For some reason (beyond my poor fisherman’s understanding) in 2019 some rich, snobby human (more like some idiot) paid roughly $46,000 to eat a rare but delicate Chionoecetes Opilio, more commonly known as a Snow Crab. Now, call me naive if you want (“You can call me Billy, you can call me Ray, but you doesn’t hasta call me Johnson!” I know, real deep dive on that joke), but is it such a reach to think the far depths of the elitists’ society haven’t heard of Long John Silver’s (are they still in business?)? I have a sneaky suspicious King of the B-Movies Roger Corman might have had these societal conflicts in mind when he directed his 1957 King of the Crabs opus Attack of the Crab Monsters. Studies have shown, on average, Americans will consume twenty pounds of seafood in a single year (and yes, this does include fish sticks), so does it come as anyone’s surprise there would be a movie where our species (Humenous Dumbanous) is plotted against by sea roaming crustaceans which are a tad bit salty (and buttery… and slathered… and delicious… does anyone have tarter sauce?)
Unlike many of the Corman oeuvre of quickie-flickies (movies made for under $100,000, usually in black and white, and have a running time usually under an hour) where the movie poster often delivered a check the movie could not cash, Attack of the Crab Monsters does something radical – it gives you the poster in the movie! As was standard by independents in this period, it was cheaper to pay a talented artist to visually sell the film rather than spend the bucks on expensive celluloid. Corman was a master magician with this (see the posters for She Gods of Shark Reef and The Wasp Woman then watch the films, if you don’t flounder in their ridiculousness). In bright, bold yellow colors we are given a title that is so on the nose it could be a pore with a hair striking out, and underneath the title is a scene directly out of the film… sort of. Although there are (so-called) scientists in swimsuits, there certainly is no Goldilocks bombshell. There is however a giant, head-chopping grab monster who looks almost identical to the poster rendition. I feel that once when teenagers went to the drive-in to watch the movie (yeah, right) they must have choked on their popcorn and honked their horns in excitement for actually getting their money’s worth (even if the b feature following it tricked them again). With a script written by horror/comedy master Charles B. Griffith (Little Shop of Horrors), and always excellently framed by legendary cameraman Floyd Crosby (High Noon) for a pilchard $70,000, this film became one of the most profitable films (estimated profits of $1 million. Now that’s a lot of seashells!) in Corman’s early films because, as he says, “I think its success had something to do with the wildness of the title which, even I admit, is pretty off-the-wall.”
On a remote island in the middle of one of our oceans, a group of scientists and their Navy support crew (because all science nerds always need protection from bullies) are searching for a fellow crew who stops all communications. Upon arriving on the island, it appears to be just a normal, average, run-of-the-mill island, unless you feel that an island imploding upon itself is out of the ordinary! There is a feeling of unease throughout the island, like when the scientists go for a deep dive and use massive rocks for visual reference but then the next second the rock has moved or clicking sounds echoing in the dead of night or even hearing the voices of the dead summoning them to have a nice little midnight swim (I’d avoid skinny dipping if I were them). Whatever it is, our scientists don’t know what it could be and our boys in bellbottoms can’t seem to stop it. As members from each side begin to disappear, including a scientist who loses his hand and another who loses his mind (figuratively and literally), everyone discovers it is the giant crabs from the poster campaign hell-bent on revenge for everyone having their anniversaries at Red Lobster! Will the team find a way to declaw these telepathic underwater mutants or will our heroes arm themselves with a metal cracker, a wood mallet, and a long bib to feast on the abysmal beasts (does anyone have extra butter sauce)?
Crab walking your way at a pinched sixty minutes, this film was not released by American International Pictures (like most early Corman’s) but through Allied Artists as a double-bill with Corman’s Not of This Earth. Not being released through Corman’s Filmgroup label (for once) this is one of Corman’s films not in the public domain, so it might be a little bit of a treasure hunt to find this title, but if you can get a copy of the triple feature set from Scream Factory a few years back (which includes this along with Not of This Earth and War of the Satellites) its worth its weight in crabcakes from Maryland! They say the perfect locations to catch Crabs include mangroves, shorelines, bays, inlets, marshes, jetties, and piers, and should also include drive-ins, abandoned video rental stores, and thrift stores infested with old VHS tapes because the world’s your oyster – crack that shell and grab these incredible Roger Corman pearls!
