‘The Giant Claw’ or — An Inadvertent Masterpiece?

Warning — I might be about to commit sacrilege several times during this.

You see, producer Sam Katzman’s ‘The Giant Claw’ (1957) was originally to have stop motion special effects provided by the legendary Ray Harryhausen but due to various reasons, possibly budgetary, this never happened so a giant puppet was used instead. Usually I would view this as a huge deficiency against a monster movie but with ‘The Giant Claw’ this not only doesn’t hamper the film but in its own VERY weird way ends up somehow making it better. What? It’s better WITHOUT any Harryhausen?! Reality is not meant to work this way! Fortunately with ‘The Giant Claw’ we’re not dealing with reality in any way shape or form whatsoever, so…

I’ll keep the story description brief — a giant extraterrestrial bird made of antimatter attacks Earth and the humans must destroy it. It’s almost beautiful in its simplicity, like a haiku with a beak. It’s also pretty much par for the course with these Katzman produced monster movies as we endure a basic story with basic characters whilst waiting for the meticulously crafted creature to show up and the excitement can start. At least, that’s what would normally happen but ‘The Giant Claw’ is not a normal movie. Oh, fuck no.

The legend goes that, being unable to hire Ray Harryhausen to provide stop-motion effects, Sam Katzman farmed the creature work out to a Mexican effects company, which, if true, is an amazing story in and of itself. The result? A nightmarish giant turkey puppet with googly eyes and a Mohican haircut that bears ZERO resemblance to what the actors on screen are describing. It has to be seen to be believed let alone letting that belief being suspended. Yet belief doesn’t need to be suspended here because once the creature appears terms such as ‘suspension of disbelief’ are completely obliterated as this movie overrides any voluntary effort on behalf of the viewer.

What’s weird, and utterly counterintuitive, is that far from terminally hobbling the movie this deranged puppet actually IMPROVES the film! Sure, Harryhausen’s meticulous stop-motion work would have provided verisimilitude and realism to the monster but it could also have diluted the out of control energy we get here instead. So we don’t get ANY realism or verisimilitude but what we do get is a fucking bonkers puppet being tossed about, thrown into buildings, smashing into models and generally being totally and frenetically insane. I’m not sure Harryhausen could’ve matched it for sheer nutso panache! God, I’m typing complete sacrilege here.

At one point we are shown pictures of the flying creature taken by a passing fighter jet that ends with the monster photo-bombing the frame with a close-up screech that had me clawing my way back up off the floor it had me laughing so hard. Why do people call Tarkovsky a genius when we’ve got this?!

So the monster is unusually crazy for a Katzman monster movie… but so is the human stuff too!

Look, I love the Katzman produced ‘Earth vs. The Flying Saucers’ (1956) and ‘It Came From Beneath the Sea’ (1955) but I’d be lying if I didn’t say I find the non-monster sequences and the acting occasionally a little flat and dull, and easily outdone by the effects work. Yet with ‘The Giant Claw’ there’s a real pep and zing to the human stuff too. Mara Corday in particular is fantastic bringing a shit load of energy to her performance. She’s a delight to watch, especially during the scene on the airplane where she wakes up the other passengers with her unbridled enthusiasm. It’s a really nicely directed scene too and one of the most genuinely enjoyable I’ve seen in any monster film.

Or how about the scene when the giant claw attacks a train? It swoops down (well, more like plops down), grabs the locomotive and carries it away. We then cut to a silent office, a man asleep at a desk and Mara lying on the sofa while, in the next room, work is being done to find a way to defeat the creature…only for the wall and the door next to Mara to suddenly EXPLODE with such ferocity that I was genuinely worried she’d actually been blown up! And all this — the claw, the train, the explosion — takes place in the time span of several seconds. I love fast paced movies but I’ve rarely seen anything THIS quick.

I have no idea what was happening when this film was being made. I have the hunch the filmmakers saw the deranged puppet, knew the movie was in severe danger so just decided to amp everything else up to the max and make the movie so fast and crazy that people wouldn’t know what had hit them until it was all over. Nobody, and I mean nobody, in their right mind would deliberately make a movie like this and that’s what’s so beautiful about ‘The Giant Claw’ — it is utterly unique and impossible to replicate. Hence it needs our protection and our love.

And yes, I’ve completely fallen in love with this movie (oh god how I adore it) and like after most bouts of erotic bliss (and yes, the accurate description of my response to this movie genuinely could be defined as “erotic”) I was left exhausted and questioning my sanity. This is truly transcendent cinema.