L'assalto dei granchi giganti

Whether Roger Corman likes it or not this is one of the movies he will always be remembered for. Radiation gets the blame again and spawns mutant crabs who can walk forward (something no real crab can do), talk, and absorb the brains of the people they eat. These ambitious soft shelled terrors want to conquer the world and digest the brains of several scientists to gain the know-how to do that. Believe me, a giant crab with a PHd. is a dangerous thing! Corman's usual stock company does very well here. Mel Welles and Leslie Bradley sport believeable accents, Richard Garland and Pamela Duncan (both of whom would be in THE UNDEAD the same year) are a fine couple, Russell Johnson is great and Beech Dickerson is the comedy relief. If we can believe Ed Nelson, he is the one who was under the giant crab and he also dimly recalled Jack Nicholson hanging around the location pestering Roger for something to do so maybe Jack was helping move the crab around too. Gore is non existant (it was 1957 for cryin' out loud!) except for a decapitation at the start of the film (interestingly (symbolically?) the victim is Charles Griffith who wrote the screenplay). Can I get serious for a moment now? Would someone get in touch with Roger and get him to round up the cast members who are still alive and release this on DVD with an audio commentary track? There IS a market for this movie out there and a 45th anniversary edition would, in my opinion, sell very well. Roger . . .er . . .Mr. Corman, if perchance you should read this, get in touch with me.

Ah, Roger Corman, the purveyor of the finely tuned art of ten-dollar-to-shoot-and-distribute sci-fi movies. This, Attack of the Crab Monsters, is part of the minor boom in the B-movie world of the GIANT THING THAT WILL KILL YOU craze, where anything that could be done to capitalize on the threat of *the* bomb (remember, kids, by the way, duck and cover!) could be marketable for a short time, as long as not much real solid thought or questions were raised. Charles Griffith's script posits a group of scientists- off to seek out another expedition that went missing, on some small island out in the middle of A-Bomb-nowhere's-ville, and encounter a super-atomic species of land-crab that get possessed by those that they kill. They (or rather one at a time as Corman's budget had only enough for one crab at a time to shoot) project telepathically the 'souls' of those they kill, and can only be controlled by, gasp, electromagnetic fields!

So, once you get past the fact that there's not a shred of intellectual engagement here, that there's an opening title scrawl that comes out of a video game directing 'You' to be apart of the crab team and that the voice of the crabs are like the voice of God, and that the crab itself happens to have Asian eyes, it's fun crap. Crap, of course, not to be taken likely, as you and your friends can make a very fine MST3K right in your living room for no additional charge! On that level, it's classic stuff, and seeing one guy get his hand chopped off by a random rock, lots and lots of long takes of two of the scientists in deep-sea diving gear looking around for s***, is good for a gas. And the action is a real hoot, in that no-budget 50s tradition that combines miniatures that are really the production designer's toy-towns made by their kids and stock footage of LOTS of A-Bomb explosions, plus the crumbling field or two. Did I mention you can see the strings puppeting the crab? Will these directors never learn?

I don't know why I am haunted by the movie. I first was it in the late 50's and for some reason it captured me. it is not shown much if at all anymore on TV. I had all but given up ever seeing it again let alone owning a DVD. I looked at all the sites that offered it and finally found it on DVD on Overstock.com. OH JOY! OH JOY!

Of course, I ordered it and found it to be every bit as entertaining as I had remembered. Mel Welles deliciously over-acting as did most of the cast. What a treat!

You don't have to wait long for the Crabs to attack. They hit as soon as the characters land on the beach. They begin dropping like flies.

If you get the chance, watch this forgotten little flick. I think you'll like it.

In the late 1960's, television independents were not what they are today. They, the local stations, had little, to no money for quality program broadcasts. One of the tricks that many of these stations had was to strip, for a five day run, a low budget movie. Attack of the Crab Monsters was one of them. I loved the film as a child. Even though I was at such a young age, I could still comprehend how poorly this film was produced. Nevertheless I marveled at it's wonderful imagination.

After viewing it recently, I realized how special this film really is. Remember now, it has been almost 20 years since I saw this feature and while I was expecting to look at this work with nostolgic dismay, I was very surprised that it was so much fun to watch.

Forget logic, decent special effects or good acting, you won't find any of those things here. What you will find however, is a campy silly yarn with crabs that eat the brains of humans and by doing so, gain their knowledge and personality.

The crabs have wonderfully scarey faces. And believe it or not personality. Too bad this film is so hard to come by.

If there is, but, one hideously produced film, for you to see in you life time, make it Attack Of the Crab Monsters.

I last saw this film in 1963 on "Chiller," a locally produced TV show out of Minneapolis which showcased B horror movies every Sunday night. For years my friends and I would toss around the line, "I can grow a new claw--can you grow a new life?" I recently purchased a copy on the Internet and had a chance to watch it again. Except for the conventional bumbling around that characters in this kind of movie do (wandering in the dark in the middle of the night; responding to amplified voices as they lie in their beds in fear; going alone through caves where there is only one exit and the crabs are definitely around) this is pretty entertaining. I'm not sure whether these crabs have world domination in mind (revenge for those little forks and drawn butter) or just want to rid the island of humans. They do a real number on the eco-system. Will they have any beaches left to go to. Will they eventually go back to being "just crabs" or will they take their ventriloquist act on the road? We really don't know.

I think the strength of the movie is the cool, oppressive atmosphere and threat posed by the enterprising crustaceans. A weakness is that there is no explanation of their fine motor skills. They seemingly knock down everything in their paths in their lumbering way, but are still able to destroy just the right parts to dismantle a radio and are able to blow up a plane. If you don't do too much criticizing or thinking, you will enjoy this early Roger Corman gem.