You
may recall that In
our last review of The
Beast from 20000 Fathoms, we talked
about all the films that were a direct
result of that particular film's box-office success.
Hoping to cash in, today's film borrowed
heavily on that film's formula but really
fudged-up on one vitally important ingredient: It's
monster.
Oh
brother, did it fudge-up on it's monster...
Our
film begins with, what else, copious
amounts of stock footage and our good
friend the overly redundant narrator
explaining what we're looking at: We're
way up north in Canada along the D.E.W.
line (and if you don't know what
that is, go watch The
Deadly Mantis),
where civilian engineer Mitch MacAfee (Jeff
Morrow) hot-rods around in a military
fighter jet while his companion on the
ground, Sally Caldwell (Mara
Corday),
crunches numbers on a new radar set-up
they're testing.
After
some idiotic banter -- that I think is
supposed to be implicit sexual innuendo
between our two leads, Mac spots a UFO
moving at such great speeds that it blurs
right past him. He radios it in, and
despite the fact that his blur, his blur
as big as a battleship, doesn't appear on
the new fangled radar, an intercept
squadron is launched to investigate
(just in case it's those pesky Russians
wanting to start some).
Mac
lands his jet and gets a blistering earful
by the base commander for wasting
tax-payers money with his false alarms (you
mean besides letting civilians muck around
in one of your jets?). His rant
abruptly ends when word comes that
one of the search planes has gone missing
-- after it reported spotting a blur, a
blur as big as a battleship.
Wasting
more tax dollars, Mac and Sally appear to
be the only cargo on a military
transport back to the States. When the
C-47 encounters some rough turbulence, some
rough turbulence as rough as a battleship,
Mac rushes to the cabin, but then the turbulence
hits them again, hard, and the pilot is
bludgeoned unconscious. Our hero takes the
controls and the film blindsides us with
our first atrocious F/X shot as the balsawood C-47
goes into a nose dive -- and it appears
to be having some transmission problems
while it plummets to the ground as it
seems to be stuck in neutral, and then full
reverse(!), before gravity reasserts
itself. Mac proves his piloting skills by pulling the
plane out of it's terminal nosedive and
belly-lands it into some trees. He and
Sally manage to get the pilot out before
the plane explodes -- and who knew
balsa was that volatile.
They
find refuge at the farmhouse of Pierre,
French comedy relief and provider of
spiked apple-cider, and contact the proper
authorities. Mac is convinced that his UFO
attacked them. but again, nothing appeared
on radar so no one, including Sally,
believes him. Pierre thinks it is the Le
Cocona (or something): a
mythical giant bird like creature, and
according to legend, if you see this
creature it means your own death is
imminent.
With
that plot device now out in the open,
something starts spooking Pierre's livestock.
When he goes out to investigate, Mac and Sally
here him scream. They find him and drag
him back inside where he raves about seeing the
Le Cocona, but Mac thinks he's hysterical
for drinking too much Apple Jack. The
local constabulary arrive and they're
supposed to take Mac and Sally to the
airport and a plane bound for New York. As
their car pulls away, the camera pans over
to reveal the giant footprint of a bird, a
bird as big as a battleship, embedded in
the ground -- and
if this film has one redeeming F/X shot, that's the only
one.
On
the plane ride back, Mac takes his best
shot at stealing a kiss from Sally. It's
his best shot because she's asleep. After
some more groan inducing banter, Sally
mentions something about a pattern. The
lone filament in Mac's brain sparks to
life and he
asks to see one of Sally's maps, and then plots
out all the sightings of the UFO, a UFO as
big as a batt -- ah, forget it. That
aforementioned filament quickly sparks out as Mac
then draws a spiral pattern, connecting
all the dots, which can mean only one
thing: The UFO is very very dizzy. Speaking on
behalf of the audience, a fellow passenger
asks them to be quiet (because they
aren't making a whole lot of sense.)
The
military flies in a special investigative
team to examine the wreckage of Mac's
downed airplane, but before they arrive, their plane is buzzed by a UFO.
The pilot radios a mayday, reporting
they're under an attack by a giant bird, a
bird as big as a -- oh, yeah, I was going
to stop doing that. And then the goofiest dang monster in screen
history finally reveals itself and what
little credibility this film had left is
chucked clean out the window...
Wow.
Our
stuffed-prop monster manages to snatch the
balsawood plane without disturbing the
wires holding it up, and those that manage to
bail out are quickly set upon by this
flying monstrosity-- and insult to
our intelligence. Picking them off one by one,
the bird snatches them in it's
beak with a satisfyingly gruesome crunch...
Can
you believe what we just saw? I can
understand if you can't quite get your
mind around it. It took me a while, too.
Now
I encourage everyone to pause the film now
to fully recover from those uncontrollable
laughing fits as we ponder how -- HOW!, how
in the hell did this thing ever get
committed to film:
Film
producer Sam Katzman left behind an
exhaustive body of work and almost all of
them made money. Of course when you
consider his budgets and "five to
nine day wonder" shooting schedules,
that statement kind of loses some of it's
luster. I mean, how hard could that really
be?
Katzman's
thrifty career began producing serials and
Tim McCoy westerns, and then he graduated over
to the
"Poverty Row" at Monogram
for a few Bela Lugosi vehicles and bilked
The East Side/Dead End Kids/Bowery Boys
until they were all long in the tooth. The man
had a legendary reputation for his miserly
budgets and never met a corner he couldn't
cut.
How
cheap was he? Former Dead End Kid Huntz
Hall often tells a story of how Katzman
came on to the set one day when his
director wasn't working fast enough to
suit him. Asking how many pages had been
shot, hoping he had done the slated ten,
the director answered five. Katzman then took
the script, ripped five pages out and said
they were done for the day.
Then
it was off to Columbia, working for the
equally minded Harry Cohn, where he
cranked out more serials and one
particular flash of brilliance when he and
Kirk Alyn brought the Man of Steel to life
in The Adventures of Superman.
(He also produced the original Batman
serial as well.)
One of the firsts to exploit the
burgeoning rock-n-roll scene with a string
of pictures, including not one, but two,
movies based on "The Twist",
Katzman had a
knack for cashing in on fads, squeezing
every last cent of it, and then move on to
the next big thing.
Katzman, of course, hedged his bets by countering
these pro-teen films
with plenty of juvenile delinquent fair
like Teenage
Crime-Wave. He's also
responsible for two of Elvis' most reviled
pictures, Harum
Scarum and Kissing
Cousins, and that's
really saying something.
Katzman
had better luck and results with his
sci-fi pictures. Eddie Cahn's Creature
with the Atom Brain, Fred Sears' Earth vs.
The Flying Saucers -- and his totally
neglected The Werewolf -- are actually
pretty good (and
a tip of the proverbial hat to those who
overachieved on those projects.) He
even road shotgun as executive producer on
Charles H. Schneer's first effort It
Came from Beneath the Sea,
and
this probably explains why the octopus
only had six tentacles instead of eight.
With
The Giant Claw, however, Katzman went back
to the well perhaps one too many times.
Bringing Sears back to direct, he cast
genre veterans Morrow, Corday and Morris
Ankrum. Couple all that with a script from
two screenwriters who mainly wrote
westerns and jungle pictures -- and the
fateful decision to farm out the
special-effects to a studio in Mexico City
specifically on monetary grounds (in
other words, it was a lot cheaper),
this combination was destined to blow up
in Katzman's face.
And
boy did it go boom.
Where
were we? Oh, yeah...
The
rest of the plot basically becomes
irrelevant for the remainder of the picture
because after we witness the monster in
full view, the rest of it really doesn't
matter. All we really want to see is that
gangly thing in action again. Our protagonists finally get to see it, too,
when they check out photos from some
cameras that were sent up in balloons for
an "Earth curvature calibration"
study. Luckily, the bird buzzed one of
those balloons and came in for a close-up.
Now
that they know what it is, General
Buzzkirk (Robert Shayne) and General
Considine (Morris Ankrum) are convinced
they can bring it down. After a
stock-footage tour of the globe, the
monster is attacked by a squadron of
jet-fighters. Their rockets prove useless
and the monster destroys them all (magically
changing the shape of the stock-footage
planes when it eats them.)
They
then consult with Dr. Karol Noymann (Edgar
Barrier) -- no relation to that guy
from The
Invisible Invaders
-- who makes a quantum leap in
logic when he suggests that the giant bird
is from outer space. He even pushes it
further, claiming the bird is from an
anti-matter galaxy and projects an
anti-matter shield; that's why the
rockets and cannons had no effect. They
detonated when they hit the shield. Well,
actually, in theory any matter that
touches anti-matter would explode -- like
parachutists and balsawood airplanes. They
quickly explain away that plot-hole by
theorizing the monster can control the
shield and shut it off when it feeds.
While
work
commences to try and counteract the
anti-matter shield, Sally gets in on
the wild postulating and suggests the
reason the bird landed on Earth was to
nest and lay eggs. One creature is bad
enough (believe
me), so Mac deduces that the nest
must be near Pierre's farm. Commandeering a helicopter,
they round up Pierre
and within a very short time come under
attack but Mac manages to land the helicopter
before getting eaten. They follow the bird,
and sure enough, it has built a nest, and
nestled in the center is a very large egg.
Pierre, being French, quickly surrenders
and runs away. Sally takes up his rifle,
being from Montana and all(!), and she and
Mac scramble the egg. Enraged, the bird
takes it out on poor Pierre. (And
since the egg broke when you shot it, I'm
assuming the shield was down. Why not take
a few shots at that thing's ugly noggin'
while you were at it?)
Poor
Pierre, he did prophesize his own death,
but that doesn't stop Mac and Sally from
stealing his car to get back. They're
passed by some hot-rodding teenagers who
quickly become buzzard-chow.
With
that subplot now safely tucked out of the
way, work continues on the anti- anti-matter force field endeavor. Mac and
Noymann hit upon an idea for a "mu-messon"
cannon that will disrupt the anti-matter
long enough for Buzzkirk to blow the thing
out of the sky. Of course, they have to
develop a working model first...
The
development montage is interrupted for a
truly incredible scene as the bird monster
attacks and plucks a train right off the
tracks, and then flaps away with the whole
train
dangling from it's claw.
The
development of the cannon moves along
slowly until Mac blows up the lab. Eureka!
He
finally realized all they had to do was,
duh, reverse the polarity. They have to
quickly mount the cannon into the rear gun
of an old B-17 because the giant bird is
in the process of leveling a very poor replica
of New York City.
Buzzkirk
and Considine fly the plane, while Mac mans
the gun with Noymann and Sally along for
calculations and moral support. The bird
chases them and Mac blasts it with the
cannon. Hoping the contraption worked,
Considine orders the shore batteries to
open fire. Luckily, it did work and the cannons blow
the bird right out of the sky. Plummeting into
the water, the smoking carcass slowly sinks beneath the
surface.
The
Earth is saved again.
The
End
While
The Giant Claw was in pre-production,
Katzman really sold his director and cast
on the fantastic effects that were going
to bring the fearsome, giant space bird to
life on screen. So with visions of a sleek
and deadly foe, production commenced.
Everyone involved, except for the crew down in
Mexico, had no clue what the finished
product was destined to look like and
these visions of grandeur soon became delusional
as the resulting efforts were -- well...Wow...
The
written word does not do this monster
justice. One must watch, experience, and
endure The Giant Claw to fully appreciate
the -- what is the word I'm looking for,
inept grandeur of it. My god. Look at that
thing and try not to laugh. From it's mangy
tail feathers to the Larry Fine haircut on
the tip of it's pointy head, and from it's big
googley-eyes and flaring nostrils to the
loose molars in its crooked beak, one can
only watch stupefied before erupting with
uncontrolled laughter. Whether
it's a stuffed-prop twirling on visible
wires in erratic trajectories for the long
shots, or an articulated marionette for
the close ups, this monster transcends bad
into a whole new realm of incredulity.
There have been worse and less animate
monsters on the big screen, but this, this
is just insane.
For the worst
puppet monster F/X you'll have to cast
your eyes on Sid Pink's no less dubiously
inept Reptillicus.
The
monster isn't the only instance of failure
for the F/X crew. Take a look at the
wooden plane props, the balsawood buildings it
gets to destroy, and the firecracker
induced pyrotechnics. It all looks bad
enough, but when you add in the creature's
repeating gobble/cackling war-hoop -- "AWWK! AWWK!
AWWK! -- all hope is lost.
People
always talk about laughing themselves to
death. We're usually kidding or exaggerating,
but on two separate
occasions, I actually feared my life while
laughing: One was my first screening of O'
Brother Where Art Thou when the three
escaped convicts are pulled out of the
train by their leg-irons, domino style -- I was laughing so
hard I couldn't get any air to go in and
damned near passed out. The second was my
first screening of The Giant
Claw,
and by the
monsters third appearance, I had pulled a
muscle in my stomach from laughing too
hard -- off
course I was about five-sheets to the wind
at the time. Sometimes beer and bad
monster movies can be detrimental to your
health.
Upon
first seeing the footage, I can't even fathom
what went through the producer's mind
during the editing process. To save more
money, Katzman cannibalized footage, F/X and even the soundtrack from his
earlier films -- Earth vs. The
Flying Saucers
was victimized the most, including
one clearly visible saucer crashing
through a wall during the bird's rampage
in New York.
Audiences
should have been suspicious that all the
promotional artwork for the film
purposefully omitted showing the monster's
head. Just it's long neck stretching off
the page while the claws do all the
damage.
Both
Morrow and Corday would go on to tell of
embarrassing trips to the theater to
finally see the end results of their work.
Morrow left early and headed to the bar,
while Corday sunk lower and lower in her
seat. Both of their careers never fully
recovered after this picture. Sears
dropped dead of a heart attack not long
after the film premiered. (And no,
this wasn't the cause of it. At least I
think it wasn't.)
Without
missing a beat, Katzman put this disaster
behind him and kept cranking them out
until his own death in 1973.
This
movie...What is it about this movie that
makes me love it so much in spite of
myself. It's just a paint by the numbers
plot (that's eternally stuck on one
metaphor for the creature),
hampered by ludicrous effects and laced
with pseudo-science gobbledygook that
doesn't make one darn bit of sense. It's
hero is a blockhead who is called on to do
everything, but it does have a very cute
and spunky heroine. And so help me, once
you get past the initial reaction to the
monster, it is quite beautiful in an
atrocious kind of way.
Somehow
this movie, and others
like it, transcend all the cards dealt
against it -- and we're talking about the
entire deck, including the jokers, folks
-- and reaches a new level of
enjoyment that is truly baffling and
unfathomable for me to explain. I don't
know why, but I love every gawdawful
stinking minute of it -- lumps and all. Seek
this movie. Find this movie. Watch this
movie. And you -- defying all rationality
-- will love this movie, too. Trust me.
Posted: 10/17/04.
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