Attack Of The Crab Monsters

This weekend at Unseen it's really my choice of films. This time out of the box we're going to take a look at two of my most favorite films in the world Attack Of The Crab Monsters and The Crawling Eye (which is tomorrow's film).

Crab Monsters is a film that scared the living crap out of me as a kid. Growing up in the late 1960's and early 1970's I tried to see this every time it was on. I think the first time I saw the film was around the time we were heading home from an aunt's house and I caught part of it on the TV. Whatever it was, probably some shot of the giant crabs, the film hooked me.

The plot of the film has a group of scientists going to a small island that's being used as a research post to find out what happened to the previous group. They also have to try and find out why the island appears to be shrinking. Along the way people are killed, heads are chopped off, giant crabs with telepathic ability and the desire to tunnel are discovered and a fight to the death occurs...and it all takes about an hour.

High art it is not. Pure fun it is.

I freely admit that the film is as stupid as a stick but at the same time the earnestness of the direction (by one of my heroes Roger Corman), and the performances of the cast make this more than just another bug-eyed monster film.

I suspect that everyone working on it knew this was a dumb movie, but they tried to sell it, with the result that the film actually has tension and less silliness than you might expect.

I also love the giant crabs, which are these huge, real, things that don't really move all that well but still are rather creepy because they don't move quite right.

I just love this film.

This was the first film I converted when I was moving over my video tape collection to DVD.

Fortunately you don't have to go out of the way to dig up a copy. This film is available on an official DVD so feel free to give this monster classic a try.