Yes, ‘fraid I feel positively compelled to stand up and be counted in support of “The Giant Claw”(if only for sentimental reasons).It’s yet another of those decidedly creaky but fun Z – Grade sci fi flicks from the golden days of late night television.
If you look closely at one of the Pentagon scenes where Jeff Morrow and lovely Mara Corday are chatting to military chief Robert Shayne you might just detect Mr Shayne trying hard to stifle a laugh as he turns away from the camera at one point. And by jingo, by crikey … who could blame him ? He’s just finished delivering an impassioned speech about “Bombarding the creature with guns, rockets and cannons … God help us ….. NOTHING can stop It”! He’s knows only too well of course that the so called “Monster” looks like an escapee from a Safeway freezer. In fact, it looks like a Christmas turkey that got away halfway through being plucked ……. about 47 years earlier! I mean, like man , that’s got to be the most grisly lookin’ buzzard in the entire history of ornithology.
After 70 minutes of failing to succumb to constant direct hits by interbalistic missiles the creature does, indeed, appear to be unstoppable. Finally, Vic and Mara decide to climb aboard a technologically challenged DC 3 prop plane which has some sort of unspecified atomic ray gun hangin’ out the back of it. Apparently the idea is to squirt puffs of talcum powder in the pot boiler’s face in the hope of blinding it and forcing it to crash land into the North Atlantic. And guess what ….. the whole crazy scheme WORKS!
Sure enough the buzzard cops a blast right in the baby blues, goes into a nose dive and takes a dramatic plunge into Neptune’s Garden. OK, so what if the final impact does look suspiciously like a pile of garden rubbish being flung into a tank of water by someone who was standing just off camera. Even the most world weary monster chasers couldn’t help but to feel just a touch sad as we watch the brave bird slowly disappear beneath the waves, Titanic style.
Of course, it probably deserved it when you think about all those model cars that it destroyed and all those papier mache buildings that it sent crashing to the floor of the Columbia Studios.
