, and a smoking fuse) and the train featured in the infamous sausage-links scene. New York features only three real miniature buildings - the Empire State Building, the United Nations building, and something unidentified that the bird slams into unexpectedly. The illusion of a city is accomplished by surrounding every shot of the bird in New York with cardboard mock-ups of a few photographed buildings - these cardboard mock-ups are used over and over again with no concern at all for geographical continuity.

As incorporated by the editors of the film, the original special effects footage becomes all the more unconvincing. The aerial attack on the bird halfway through the film is accomplished, largely, by inter-cutting stock-footage of jets with the newer Mexican footage - sadly, the miniature planes devised by the Mexican production team don't match the stock footage in the least and the scene is rendered even more hysterical than it would otherwise have been. In a last ditch effort to make the film's effects work look better than it was, Clover Productions incorporated stock segments from EARTH VS. THE FLYING SAUCERS and THE THE WAR OF THE WORLDS [1953], to name just two of the cannibalized films. Whether or not they succeeded in this effort should be more than obvious. Adding to the cheapness of the production is the fact that, while not entirely noticeable at first glance, many of the sets are quite reused - the most obvious of these are the interiors of the planes that transport Mitch to Canada and attack the bird in the final battle, which are identical. Less obvious is that the same sets are used for the opening scene in the radar room and the following scene in Major/General Bergen's office and that the commercial airliner Mitch and Sally fly home to New York in is the same interior as the plane that carries the unfortunate CAB investigative team. The producers of THE GIANT CLAW never screened the finished product for the cast - as such, Jeff Morrow was first introduced to it when his home-town theater premiered it. According to his daughter, he was so embarrassed by what was on screen that he left the theater and waited for his family in the parking lot - a pity, really, as his personal contributions to the production were quite worthy enough.

In the end, THE GIANT CLAW is as essential a 50's science fiction opus as THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL [1951] or FORBIDDEN PLANET [1956] - it simply occupies the opposite side of the qualitative spectrum. The entirely competent theatrical production coupled with the hilariously incompetent special effects work rank the film high above other lower budgeted scifi fair of the time in my mind, however - I will never consider it anything less than the greatest bad movie experience the world has to offer. By all means, see it - in fact, I demand it. And if you feel like drinking to it, here are a few simple rules to follow.

1) Take a shot every time a connection of any kind between the bird and Battleship is mentioned.

2) Take a shot every time the titular beast appears in a closeup.

3) Take two shots every time one of the main characters (Mitch, Sally, Dr. Noymann, and the Generals) come to an entirely ridiculous conclusion about something.

And if you really want to get plastered you can make a brave attempt at my only rule for my very first THE GIANT CLAW drinking game:

Take a shot every time stock footage rears its ugly head.

Enjoy. But enjoy responsibly.