10 Most Ridiculous Monster Movies Of All Time

When Mara Corday watched The Giant Claw for the first time, she shrank back in her seat and told her husband the picture was dreadful. The eponymous colossal bird – billed as a “Flying beast out of prehistoric skies” on the poster and reckoned to be “as big as a battleship” twelve times during the movie – looked more like a turkey puppet on wires, and the audience burst out laughing.

In the film, Corday plays a mathematician who, together with Jeff Morrow’s pilot, attempts to stop the monster from destroying New York (or its toy model equivalent). This being 1950s sci-fi, there are countless white coats around to offer ‘scientific’ analysis. “That bird is extra-terrestrial,” claims one. “It comes from some godforsaken, anti-matter galaxy millions of light years from the Earth. No other explanation is possible!”

Perhaps if producer Sam Katzman had gone with Ray Harryhausen, his original choice to do the special effects, the film would’ve turned out differently. But Harryhausen had butted heads with Katzman on Earth Vs The Flying Saucers and knew all about the producer’s penny-pinching ways, so he cited “prior commitments” and politely declined.

Katzman eventually went to a model maker in Mexico, and the results speak for themselves.