The Giant Claw (1957)

The Giant Claw is a 1957 sci-fi film about a giant bird that terrorizes the world. Produced by Clover Productions under the working title 'Mark of the Claw' and released through Columbia Pictures, it starred Jeff Morrow and Mara Corday, and was directed by Fred F. Sears. The film has been a staple of the bootleg video market with only two official VHS releases (one in the USA through Goodtimes Home Video and the other through Screamtime in the United Kingdom) to date. Mitch MacAfee (Jeff Morrow), while engaged in a radar test flight, spots an unidentified flying object. Jets are scrambled to pursue and identify the object but one goes missing. Officials are initially angry at MacAfee but are forced to take his story seriously after several other planes disappear. A gigantic bird, purported to come from an antimatter galaxy (and then later from the year seventeen million B.C.), is responsible for all the incidents. Mitch, along with his mathematician girlfriend Sally Caldwell (Mara Corday), Dr. Karol Noymann (Edgar Barrier), and generals Considine (Morris Ankrum) and Van Buskirk (Robert Shayne), works feverishly to develop a way to defeat the seemingly invincible enemy. The climactic showdown takes place in New York City, with the bird attacking both the Empire State and United Nations buildings.
The Giant Claw has been mocked for it's terrible special effects. The bird in particular is considered to be badly made, being an unconvincing marionette puppet with a very odd face. The film is riddled with stock footage, making continuity a serious issue. Morrow later confessed in an interview that no one in the film knew what the titular monster looked like until the film's premiere. Morrow himself first saw the film in his hometown, and hearing the audience laugh every time the monster appeared on screen, he left the theater early, embarrassed that anyone there might recognize him

THE GIANT CLAW
FRED F. SEARS (1957)
COLUMBIA PICTURES
75 MIN
USA