31 Days of Halloween - The Giant Claw (1957)

The Earth is invaded by a giant space turkey. Really.

Synopsis

North of the Arctic Circle, a team of Air Force officers and technicians are testing out a new DEW (Distant Early Warning) Line radar. Mitch (Jeff Morrow) is an electronics engineer and pilot. Also involved is Sally (Mara Corday), a mathematician and system analyst. Mitch is conducting a test flight when something "as big as a battleship" flies past him. Whatever it is, it is invisible to radar. While flying back to New York, their transport is attacked and crashes. Mitch and Sally make it out of the wreckage.

Mata Corday. Don't all system analysts lounge around like this? I do.

More attacks follow as the space bird attacks trains, planes and automobiles. The military is unable to harm it, since it has an antimatter force shield. Mitch and Sally realize the bird is one Earth to lay its eggs. They deduce where it has laid them (at a farm in upstate New York where they took shelter after the airplane crash). They travel to the farm and destroy the eggs. Then, as an encore, Mitch comes up with a way to bring down the shield. In a final battle over New York City, the shield is destroyed, followed by the bird. The film ends with a shot of a claw sinking into the ocean.

Analysis

The Giant Claw has a reputation as one of the worst films ever made. Does it deserve this harsh judgement. No...and yes.

Compared to many of the other science fiction films of the era, it's somewhere in the middle of the pack as far as story and acting go. While not in the same league as classics like The Day The Earth Stood Still, The Thing from Another World to Them, it is no worse than movies like Earth vs The Flying Saucers or The Monster that Challenged the World. Jeff Morrow makes for a good Fifties-style geek of action. Mara Corday is hot and pretty believable as a science babe. Some of the supporting cast is wooden, but not offensively so. The story - monster attacks Earth, conventional means to fight it are useless, hero finds sciencey way to kill the monster, does so, gets the girl, the end - is found in a host of films. The dialogue is at times clever. After Mitch makes a window-rattling, fly-over of a building the Sally is in and, after being told that Mitch "makes his own rules" she says, "So does a three year old child until his mother spanks him." He replies (over the radio), "Mother, dear mother, I'm ready if you are." At other times it is pretty bad, but for the most part, the dialogue is what you'd expect in a Fifties sci-fi film.

What kills the movie (and, paradoxically, makes it memorable) are the special effects. People focus on the ludicrous bird (see image at right), but all the miniature work is terrible. It is worse than using store-bought models. Nothing matches up to the stock footage (of which there is a lot), the planes look like they were carved from balsa wood, the trains and cars look like toys.

Of course, the bird is the highlight of what is wrong with the visuals. It is poorly conceived, poorly designed and poorly executed. How anyone could have looked at this and said "yeah, that's a great monster" is beyond me. Even if the bird had been poorly animated, it could have been given a more menacing look. The explanation is that the effects work was farmed out to Mexico to save on costs and wasn't seen by the production team until it was too late to redo them. It may have achieved the cost-savings goal, but, at the cost of being anything but the object of laughter.

Of course, one could argue that if the film had had competent, but low-budget effects, no one would remember it.

Notes

The Giant Claw says, "Watch me or I'll leave a 5 ton 'gift' on your front lawn."

One little oddity: the screenplay writer, Samuel Newman, also wrote Invisible Invaders. One of the characters in that film is Doctor Karol Noymann. There is also a Doctor Karol Noymann in The Giant Claw. Coincidence? Character name reuse by a lazy writer? Or, an early attempt to create a cinematic universe? After being attacked by the space turkey, Earth is invaded by zombie-making invisible killers from the Moon! Eh, probably not.

Verdict

Worst movie ever? Nope. Some of the worst effects you'll see? Well, that's a better charge to lay against the film. Worth checking out? If you like the run-of-the-mill Fifties sci-fi and can see the humor in both the dialogue (intentional and otherwise) and the effects, then you might enjoy this movie. I find it to be cheesy fun, so I'd say, check it out.

Hey, and you can do so right here!