The Giant Claw is about a UFO report that turns out to be a giant bird, things turn sour when the bird begins to wreak havoc upon people.
Being the buff on bad sci-fi movies that I am, I decided that I would give this movie ago, and to be honest, I got just what I expected. The Giant Claw is another classic of the bad sci-fi genre, it’s a cheesy, clichéd, badly acted, badly written, and badly directed film, but as you might have expected, all of this falls into the so bad it’s good category. I had heard how bad this movie was (and especially about how ridiculous the bird looked), and all of it’s true, this movie is bad, yet at the same time, there is just something about the movie that makes it enjoyable. I think what did it was the fact that I was laughing and laughing at the movie’s shoddy production values. However, I did not find this movie as enjoyable as some of Ed Wood’s movies. Fred Sears may have been good at making movies on the level of so bad it’s good, but he wasn’t a master like Ed Wood was. But all the same, this movie has plenty to recommend, especially if you are into those low budget sci-fi movies of the 1950’s and the 1960’s.
The special effects are terrible (but is it really surprising?). As far as cheap looking movie monsters go, I would say that the bird in this movie probably takes the cake. The bird is an obvious and extremely unconvincing marionette. It flies around destroying obvious models of buildings, and when the bird itself is finally taken down? It looks like somebody just throwing a tree branch into some water. And the acting, is terrible as well. In fact, I heard a story saying that nobody knew what the bird looked like until the movie’s release. Actor Jeff Morrow went to go see the movie at a screening in his hometown, and he recalled that everybody in the theater just burst into laughter whenever the bird appeared on screen, and afraid that anybody might recognize him, Morrow left and went to a bar. However, I was expecting it to be bad, and it was bad, but at the same time, I enjoyed it for the hilarity and the low quality production values.
In short, The Giant Claw is a classic of the bad sci-fi genre, it has got just about everything that you would expect to see from such a movie, bad production values, numerous special effect failures, laughable acting, cheesy dialogue, and much more. And like most people, the is a very high chance that whenever the bird appears on screen, you will end up laughing yourself silly at how cheap and silly it looks. On a more positive note, I will say that will the movie was bad, it wasn’t boring, it was at least entertaining. So in short, if you are a fan of this kind of movie, then step right up and enjoy the “dazzling spectacle” that is known as Fred Sears’ 1957 movie, The Giant Claw.
