I can suspend my disbelief quite a ways, but IMHO remove at least one of the preceding and the movie plays better. Was I surprised! All three films were enjoyable, but I feel like Charles Griffith got a little too ambitious here: absorbing brains, impervious bodies, negative electricity (?), speaking using metal objects as antennas, etc. So did Tony carry it around entirely under his own power, or do I need to look closer?Īs for the film, I was expecting just another "giant bug" flick. And the two color photos (thanks again, Rakshasa) also show nothing below the body. IMDB also says "Wheels and legs under the giant crabs." Now I watched it just once (plus the commentary) and Corman did take pains to obscure the bottom of the crabs, but I spotted Tony Miller's (or somebody's) legs at least twice. Oddly enough, this is very likely the only thing I recall from the book. (I just went web searching and damn if I actually found it, " The Dynamite Monster Hall of Fame", if any 1970's Monster Kids recall it.) It included the classic b&w still that Rakshasa uploaded 4 years ago, with the comment "You could spot the wheels". I've actually been waiting to see this film since I bought a monster movie book through my elementary school's book club. This works both as a cheesy monster movie and as a character study, despite a rather bizarre French accent from one of the actors.I watched Shout Factory's Corman set in its entirety over the weekend, which was my first viewing of Crab Monsters (and War of the Satellites). I like these cheap and cheerful sci-fi B-movies so have absolutely no problem with a giant crab looking quite clearly fake as, although the title is all about the crab, the film is more about the group of scientists and how they deal with being stranded on a desert island with something very weird happening. What everyone wants to see, then, is one of the enormous titular crustaceans and Corman delivers with, what is now a rather unconvincing and laughable crab that is quite obviously papier mache as you can see the eyelids crinkle when they open very, very slowly and the crab doesn't really mean very much but, thanks to the skilled direction and editing, the shots don't linger to maximise effect. Such as exploitative title promises fairly exploitative material: in this case giant crabs so the script is cleverly written so that the earthquake that left a hole in the middle of the island also crushed most of the crabs, leaving only one. It's only a matter of time before someone else goes missing and they find that the small crustaceans they saw on the beach have much larger relatives inland. Oddly, his colleagues can still hear him, almost as if he is reaching them telepathically, and they venture out, one by one, into the night to find him. One of these opens a huge crater and it seems that one of the scientists is buried down at the bottom. They don't know what did this (and don't put in too much effort to find out, something completely understandable as they were left stranded when their plane exploded) but plough on and set up base even though there is no radio communication and the island is frequently hit by massive earthquakes. It is clear straight away that something is very weird when one of the seamen taking them and their luggage from the seaplane to the island falls off the inflatable dingy and is pulled from the water with his head completely missing.
When news reaches the scientific community that a group of researchers who went into the Pacific to do some experiments in order to determine the effects of nuclear experimentation have failed to return, several of their colleagues decide to go to the island where their friends had travelled to try and find them and do their own research. Griffith, devised another sci-fi/horror film set in a more exotic location: a small Pacific island.
Having already made Not of This Earth, Corman decided to make a movie with underwater scenes so, with writer Charles B.
He did this not once, but three times, directing three movies in 1957, 1961 and '64 and his output as a director, never mind as a producer between 19 was incredible. 1957 was pretty prolific year for Roger Corman as he made not just one movie, but three films, the most he made in any one year.