Review of The Giant Claw (1957) by Harry W — 01 Jul 2013

Unlike most films deemed as the worst in existence, you can't identify immediately from the intro that The Giant Claw is a terrible film, but the poor quality first becomes apparent about 12 minutes in when out of nowhere the plane's pilot is severely injured, and then a plane crashes which is clearly just a model plane on strings, but then everyone's just fine having survived a plane crash which is now in flames. Although by this point the plot is somewhat interesting and the entire story is held together by decent acting.

But the viewer's interest goes into a rapid decline soon after because the extensive but boring dialogue takes up much of the time for the next scenes which are stretched longer than they can hold a viewer's interest for. It's only 27 minutes in that the titular "Giant Claw" makes a presence on the screen, and before it even shows its face I was sick of the sound effects of the creature's voice. Once you can actually see this things face, instantly turning off the movie and walking away is the best idea, but I was all to interested in trying to find out how far they could pull the strings on this ugly puppet for the remaining 45 minutes.

One key problem during The Giant Claw is that the atmosphere is blank, as in there is no intensity in either the dialogue or attack sequences. And even though it would have been physically impossible with something faker than Kim Kardashian as the monster in the movie, it's like the filmmakers didn't even try since they were too busy focused on the terrible marionette puppet.

Essentially, it's obvious how bad this film is and the fact that the props are meagre toys filmed on a small setting in an attempt to appear real, and although there was probably a day where this was somewhat believable, even in that day a puppet so flimsy and so ugly could not be convincing as the giant claw it intends to be, and so that's utterly the fatal flaw in the Giant Claw which gives a bad name to the entire movie.

Except that with The Giant Claw, it at least succeeds as what it is: a cheap and obviously fake monster movie. It even has a vaguely mild sense of scientific accuracy along the way and has a semi-decent explanation as to why the monster comes after the lead characters, even though its all crummy.

And for a film with an obviously ridiculously low budget, The Giant Claw is clearly made with the good intentions of director Fred F. Sears who's intention was only one thing: to make a film. Although his low budget limited that and his lack of experience resulted in a poor film, his ambitions were good and he did end up making the film better than half the other terrible films out there such as The Beast of Yucca Flats, Eegah or Manos: Hands of Fate. And even though it has a legacy for being one if the worst films of all time, at least it does have a legacy and so people everywhere can gather to see his attempt to succeed in show business.

Basically, of all the films considered the worst of all time, I'd say that The Giant Claw was one of the most entertaining, but the entertainment value was mild and it still was not a successful film and was full of terrible special effects and tedious sounds.