Movie review – Corman #8 - “Attack of the Crab Monsters” (1957) **1/2

Early Roger Corman opus which has become famous for its silly title and legendary wonky effects of crab arms, but actually has a really, really strong story (radio active waste causes mutated crabs, crew arrive to investigate, crabs taking over humans, island shrinking), is well paced, has plenty of action and deaths, some decent acting from the support, and the special effects aren’t bad.

Charles Griffith wrote the script and is a quite solid and strong – deaths one by one, the fact that the island gets smaller and smaller (there are logic problems here but the structure is fine). It gets right off to a great start – a group of scientists and sailors arrive at an island looking to chase up an expedition who haven’t been heard of. A sailor falls into the water (played by Griffith himself) and dies - his head falls off! Bad weather is threatening the island. Their pilot flies back and the plane blows up. The girl on the expedition (who does some obligatory swimming in a swimsuit) starts hearing voices. The crabs are taking over humans.

Unfortunately after this beginning the story gets bogged down. Corman’s handling was a bit slack – not up to the script if truth be told. There are lots of incredibly complex scientific explanations as goes on – I’ve seen this film three times and I’m still not sure what the deal is.

Richard Garland and Paula Duncan are poor leads, physiques notwithstanding (she's got one of the 50s sci fi point boob figures) – both are easily overshone by Russell Johnson, who is really good as a bitter member of the expedition who loves Duncan (a lot more could have been made of this triangle). There is also decent support from the Roger Corman stock company, including Mel Welles, Ed Nelson and Beach Dickerson.

Fans of this film will want to get the DVD which contains an audio commentary by the guys who wrote “Universal Monsters” including Tom Weaver is interesting, although they pick at the film a little too much. They read from Griffith’s original script which apparently was more logical (the famous gaffe line, where someone comments on there being no animal life on the island when we’ve seen plenty of gulls was meant to be “no insect life on the island”). Apparently Columbia were keen on Griffith, thinking he might have been the power behind Corman’s throne, and signed him to a two picture deal but the films went over budget and were unremarkable.