The Giant Claw (1957)
   Have you ever wondered what would happen if the buzzard from the Bugs Bunny cartoons grew to gigantic proportions and terrorized the world? You'll find out if you rent one of my favorite monster movies – The Giant Claw.

   Jeff Morrow (The Creature Walks Among Us) plays electronics engineer and part-time jet pilot Mitch MacAfee. Mitch, while on a test flight for the government, spots a blurry UFO that looks like a feather duster being pulled through the air. No one believes Mitch's story, including the saucy mathematician Sally Caldwell played by pinup girl Mara Corday.

   Soon, Mitch, Sally and some movie extras are back in the air to test fate when the plane is suddenly attacked. It causes the pilot to lurch forward (out of camera range), smear fake blood down the side of his face and fall back into his seat! Then a completely different model plane is on fire and spinning out of control! Fortunately, the model plane's fishing line guides it to a gentle belly landing! The actors escape the exploding aircraft but appear to be in greater danger by the director when flaming shards of metal are thrown at them while laying on the ground!

   Momentarily stranded, they are rescued by a local French Canadian farmer named Pierre and he takes the crew back to his cabin. Here, Sally convinces Mitch that if he drinks enough alcohol, he'll have the courage to talk to "top brass" on the telephone. In fact, most of this scene is one giant booze-fest.

   Then Pierre hears a disturbance outside. When he investigates, he is attacked and found unconscious by Mitch and Sally. A frantic Pierre babbles that he saw a creature with the head of a wolf and the body of a woman (???). (Close, Pierre…maybe you should lay off your homemade ‘applejack').

Soon, Mitch and the ever-present Sally are back in the air. On the plane, Mitch, knowing there are no sexual harassment charges in 1957, kisses Sally while she sleeps. What follows is a series of silly baseball/sex metaphors that has to be heard to be believed. Meanwhile, the feather duster is attacking another plane investigating Mitch's crash site. Thank God the committee members are ALREADY WEARING PARACHUTES when the plane starts to go down!

   This is when we, the viewing audience, get our first clear view of the giant bird and what a bird it is! Although the silliest-looking bird the world has ever seen, it still has an appetite for committee member skydivers wearing 3 piece suits. Later, just when our stars and the military are at a loss to identify the creature, Sally remembers that cameras from observation balloons are constantly rolling and soon we're all looking at crystal clear photos of the bird's giant nerdy face!

Miss Sally Caldwell, Mitch and the general fly all the way to Washington just so a second general can look at the film and say, “It's some sort of bird, alright…there's no question of that!” Despite having the superhuman ability to see images on a filmstrip without a light source behind it, the general also appears to be shy, reciting most of his lines standing with his back to the camera.

   Word comes via short wave radio that fighter planes are currently engaged in combat with the giant buzzard and we, the viewer, are taken there! The bird/beast that slowly glides on wires at “supersonic speed” is under attack by model planes! This scene contains two especially funny moments: First, the Giant Claw bites into a model plane COMPLETELY different than the plane shown in real footage. The second is a scene where the general listens to a pilot yelling, “No! It's coming after me! No! No!!!”, then the general switches off the radio in disgust. You gotta love a leader who cares so much about his men!

   Then Mitch makes the suggestion that is made in every great monster movie… USE THE ATOMIC BOMB! A scientist (every monster movie also has one of these) explains the bird uses an antimatter force field that explodes everything it touches. It also repels radar (And probably cleans ovens, for all we know). The bird can also lower the force field if it wants to consume skydivers in formal wear and can apparently screech without moving its mouth.

In the days that follow, the blurry feather duster is seen in all parts of the world. In one scene, there's a fire raging in the street but they don't show what caused it. Perhaps the Giant Claw launched an antimatter bird dropping? Meanwhile, as Sally deduces the bird has come to Earth to build a nest, the radio announces that America is under martial law and no one is allowed outside for their own safety. The military will also be in charge of distributing food and supplies??!!  Hey army, I've got an idea — how about sending some of those soldiers to go kill the giant monster bird!!

  Then Sally makes the second greatest guess of her life by predicting that, after flying over the ENTIRE WORLD, the giant bird is going to nest at Pierre's farm! Mitch and Sally take a plane (is it safe to be flying right now?) back to Pierre's farm where they take a helicopter (does anyone DRIVE anymore? I bet Mitch takes a Zeppelin when he needs a quart of milk!) to look for giant bird eggs.

Caldwell, Pierre and Mitch (carrying TWO rifles??) finally locate the Giant Claw's eggs. Sally takes one of the rifles and when Mitch looks surprised, she responds, “I'm from Montana.” Apparently all women in Montana know how to shoot a rifle. Sure enough, she's a crack shot and she crumbles eggs the size of the Superdome. And as protective as mother birds are, this one didn't think to put her invincible force field up around her precious young. Shortly after, a terrified Pierre buy's the farm (no pun intended) when he flees down a wide-open rode and becomes The Giant Snack!

   Mitch and Sally then take the late Pierre's truck (no time for grieving) and are harassed by a pack of wild 50s teenagers in a jalopy! “Hey, Daddy-O…Get that tin can off the rode!”, yells one of the hooligans. Then, to every senior citizen's delight, the punks are picked up by the Giant Claw, roadster and all! But wait! Upon further review, after falling hundreds of feet from the sky, their car EXPLODING on the way down, it seems the kids are merely stunned!

   After taking the kids to a nearby hospital (probably just outpatient stuff), Mitch and Sally regroup with the general and the scientist. Then we learn that Mitch, already electronics engineer and jet pilot, is also the most brilliant atomic research scientist on the planet, somehow knowing all kinds of scientific words I'm pretty sure don't really go together. He then basically commandeers the research lab and team to build some sort of atom-shooting gun that will disable the bird's force field. (Man, I wish I knew electronics!)

Next we see Mitch installing his atomic gun into the tail of a bomber (How long is all this taking? Can there be anything left of Earth to save?) The military finally uses its new weapon on the bird (Mitch didn't mention the effect would look like an exploding flash pod) and soon the bird is upside down in the river.
THE END

I watched this movie with friends who weren't into 50's horror movies and they thought it was a riot…especially the constant references to the bird being "as a big as a battleship!" This is one “horror” movie I've watched over and over. I highly recommend it!

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