The Giant Claw

The Giant Claw (1957) is a US horror sci-fi creature feature you can watch online on iFILM. Test pilot Mitch MacAfee spots something in the sky that outruns every aircraft sent after it. The brass writes him off as jittery. Then planes start falling out of the air.

The thing turns out to be a prehistoric bird the size of a battleship, screaming in from nowhere with no interest in sparing people or skylines. Conventional weapons bounce off it: an invisible shield wraps the beast and shrugs off every shell. Fred F. Sears directed the brisk 75-minute panic, with Jeff Morrow and Mara Corday leading the ground crew.

That bug-eyed marionette buzzard is the whole reason the film survives — it's a beloved fixture of so-bad-it's-good 1950s cinema, watched today for its gloriously cheap effects. Stream The Giant Claw (1957) online on iFILM.