I have to admit that I was completely entertained by the nuttiness of script and the unapologetic nature of its nonsensical logic.
“Once they were men; now they are land crabs,” says Dale Drewer (Richard Garland), in an example of the absolutely priceless dialogue in Attack of the Crab Monsters, Roger Corman’s 1957 B-movie extraordinaire.
When one sits down to watch a movie called Attack of the Crab Monsters, one is either looking for a way to escape reality for an hour or so or one has a gun to their head. Either way, I find it highly unlikely that anyone would approach a screening of this film expecting to walk away praising the performances or the stellar character development. Personally, I plopped in front of the TV to see just how bad this film would be. I was not disappointed. But I had to marvel at its sheer weirdness because this is a really strange little movie.
Made for $70,000 and written by Charles B. Griffith (The Little Shop of Horrors), Attack of the Crab Monsters tells the tale of an expedition to a small island in the South Pacific that has been irradiated by nuclear testing. A group of scientists searches for clues to the whereabouts of another group of scientists who have gone missing following a typhoon. When one of the Navy sailors escorting them to shore dies mysteriously, a pair of sailors is left behind to guard the scientists. A handyman (Russell Johnson, the Professor from Gilligan’s Island) is also part of the group.
Shortly after their arrival on the island, the group hears mysterious explosions which are then followed by earthquakes. They discover a journal belonging to the original research team that details the strange flesh of a worm-like creature. In the night, Martha (Pamela Duncan), the group’s sole female member, hears the voice of one of the members of the earlier expedition calling out to her, asking for help. Carson (Richard Cutting) also hears the voice, but he says that it was calling out to him. Neither finds the man in question.
The team theorizes that the earthquakes are actually from the island disintegrating into the sea. As if to prove them correct, a large pit emerges as a result of the earthquakes and reveals a network of underground caves. To their horror, the team finds out that the caves are the subterranean home of two giant crabs that have most likely been mutated by radioactivity from hydrogen bomb testing. These crabs that have also eaten the original scientific team, absorbed their minds, and now speak in their voices.
That’s a fair approximation of what happens in the movie. I’ve left out the pseudo-scientific lingo and absolutely wacko logic that strings these events together. It’s difficult to criticize this movie because watching it is something like trying to complete a coherent jigsaw puzzle with the pieces from six entirely different puzzles. It’s challenging but also kind of fun to try to piece something recognizable together.
There’s a half-assed attempt at a love triangle. There are disembodied voices talking through steel objects for some reason. Scuba divers in an overstocked aquarium (complete with reflections of the camera on the glass) are meant to stand-in for scientists diving off the coast of an island. And, the thing that will burn itself into the mind of anyone who watches this movie are the giant crabs’ enormous, human-like eyes. Eyes that blink wholly unconvincingly as their plastic-bag eyelids are pulled up and down by stagehands.
On one-hand, I have to call a bad movie a bad movie. But, I have to admit that I was completely entertained by the nuttiness of script and the unapologetic nature of its premise. Attack of the Crab Monsters delivers exactly what you’d expect from a movie with that title. If you like atomic age horror movies, this one is definitely a must-see.
2.5 out of 5.0 stars
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