Episode 33: The Giant Claw (1957)

If the Bird is the Word, then the Word is STINKY!
:=8P
This terrible monster bird moovie is fun on many levels – the moost obvious is the lame, fake-looking bird puppet which floats around the cheap sets, without ever flapping it wings (like it was on a string, perhaps?), attacking model trains and toy cars.  Apparently the ridiculous bird puppet comes from “some god-forsaken anti-matter universe”, and it’s here to build a nest & lay eggs in New York City.  Seriously.  Check out the latest Indie Film Cafe PODCAST to hear us moan and groan and put up a squawk, ’cause this turkey is really bird-brained…

Well, they try to kill it but, alas, the big bird is too tough and all the planes are destroyed.  So its up to doughty flyboy Jeff Morrow and cute math wiz in a skirt, Mara Corday, to say the day with their rear-end firing masonic atom gun.  One of the last films from prolific B moovie veteran Fred F. Sears (Don’t Knock the Rock, Durango Kid, The Werewolf) before he died, The Giant Claw laid a box office egg and was notoriously laughed out of the theaters.

Special guest host Lenore Miller is a scientist who is interning for NASA, and she joined us for our huge flapping disaster of a flick.  Moody and the MooCow scored it 8’s, while Ms. Lenore chimed in with a 5 – That give us an overall Stink Score of 21, and a stinky average of 7.0 – a veritable  bounty of 50’s stink – and hay, it was better than Snow Shark!

Check out the loud and annoying trailer HERE.  Someone posted the blu ray copy on YOUTUBE, god bless them.  Add the dvd to your stinky moovie flock from AMAZON.  Or get it as part of a 4-pack Sci-Fi Creature Classics pack HERE.  The German blu ray can be found here.  2 awesome posters can be found at THIS SITE – the MooCow wants them both!

“We shot the film before we ever got a look at this monster that was supposed to be so terrifying. The producers promised us that the special effects would be first class. The director – Fred Sears – just told us, ‘All right, now you see the bird up there, and you’re scared to death! Use your imagination.’ But the first time we actually got to see it was the night of the premiere. The audience couldn’t stop laughing. We were up there on screen looking like idiots, treating this silly buzzard like it was the scariest thing in the world. We felt cheated, that’s for sure, but they told us afterward that they just ran out of money. They couldn’t afford anything but this stupid puppet. But it was just terrible. I was never so embarrassed in my whole life.” – Jeff Morrow, in an interview prior to his death in 1993.

The Angry Video Game Nerd rated the bird puppet monster as his favorite giant movie monster of all time.  So there’s that.  But we here at IFC say check it out!

:=8)