I watched a decent copy of The Giant Claw. Not too pixelated on my hdtv, and the stereo soundtrack was setup to 5 channel stereo by my receiver. Decent, but nothing noteworthy.
I'll be honest, I wasn't looking forward to watching this week's viewing poll winner. I just didn't want to watch The Deadly Mantis again because that's what I thought this would essentially be. I'm glad I was wrong. Yes, it does follow the 50's monster movie formula but it adds a sufficient number of twists while featuring a decent cast that I really did have fun watching. Technically, I watched this 4 times today.
But really, I just had it on a loop, and was watching this inbetween doing yard work.
"Yeow! Holy Toledo! I've seen some mighty big chicken hawks back on the farm, but man this baby takes the cake!"
"Honest to Pete! I'll never call my mother-in-law an old crow again!"
So, things I liked.....in a number of ways, this reminded me of Rodan. The creature is super sonic and can be anywhere bringing the country to a stand still. Granted, when we do see the creature it looks anything but fast.
That's another thing I wonder. They obviously wanted this monster to be as grotesque as possible, but would this be remembered differently, or to the point, more fondly if the creature really did look like it came from space instead of looking like a giant cartoon buzzard?
"That bird is extraterrestrial. It comes from outer space. From some God-forsaken anti-matter galaxy millions and millions of light years from the earth. No other explanation is possible."
The scene where the passengers jump from the plane with their parachutes only to be picked off one by one by the Giant Claw is, of course, classic horror. I also liked the "la concarnay"(sp?) legend the French Canadian characters talk about. Makes you wonder if this isn't the first time the Giant Claw has been around.
The ending felt a little abrupt, and I wasn't even really sure that the meson(sp?) beam to penetrate the bird's anti-matter shield had worked for the rockets to hit until the bird dropped into the ocean. Did I just type that sentence? I liked the ending scene here with the Giant Claw's claw slowly sinking into the watery depths.
I would like to own a copy of this, and if I see it on one of those double feature discs with a decent co-feature similar to "Beast from 20,000 Fathoms" with "Them!", I'll eagerly pick up a copy. However, for next week's poll options, I'd like to put forth the request that we get back to Japan.
