Monster of the Day #62

Updated on July 8, 2010 By Ken Begg 7 Comments

Man, I love the ’50s.  Not quite up there with Harryhausen’s, but considering the film’s entire budget was probably under 50 grand, you’ve got to take your hat off.  Quickly, now, the drawn butter!

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  • Ericb

    Loved this movie as a kid. I think this is one of the first monster movies I saw. I was a very little kid who was loved bugs and crabs and my mother pointed this movie out in the TV listings and, wala, I discovered Saturday afternoon monster movies.

  • A potentially awesome movie sadly spoiled for me as a kid by the idiotic concept to make the monsters “cooler” by amking them immune to gunfire not because they are giant armored crustaceans, but by having them be soft and porouds so bullets pass “through” them as though through jello. Alas. Even as a tad I called shenanigans.

  • The Rev. D.D.

    Giant decapitating crabs and yet I’ve never seen this.

    Something is seriously wrong here.

  • Ericb

    Giant decapitating crabs with French and German accents.

  • Rock Baker

    Ah, Attack of the Crab Monsters, near perfect example of 50s drive-in Americana! All the elements are here: the title, the monsters, the cast that includes Richard Garland, Pamela Duncan, and Russell Johnson, the Ronald Stein music, the incredible poster art, a secluded setting with soldiers and scientists, a-bomb stock footage, a script with more imagination in one scene than most Hollywood fare today sports in a two-hour running time, a lean quick-to-the-point pace. Even the more goofy elements here only add to the charm when it could’ve been just plain silly. The thing that knocked me for a loop when I finally got to see it was that it WASN’T an AIP film, but one Corman directed for Allied Artists.

  • GalaxyJane

    Thanks for the info Rock, I always just assumed it was an AIP pic, never made the AA connection.

  • Rock Baker

    You’re welcome! I think that’s a common mistake, since Crab Monsters just has such an AIP feel. Not Of This Earth was also an AA pic that strongly echoed AIP.

    Another bit of trivia about Crab Monsters, footage from it was playing in a theater featured in It’s A Bikini World -an Allied copy of AIP’s popular Beach Party cycle that even featured series vets Tommy Kirk and Deborah Wally. The pair would co-star in an actual AIP beach film, Ghost in the Invisible Bikini. I know no one cares about that, but there you go. Years later, Attack of the Crab Monsters was playing on TV in Chopping Mall (a.k.a. Killbots), which gave me my first glimpse of Corman’s 1957 epic (which I believe was actually his highest grossing picture of the decade).