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Thirty per cent of this movie appears to be the prototype for the Map Channel. You see a giant map for about ten minutes, then they unleash the stock footage big time while droning(droning, get it?)on about radar. Apparently there's a lot of radar stations in the far north, protecting North America's borders from attacks by deadly polar bears. The bears never show up, but a giant Mantis does. It was frozen in the ice for over a million years or so, until it was released by an earthquake somewhere else in the world(yeah, right. For my money, it was released by global warming). It is a huge prehistoric insect, and it needs lots of food. Since there aren't any cows in the frozen north, it decides to feast on the most bovine-like creatures it can find up there. I.E., human beings. It starts attacking radar stations, probably because the humming from the radar dishes was getting on its nerves.
Enter Col. Joe Parkman, the resident smarmy guy of the film. He's investigating a plane that went down, and is puzzled why there are no bodies in the wreckage. The only thing he finds is one of the claws of the Mantis. Apparently it decided to trim its nails while it was snacking on the plane's crew. Parkman takes the claw tip back with him to be analyzed by a thousand year old scientist.
Grandpa scientist can't make heads or tails of the claw, mostly because he's missed his naps so his mind isn't functioning too well. So he calls in a smug paleontologist played by the guy who was the P.I. in Perry Mason. He and his friend, a transvestite photographer, fly north because he's decided that the claw must have come from a Praying Mantis. Just one the size of a commuter train.
It's Luke warm love at first sight when Col.Parkman first sets eyes on the she-male photographer. The men at the base, obviously having been deprived for many years, think she's the hottest thing to come along since Granny Clampett. Smug science guy and smarmy soldier guy start working together to track the path of the Mantis, which has devastated some stock footage of an Eskimo village. It comes to the base looking for an after dinner snack, and crushes some cheap sets quite effectively. Then it flies south and disappears.
Now comes the tense hours when the civilian ground observer core are called on to sweep the skies looking for anything large flying overhead. I doubt that in reality they would have been told that they were looking for a giant flying mantis that eats human beings, since that would haver caused a panic. Probably they were told to look for a giant 727 that was painted green and hummed because its engine was out of tune.
Col. Parkman goes up in a plane to try to shoot the Mantis down, and botches the mission. The Mantis lands in New York City, probably because it wanted to take in a show on Broadway or visit Sex World in Times Square. The army corners it in the Tunnel, and Parkman and his men don stupid suits that they borrowed from the Orkin Man to go in and try to blow the Mantis up. Success! Well, almost, since the Mantis is still twitching enough that it almost kills the mannish Eve Arden photographer lady. There's a tepid love scene at the end, and the paleontologist takes a picture of the dead mantis because Colonel Hair Grease and Ms. Gender Unspecified are busy smooching. So kind of a nauseating ending.


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