THE GIANT CLAW contains damned near everything that makes bad '50s sci-fi so much fun: a goofy-looking monster; scenes of destruction with Styrofoam buildings, model cars, and HO-gauge trains; made-up science (my Google search of "masic atoms" turned up nothing); scientific equipment slapped together with whatever junk was handy; a female lead with a brilliant mind who nonetheless does all the "girl" things like serving coffee to the men; and the usual dollar-store acting.The story: a killer bird the size of a battleship (and with teeth) flies around the Earth on a swath of destruction. It is impervious to guns, bombs, and fighter jets, nor does it appear on radar screens. Scientific analysis of a discarded feather concludes that the bird emits a protective energy shield that makes it nearly invincible. Also, since the feather contains no elements known on the Earth, the bird must be an extraterrestrial from some anti-matter galaxy millions of light years away. (Don't you dare question it!) As the lady scientist deduces, the bird came here to build a nest and lay an egg. When the film's heroes shoot up the egg with rifles, it seriously pisses off the bird, which sets about trashing a cheap mock-up of New York City. (Did you know that buildings explode when a monster claws off a chunk of its top floors?)I watch films like THE GIANT CLAW for the same reason I listen to records by the Shaggs: they're fundamentally awful, but I can't help loving them.

This is one of those Sci-Fi flicks that is bad enough to be good. And this creature is so ugly. A large winged giant bird first believed to be part of a French-Canadian folktale turns out to be aggressively carnivorous and from outer space. This nail-biter is directed Fred F. Sears and part of producer Sam Katzman's legacy. Scientist Mitch MacAfee (Jeff Morrow) and the military represented by Lt. Gen. Edward Considine (Morris Ankrum)and Gen. Van Buskirk (Robert Shayne) must work feverishly to stop this bird from outer space with enormous beak and giant claws from continuous attacking planes, trains, boats, buildings and munching humans.Former Playboy Playmate Mara Corday is also in the cast. Rounding out the players: Edgar Barrier, Clark Howat, Louis Merrill, Dabbs Greer and Sol Murgi.

Did the scrawny-looking bird puppet used in this movie inspire Jim Henson to create "Big Bird"? One might be excused for thinking so. Apparently the producers were going to employ stop-motion animator Ray Harryhausen to create the special effects, but then decided to go with something requiring less time and money. The result elicited nothing but laughter from audiences, even in 1957. I understand that the actors never actually saw the ludicrous- looking "monster" until after the movie was completed, which undoubtedly explains how they all managed to get through the production with straight faces. That's probably just as well, since playing this sort material absolutely seriously is the only way it can possibly work. They love to make fun of films such as this on shows like "Mystery Science Theater 3000". However, films such as this really don't need that treatment because they're already so "bad" that they require no external enhancement to be appreciated for what they are. As legendary low-budget film maker Roger Corman once observed, "You cannot set out to make a 'cult movie', only the audience can make a 'cult movie'".

Near the beginning, the airplane in which hero Jeff Morrow and heroine Mara Corday are flying is forced down in the Canadian wilderness by some sort of UFO imperceptible to radar. They hole up in the cabin belonging to the heavily accented but affable Pierre Broussard, who gives them glasses of homemade applejack while they recover from the shock of the crash landing. The telephone rings. "Oui, this is the house of Pierre Broussard." A pause while the caller asks for Jeff Morrow. And the very French Pierre Broussard replies, "Ein moment," in German.I didn't mind. It was already clear that not too much directorial attention would be lavished on this story of still another flying monster appearing out of nowhere and bumping into airplanes and driving people crazy before eating them. If you want to see an outstanding spoof of the genre, try to catch "Q", with Michael Moriarty.The special effects could have been done by a child, but this is 1957 and it's Columbia Pictures with the stingy Harry Cohn in charge. One kind of airplane in flight may suddenly change to a different type. Footage is clipped shamelessly from earlier movies. When the monster eats someone, there is a crunch, as of a potato chip. Yet it's not that cheap a picture. There are several sets that are adequately done and enough extras around when they're needed. The dialog is straight-jacketed by the formula but it still shows a bit of originality, probably when the writers managed to slip it past the eyes of Cohn. Morrow even gets to paraphrase Shakespeare -- "Love sought is good, but given unsought is better." It's from "Twelfth Night" and not an old chestnut.Of course the UFO is a giant bird that attacks one airplane after another. Morrow plots out the attacks on a map but nobody sees any kind of pattern until he traces a spiral -- the bird knows Fibonacci numbers! And why shouldn't it? After all, the thing may be a bird but it's from outer space, and maybe we've been misapplying the term "bird brain" all along. I have a friend who holds deep conversations with his parrot, but the damned bird is a mind/body dualist and my friend is a logical positivist, so the parrot is more of an irritation than anything else. They argue so loudly and so frequently that it disturbs the neighbors.Soon enough, Morrow and Corday are working with the military, trying to figure out how this rubber chicken -- made of anti-matter -- could have gotten here and why. It seems to "absorb energy from whatever it destroys, buildings, people." How? "Sort of a molecular osmosis." It's finally destroyed with "mesic atoms" after Morrow discovers a way to make them last more than a few nanoseconds.It was a relief to see the thing flung into a tank of water by some guy off screen, not only because it saved the earth but because it saved the sanity of so many viewers.