Villain(s)  Giant alien bird

Actor(s):  Jeff Morrow, Mara Corday, Robert Shayne, Morris Ankrum

Brief Description  Released on June 1, 1957, The Giant Claw is a 75-minute sci-fi B-movie about a supersonic, jet-sized extraterrestrial bird from an antimatter galaxy that terrorizes Earth. Protected by an impenetrable anti-matter force field, the creature is hunted by electrical engineer Mitch MacAfee and mathematician Sally Burroughs until they develop a special isotope particle weapon to bring it down over the Atlantic Ocean.

Plot:
Civil aeronautical engineer Mitch MacAfee (Jeff Morrow) spots a UFO flying at supersonic speeds during a radar test flight near the North Pole. The military dismisses his claim as a hoax until military and commercial aircraft begin mysteriously disappearing worldwide. Mitch and mathematician Sally Caldwell (Mara Corday) survive a crash-land attack in the Adirondacks, later verified by French-Canadian farmer Pierre Broussard, who relates it to a mythical creature named "La Carcagne". Scientists discover the attacker is an extraterrestrial bird "as big as a battleship" from an antimatter galaxy. It attacks global landmarks, including the United Nations headquarters and the Empire State Building. Mitch and a team of scientists realize the bird is protected by an antimatter shield, making standard weapons useless.

They project a "mu particle" beam to collapse the shield, allowing conventional missiles to blow the creature out of the sky. Despite the characters constantly building up tension by describing the threat as a terrifying "flying battleship," the eventual reveal of the monster is famously underwhelming. Due to extreme budget constraints, the special effects were outsourced to a low-budget studio in Mexico. The creature is rendered as a giant, clumsy marionette puppet that reviewers frequently mock as looking like an "angry, comically overstuffed turkey wearing eyeliner". It features wide, frozen googly eyes, a jagged buck-toothed beak, a tuft of stringy hair on its head, and static wings that rarely flap despite flying at supersonic speeds. Visible strings can occasionally be seen holding the puppet during its destruction sequences.