In essence, The Giant Claw from 1957 is a decent monster movie programmer. The ludicrous monster ruins the film – but it is also the only thing that qualifies this movie for the status of a cult classic. 5/10

The Giant Claw. 1957, USA. Directed by Fred F. Sears. Written by Samuel Newman, Paul Gangelin. Starring: Jeff Morrow, Mara Corday, Morris Ankrum, Louis Merrill, Edgar Barrier, Robert Shayne. Produced by Sam Katzman.

During a test flight for the US air force, civilian contracted pilot and electrical engineer Mitch MacAfee (Jeff Morrow) sees an Unidentified Flying Object — something which he describes as “the size of a battleship”. As radars haven’t picked up anything near Mitch’s plane, he is admonished for pulling a costly prank — one of the planes that was sent out to investigate his “flying battleship” was lost. Even his colleague, mathematician Sally Caldwell (Mara Corday) makes fun of his “hallucinations”. But as more planes go missing after their pilots have reported UFO sightings, army brass take an interest, and Mitch and Sally are called in as experts by Lt. Gen. Edward Considine (Morris Ankrum) and Gen. Van Buskirk (Robert Shayne). Mitch and Sally take a plane out to investigate across the Canadian border, but are attacked by — something. Mitch is able to crash land the damaged plane near the house of farmer Pierre (Louis Merrill), who takes them in. But during the night, while attending to his animals, Pierre is knocked to the ground by a great gust of wind, and, terrified, swears that he saw “La Carcagne”, a giant mythical bird, which the superstitious French Canadians hold as an omen of sudden death. At the end of the scene, the camera pans out to reveal a gigantic bird’s footprint in Pierre’s field.

Thus begins Columbia’s SF horror film The Giant Claw from 1957, a cult classic that has been widely ridiculed since its release for its outlandish monster, a crazy-looking rubber buzzard with wild, bulging eyes and straggly tufts of hair on its head. The film was produced by the infamous Sam Katzman and directed by low-budget specialist Fred Sears, and is filled with reliable B-movie veterans.

Soon the giant buzzard reveals itself to the public, and the air force is assembled to take it down — but bullets and rockets have no effect on it. With the help of Dr. Karol Noymann (Edgar Barrier), Mitch and Sally work out the bird is videning its territory in a spiralling pattern, which helps them track it without the use of radar. While the US is put on lockdown, the team try to figure out why it doesn’t show up on radar and why it is seemingly invulnerable. Dr. Noymann is able to confirm that the vulture itself is flesh and blood, but that emits a ray shield of antimatter. He speculates that it is alien in origin and comes from some distant antimatter galaxy.

While they are trying to figure out how to kill the bird, Sally finally gets word about the giant footprint left by Pierre’s farm, and speculates that it has landed in the vicinity on order to nest. If its eggs were allowed to hatch, the world would have a catastrophe on their hands. She and Mitch travel back to Canada, locate the nest and shoot the egg to smithereens. Unfortunately, Pierre is killed as the vulture takes out its revenge.

Back in the US, Mitch has a theory that the bird’s ray shield could be penetrated by a bombardment of exotic atoms called muonic atoms. The only problem is that such atoms can only exist in isolated laboratory conditions, and have a lifetime of a split second. The three scientists get on the problem of creating a machine that can not only create stable muonic atoms, but also project them in large quantities. After much trial and error, they are finally able to create just such a machine, and are rushed to install it in an old B-52 bomber, right as the Giant Claw attacks New York, destroying the Empire State building and pecking at the UN building. All of our five central characters pack into the plane, putting their lives on the line for humanity. But will they succeed?

Background & Analysis

Sam Katzman, executive at Columbia, had had magnificent successes with giant monsters and aliens in the past: Ray Harryhausen’s splendid animation in films like It Came from Beneath the Sea (1955, review) and Earth vs. the Flying Saucers (1956, review) turned what was essentially routine programmers into spectacles. In 1957, he was at it again. As usual, Katzman hired capable actors with some marquee draw for fans of science fiction movies. Jeff Morrow had been in This Island Earth (1955, review) and Kronos (1957, review) and Mara Corday played the ingenue in Tarantula (1955, review). And when giant monsters and aliens were involved, fans almost expected Morris Ankrum to show up in a uniform. Fred F. Sears was a journeyman director, who showed from time to time that he was able of pretty sophisticated stuff when given the chance, even though he was mostly stuck doing programmer westerns.

Katzman had envisioned making yet another cult classic, and contacted Ray Harryhausen for the monster effects. Unfortunately, Harryhausen turned him down. Perhaps too busy with other projects, or perhaps not given the time and resources for this kind of projects. Undaunted, Katzman soldiered on. He hired his two lead actors on a pitch that he had found a brilliant special effects company in Mexico, who were going to create the monster effects for the movie. In an interview with Tom Weaver, Corday remembers that Katzman made it sound like this was going to be a real special effects extravaganza, and that the Giant Claw was going to be a flying menace that would take audiences by storm. The actors never saw any concept art of the design of the monster, or any of the special effects, but acted in accordance with the awe and terror described in the script. Little would they known that what they had envisioned as some kind of streamlined giant eagle (as per the poster art) would turn out to be a crazy-looking buzzard with a pot belly, a cartoonish face and a comical tuft of hair on its head. During the premiere, lead actor Jeff Morrow reportedly snuck out of the theatre before the ending of the film, so he wouldn’t have to face the audience. To Weaver, Mara Corday said that Morrow had behaved as they were doing Shakespeare on the set, so Morrow’s pained reaction to the end result isn’t surprising.

Interestingly, no Mexican company or person is credited for the special effects. According to some sources, who attribute “some sources”, Katzman had found a model maker in Mexico who created the model for as little as $50, a fee that even low-budget monster maker Paul Blaisdell at AIP would outright reject. All three credited special effects creators were Hollywood regulars, and out of them Ralph Hammeras is the one with with most experience creating miniatures, models and and technical effects, so out of three credited special effects people, he would be the most likely candidate for creating monster effects, but it is highly improbable that Hammeras, who worked on numerous prestige movies, would have designed such a wacky thing. Actually, the separate, large head of the buzzard has pretty elaborate animation, such as eyes that move in their sockets and flaring nostrils. However the full model in flight is clearly no stop-motion animated creature, but simply a cheap marionette, which severely limits its manouverability. Alas, we will probably never know who designed this beloved monstrosity.

The Giant Claw isn’t a terrible movie as such. In fact, if you remove the monster puppet, it is a fairly competent low-budget monster movie following the formula laid out by The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms and Them! (1954, review). A protagonist discovers a monster. No-one believes him. He acquires a female companion with whom he investigates and tries to convince those around him. Eventually, the mystery regarding the monster is solved, and it is found out that it is moving toward a major city, which it will wreak havoc upon if it can’t be stopped. However, it is invulnerable. Finally, scientists and the military in cooperation find a way way to kill the beast, but it means someone has to put his (and hers, which the men initially protest against) live on the line in order to save humanity. The script is clichéd and has some terrible dialogue — but it’s no more terrible than a whole number of other routine monster movies. And then we see the buzzard. According to Jeff Morrow, the entire audience burst out laughing when the monster was seen on screen for the first time — and that was not what the actors or screenwriters had been aiming at. Poor director Fred Sears. I’m sure he tore his hair out in tufts when he was delivered the monster – or monster footage. But the wacky buzzard is the reason the The Giant Claw has become a cult classic. Without it, it would just be another The Deadly Mantis (1957, review).

The movie suffers from the same problem as so many other 50’s monster movies: Once we have figured out what the monster is, and decided it must be destroyed (usually 20-30 minutes into the film), we still have 40-50 minutes left of running time, and no other real plot than to find a way to kill the beast, which is going to be solved by three minutes of techno-babble somewhere around the 60-minute mark anyway. So what to do with the remaining half hour? In this case, a detour back to Canada on a mission to destroy the buzzard’s eggs. It’s a logical development, in a way, but the fact that it is the two scientists that undertake this mission is hardly credible (yes, I’m sure there was some contrived effort to explain why a team of army boys couldn’t blow the eggs sky high). There’s also lots of footage of people sitting around thinking and writing notes. The problem is, it is difficult to make sitting around thinking and writing notes exciting on film. Thus, as the majority of these movies, The Giant Claw sags in the middle.

The film does provide a good deal of opportunities for riffing even without the buzzard, though. For example, the romantic subplot. It’s important to note that up until Mitch and Sally crash land in Canada there has been no hint whatsoever about any romantic interest between the two characters, nor is there any such hint during their ordeals in Canada. While on a commercial flight home, having just discussed the strange phenomenon they have encountered, Mitch suddenly leans over sticks his toungue down Sally’s throat. In defense of the screenwriters, Sally seems just as surprised as the audience. Another thing is the GIANT FOOTPRINT just metres away from Pierre’s farm house, that nobody notices until days after it appeared, despite the fact that it is bigger than Pierre’s house. And there certainly must be a drinking game involving the phrase “flying battleship”. Considering that the buzzard could hardly be mistaken for anything else than a giant, wild-eyed turkey, it is remarkable how many times it gets compared to a hypothetical “flying battleship”.

This film has some good science and some bad science. I suppose scientists in 1957 must have recently been able to create so-called muonic atoms — which are totally a real thing — in a laboratory setting, and one of the screenwriters ripped his secret weapon from a science magazine. The lecture on antimatter is also fairly correct, but things start going sideways when the eggheads explain that the giant buzzard is made out of normal matter, but emits an antimatter ray shield because it comes from an antimatter galaxy. Also, muonic atoms in this film can be shot from a cannon and register as little puffs of smoke. People who know such stuff say that the film uses the wrong kind of airplanes, but since I don’t know such stuff it never bothers me if it is a Canadian XYZ Creeper or an US ABC Crawler in the sky.

Over the years, there have been several theories on the origins of the idea of the Giant Claw, or “La Carcagne” as Pierre the farmer calls it. First of all, the idea of making a giant, supersonic bird the monster of a film surely came from Toho’s kaiju movie Rodan (1956, review), with which The Giant Claw shares many similarities. Oddly, though, the film treats the French Canadians as some kind of superstitious native inhabitants, with their old mythologies and secret knowledge of the land. Of course, in reality, there is no myth of “la carcagne”, not among the French Canadians, nor anyone else. In reality, the screenwriters have borrowed the name of the creature from a collection of short stories by US author Samuel Hopkins Adams, which was published in book form in 1955, probably not very long before work on the screenplay began. Collected under the title Grandfather Stories, the book contained 14 short stories previously published in the New Yorker magazine. Adams had written them all “as if his grandfather had told them to him”. In reality, most of it was probably fiction. One of the stories is called Grandfather and a Winter’s Tale, from 1951, and recounts a tale of a smuggler crossing Lake Ontario when he is attacked by a sort of witch-like creature called “la carcagne”, which devours the smuggler clean down to the bown. In the story, la cargagne is described as “a storm hag with a wolf’s head, a vampire’s mouth, and bat’s wings”, whereas the screenwriters have Pierre describe it as “a devil in the storm with the face of a wolf and the body of the woman with wings bigger than I can tell”. Not quite grounds for plagiarism, but close enough for us to realise where the idea comes from.

By the late 50’s, McCarthyism and the so-called “Second Red Scare” were weakening in the US, and in 1957 a number of court decisions overturned previous rulings against suspected communists. When in the beginning of the decade, all science fiction films seemed to in one way or another take a stance in matters concerning communist infiltration, McCarthyism itself, Soviet invasion or nuclear war, by the end of the decade, fewer and fewer SF movies seemed to comment on political issues or world events. The tropes created as political allegories in the early 50’s remained, but were now more often than not drained of their metaphors. Alien invaders were no longer Russians in disguise and giant monsters were just that: giant monsters created for entertainment purposes. It’s hard to find a political allegory in The Giant Claw. It’s a pure entertainment product.

The low budget of The Giant Claw is reflected in its ample use of stock footage. The film borrows special effects, model shots, aviation footage and military stock foootage from at least six other films. The majority of the original footage is studio-bound, largely people talking in offices, farm houses or airplanes. However, the screenwriters and director Sears are clever enough to switch often enough from one interior to another, wich prevents the film from becoming cramped and static. The reliable actors also help the film along. Jeff Morrow was always good, and Mara Corday was one of the better B-movie leading ladies of the 50’s, always bringing a strong sense of personality and some depths to her roles, despite the fact that she didn’t always have much to work with. Morris Ankrum and Robert Shayne are always reliable, however, these are not roles in which they get to show much diversity. As a fun tidbit, one commenter pointed out that when Ankrum’s and Shayne’s characters, a lt. general and a general, shared the cockpit in the final climactic scene, they were the highest-ranking military personnel ever to fly a US air force plane into battle in film history — and they set a record that lasted for almost 40 years, until the president of the United States took to the cockpit and battled UFO’s in Independence Day in 1996. And as a duo, they probably hold the record today still.

Bottom line? The Giant Claw isn’t nearly as bad as its reputation would suggest, in fact it’s a fairly decent film — but without the wonderfully wacky bird, it would be just another late 50’s SF programmer. However, the giant fowl which turned the movie into a turkey has also made it immortal. As film historian Bill Warren put it: “The sight of this pathetic horror has been known to bring strong men to their knees in helpless laughter”. This is just plain, silly fun.

Reception & Legacy

The Giant Claw was released on a double bill with another Fred Sears-directed movie, The Night the World Exploded (review), a far more serious excercise. I haven’t been able to find any box office number, but considering neither of the films probably cost much more than $100,000 to make, in all probability they made back their budgets. Unsurprisingly, the bird was the centre of the attention from newspaper critics. W.E.J.M. in the Buffalo Courier noted good performances, but stated the buzzard was “obvious hokum”. G.B. at the Miami Herald wrote that “an unintentended laugh is suppressed” at the sight of the monster. C.S. at the Los Angeles Times said the bird has “the neck of a mange-stricken swan, the tail of a moulting partridge, the face of a worried worry bird and a turkey’s tail feathers for its wings”. The critic continued: “The human acting is competent, but [the] script is a powerful aid in reduding the picture to near-complete ludicrousness”. The Motion Picture Exhibitor said: “At one point the bird lays an egg, and so does the picture”. Harrison’s Reports wrote: “There is no intended comedy relief but it should provoke many laughs”.

Today, the film has a 4.6/10 audience rating on IMDb, based on over 4,000 votes and a 2.5/5 rating on Letterboxd, based on 3,000 clicks. Critics have often been harsher on the film that the general audience. TV Guide gave it 1/4 stars, noting “the ‘special’ effects are laughable”. Many critics note that the film works fine up to a point, “however there comes the point where the entire film collapses in on itself. That point is the one where we get to see the title creature, which may well count as one of the most pathetic and ridiculous monsters to ever appear on screen in the entire history of the giant monster movie.” The quote is by Richard Scheib’s 1/5 star review at Moria. Dave Sindelar at Fantastic Movie Musings and Ramblings writes: “Of all the monsters I’ve ever seen, this snarling, nostril-flaring, ragged, hair-tufted excuse for a buzzard is the most knee-slappingly funny monster ever devised; too bad the movie wasn’t intended as a comedy”.

On the other hand, some critics duly note that The Giant Claw has become a fan favourite in spite of itself. Phil Hardy in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction Films calls it “the best unintentionally funny monster movie of the fifties”. Gary Loggins wrote at Cracked Rear Viewer: “Despite the fact that the monster is so ludicrous, I really enjoyed The Giant Claw. It’s fast-moving and fun, with nary a wasted minute”. Mark Cole at Rivets on the Poster says: “This one is stupid, silly, and crammed full of mangled lines and overblown narration. It is also a lot of fun. So shut your brain off and you will enjoy this one far more than most of the ‘good’ SF monster movies out there.” Youtube critic Robin Bailes at Dark Corners sums it up by noting that the bird “takes a film that was never going to be a classic … and sort of makes it one. […] It’s ludicrous — but will you ever forget it?”

Cast & Crew

Director Fred Sears was born in 1913 and started his career as a stage actor, producer and director, until he was hired by Sam Katzman as a dialogue coach for Columbia in 1946, a company he stayed loyal to until his death in 1958. He also appeared numerous times in front of the camera in small roles, before graduating to direction in 1949, often getting handed westerns, crime films and other B-movies. His films were routinely undistinguished up until 1956, when Katzman handed him the double bill of Earth vs. the Flying Saucers (review) and The Werewolf. A more staple diet of his was the teenage movie, such as Teen-Age Crime Wave (1955), which made him a natural choice for director when Katzman was able to get a contract with rock musician Bill Haley, whose megahit “Rock Around the Clock” had taken off after being featured in the intro of MGM’s film Blackboard Jungle in 1955. Rock Around the Clock (1956), produced by Columbia, directed by Sears and featuring not only Bill Haley and His Comets, but also The Platters, Alan Freed, Tony Martinez and Freddie Bell, is often considered the first rock n’ roll musical film, and became a major sensation, taking home over $4 million dollars at the box office. However, Sears wasn’t able to capitalise on the film’s success, stuck as he was at Columbia, designated to its low-budget outfit, where he kept grinding out gangster movies, teen movies, westerns and the occasional SF film. Katzman hoped to repeat the success of Earth vs the Flying Saucers by having Sears direct another SF double bill in 1957: The Giant Claw and The Night the World Exploded. 

Lead actor Jeff Morrow was a veteran of the stage, a Shakespearean actor with experience from radio. He made his screen debut in 1953 with a lead in the spectacular A-picture The Robe, one of the first to be filmed in Cinemascope, and got rave reviews for his performance. However, for one reason or the other, he wasn’t able to follow up on the hype, and spent most of the 50’s alternating between A and B movies as a very respected character actor, but never a commercial star. He was picked up by Universal in 1955, as the studio wanted him for This Island Earth (review). Here, Morrow was immortalised as the dome-headed alien leader Exeter. He appeared in The Creature Walks Among Us in 1956 (review), and Kronos in 1957 (review). Later the same year, he had another SF lead, in the infamous turkey The Giant Claw. And much later, in 1971, Morrow did a walk-on part in Harry Essex’ abysmal Creature from the Black Lagoon remake Octaman, filling in for an actor who got sick. 

Actress and model Mara Corday was born Marilyn Watts, but changed her name because she thought her birth name wasn’t exotic enough for show business. All through her childhood she wanted to be in show business, and was eagerly spurred on by her mother, who even faked her birth certificate when she was seventeen so that she could get a job as a chorus girl – she had to be eighteen to get the gig. Talking to Tom Weaver, Corday says she has no regrets of using cheesecake photography as a springboard for her film carer (as late as 1958 she was Miss October in Playboy – you can check out her Playboy pictures here, no nudity). On the contrary, she was disappointed that Universal never used her sex appeal in any of the films she was in – instead they covered her up. Even in the last part of Tarantula, when she is running from the spider, she wears full pyjamas with a cover over – even when she requested to do it in a negligee, ”It was really conservative.”

After making a number of lousy westerns at Universal, Corday became fed up with bad genre roles. She turned down the role of the wife in The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957, review) and refused to make The Deadly Mantis (1957), a dangerous move as a contract player. She didn’t turn down the role because she disliked sci-fi films as such, but because she thought the roles were bad. She tells Weaver that she regrets not doing The Incredible Shrinking Man, since it became a classic, but on the other hand, she says, it did nothing for the woman who played ”her” role.

Morris Ankrum was a constant presence in science fiction films from the 50’s as military men, scientist and other authority figures. Ankrum was especially memorable as the Martian leader Ikron in Flight to Mars (1951, review), as the colonel fighting aliens in Invaders from Mars (1953, review) and as the UFO-abducted general in Earth vs. the Flying Saucers (1956). All in all, he appeared in at least 15 SF movies.

Robert Shayne had a long and prolific career on stage, in film and TV, without ever becoming neither Broadway nor Hollywood nobility. He had a string of supporting roles in A films in the forties, notably opposite Bette Davis in Mr. Skeffington (1944) and Barbara Stanwyck in Christmas in Connecticut (1945), and is sometimes remembered for his brief turn opposite Cary Grant in North by Northwest (1959). More often, however, he was cast in small, prominent or even leading roles in B movies, such as The Spirit of West Point (1947), sometimes described as the worst sports movie ever made.

Shayne is best known for appearing as Inspector Henderson in the TV-series Adventures of Superman (1952-1958). He appeared in numerous sci-fi films, such as Invaders from Mars (1953), The Neanderthal Man (1953, review), in which he actually played the lead, Tobor the Great (1954, review), Indestructible Man (1956, review), The Giant Claw (1957), Kronos (1957), How to Make a Monster (1958), The Lost Missile (1958), Teenage Cave Man (1958) and Son of Flubber (1963). In the sixties and seventies he was mainly seen on stage and on TV, and he practically retired in 1977 after nearly 50 years in the film business. He made a brief comeback in 1990-1991, then 90 years old, in two episodes of the TV series The Flash, as a newsstand salesman. He was actually blind at the time, and learned his lines by having his wife read them out for him.

Janne Wass

The Giant Claw. 1957, USA. Directed by Fred F. Sears. Written by Samuel Newman, Paul Gangelin. Starring: Jeff Morrow, Mara Corday, Morris Ankrum, Louis Merrill, Edgar Barrier, Robert Shayne, Frank Griffin, Clark Howart, Morgan Jones. Music: Mischa Bakaleinikoff et el. Cinematography: Benjamin Kline. Editing: Anthony DiMarco, Saul Goodkind. Art direction: Paul Palmentola. Sound: J.S. Westmoreland. Special effects: Ralph Hammeras, George Teague, Lawrence Butler. Produced by Sam Katzman for Clover Productions & Columbia Pictures.