Attack of the Crab Monsters - 1957

There’s something to be said for keeping the menace of your science fiction thriller under wraps, but producer / director Roger Corman obviously wanted audiences to know what to expect from the moment they saw the title of this Allied Artists cheapie on the theatre marquee.  Monsters were big, big business in the latter ’50s, and 1957 saw the world menaced by giant grasshoppers, giant vultures and even a disgruntled walking tree stump.  In retrospect Corman’s crab monsters were no sillier than the rest and his film, which could easily have been just a footnote in the history of creature features, has appeal as a minor camp classic thanks to some inspired casting and a penchant for narrative ridiculousness.
 
The story concerns a rag-tag group of scientists and Navy personnel who descend upon an isolated Pacific atoll after the inexplicable disappearance of an earlier research team.  Almost immediately after their arrival their transport plane explodes, stranding the group while inclement weather prevents them from communicating with the outside world.  Meanwhile strange things are happening on the atoll, which was heavily irradiated as a result of a nearby H-bomb test.  Booming explosions and odd clacking sounds are heard in the night, while each new dawn reveals that some part of the land has vanished…
 
More disturbing still, the members of the research group are disappearing one after the other, their disembodied voices spookily rising from somewhere unknown.  The culprits are soon revealed – huge mutated telepathic (!) land crabs are attacking the researchers with obscure intent, and its up to our heroes to stop them before there’s not a scrap of atoll left to stand on!
 
As if the title Attack of the Crab Monsters hasn’t already given it away, this is an impossibly silly film made all the sillier by the utter earnestness with which it plays.  The screenplay by Charles B. Griffith offers precious few moments of intentional levity, most of them at the expense of Mel Welles’ (The Little Shop of Horros) French scientist Deveroux, and is instead constructed to keep the audience in a perpetual state of suspense.  There is lots of talk in ominous tones of death and just how lifeless the atoll is, punctuated with some pretty gruesome exclamation points.  A Naval officer (the writer in a cameo role) is beheaded in the first few minutes, while poor Deveroux is unceremoniously be-handed while investigating a cave.  The latter seems particularly graphic for the time, and the camera lingers on the detached and bloody hand for as long as would have been allowed.

That any of Crab Monsters‘ suspense building works at all is miraculous, and largely the product of the eerie score by Ronald Stein (Spider Baby) and the often gloomy photography of Floyd Crosby (High Noon).  Any hint of real terror is dispelled whenever the eponymous beasts themselves appear, however.  Their stiff styrofoam and fiberglass construction and a menagerie of visible piano wires does much to hinder their efficacy, but Corman and company (including television actor Ed Nelson in the role of the crab itself) dutifully trot them out whenever possible.  The audience came for crab monsters and damned if they don’t get what they payed for.
 
This is also a rare case where the monsters prove just as silly off screen, with writer Griffith concocting the most ridiculous scientific underpinning for the beasts seen this side of The Giant Claw.  Radioactive fallout has not only caused them to balloon to gigantic proportions, but rendered them negatively charged and highly unstable masses of atomic particles as well!  It’s basically just a convoluted excuse to make the creatures bullet-proof, but it’s amusing to see the cast try to sort it all out.
 
What’s more, the crabs are capable of absorbing the human mind, making their victims a part of the greater crab consciousness (hints of Invasion of the Body Snatchers) and allowing the monsters to trick people with a complicated sort of mental ventriloquism in which they speak to their potential victims through metal objects.  This leads to what is perhaps the film’s most unintentionally hilarious moment, as the cast feigns surprise when a handgun suddenly begins speaking to them in a bad French accent.  ”Some-ting remahkabul ‘as ‘appened to me,” it says – something remarkable indeed!
 
Icing on the proverbial crab cake is the cast, the most familiar of whom is undoubtedly Russell Johnson.  Though now best remembered for his iconic turn as the Professor on Gilligan’s Island he was known for more serious work at the time of Crab Monsters, including supporting roles in the bona fide science fiction classics This Island Earth and It Came From Outer Space.  The late ’50s was a transitional time for the actor, who began working less in film and more in the exploding television market.  His turn here is as straight-faced and dependable as ever, a necessity given the material in question.

Die hard fans of vintage creature features have been waiting a long time for a decent home video presentation of Attack of the Crab Monsters, which has appeared once on DVD before in an edition sourced from a murky flat television print.   That disc can’t hold a candle to this new Shout! Factory release (a triple bill with War of the Satellites and the even more desirable Not of this Earth), which boasts a new transfer of the film from superior elements and a healthy array of supplements to boot.
 
Crab Monsters looks to have been sourced from an English release print, and begins with an Associated British Pathe distribution logo.  The now fifty-three year old feature presents with dirt, speckling and scratches and even the odd reel change marker, but the new 16:9 enhanced 1.78:1 transfer looks anything but bad.  Detail and contrast are strong and there seems to be no major damage – compared to the old release this is absolutely pristine.  The crab monsters themselves look worse than ever before and the array of wires operating their claws is even more obvious, but these are hardly drawbacks in a case like this.  My only complaint is that the transfer is interlaced as opposed to progressive.  The 2.0 monophonic audio mix is perfectly representative of the iffy original recording – exactly as it should be.

Like most Allied Artists quickies, the 63 minute Attack of the Crab Monsters was expanded when brought to television through the addition of a new prologue, in this case the repetition of a scene from within the film followed by the credits, a text scrawl, and a lengthy montage of stock footage.

 
Cast:

Richard Garland - Dale Drewer
Pamela Duncan - Martha Hunter
Russell Johnson - Hank Chapman
Leslie Bradley - Dr. Karl Weigand
Mel Welles - Jules Deveroux
Richard H. Cutting - Dr. James Carson
Beach Dickerson - Seaman Ron Fellows
Tony Miller - Seaman Jack Sommers
Ed Nelson - Ensign Quinlan
Maitland Stuart - Seaman Mac
Charles B. Griffith - Seaman Tate