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What also helped was how Corman kept the pace swift and the ideas compelling as he told screenwriter Charles B. Some witty asides were spoken here and there, and Russell Johnson foreshadowed his future as an island professor, but best of all, we were able to see the buxom lead actress, Pamela Duncan, wearing a form-fitting top throughout the entire film! Mind-blowing ideas indeed, but Corman really knew what he was doing: competent direction with some nicely-composed widescreen shots, nightmare monsters that were seen-and heard-many times throughout the film, and a fairly exciting and cerebral story, all squeezed into 62 minutes of pure, unadulterated, low-budget cheese. Soon they find themselves trapped and fighting for their lives, battling giant mutant crabs who have the ability to snip off a human’s head, ingest it, then absorb the brain into its own system, giving itself the power to think and talk as that person. A group of scientists, part of a second expedition to the island, arrive there to study the negative effects of the fallout, and hopefully discover what happened to that first expedition. The first H-bomb test has sent a cloud of radioactive fallout over a small Pacific atoll, blanketing the island with radioactivity. Well, if I didn’t know better, I’d say nuclear fallout + crabs + Roger Corman = Attack of the Crab Monsters. And then, most disconcerting of all, a disembodied voice calling out for help, over and over again. First, there was the question of a previous expedition to the island, and where they disappeared to, along with those shots of land crabs scurrying along the shoreline…hmmm. I thought it was interesting that there were so many things to ponder in just the first few minutes, besides that sailor suffering from a sudden onset of decapitation. And trust me, it was definitely wild…I don’t know where this vintage Roger Corman monster sci-fi ranks with fans when compared to other Corman-directed productions, but for me it sits in the Top 3, along with the excellent Not of This Earth and the guilty pleasure It Conquered the World.
#Attack of the giant crab monsters movie
When the movie you’re watching starts off with a man toppling over the side of an inflatable raft just ten feet from shore, and he’s pulled back aboard missing his head, you know you’re in for a wild, no-holds-barred ride. Griffith, Maitland Stuart, and David Arvedon as Hoolar the Giant Crab Cutting, Beach Dickerson, Tony Miller, Ed Nelson, Charles B. By the end, a single giant crab has run the trio to ground on a remaining parcel of land just a few dozen yards across.Leonard Maltin’s Movie Guide: ** out of 4Ĭast: Richard Garland, Pamela Duncan, Russell Johnson, Leslie Bradley, Mel Welles, Richard H. One by one, all but three of the members - Brewer, electrical engineer Hank Chapman ( Russell Johnson), and scientist Martha Hunter ( Pamela Duncan) - are killed off and their minds and memories absorbed by the mutant crabs, who also have the power to focus infrared radiation into deadly, destructive beams that they use to gradually pulverize large sections of the island. Their own radio is sabotaged and something has been probing the area where they're living finally, the group is lured into the caverns where the real menace is hiding - gigantic, bloodthirsty mutated land crabs that communicate telepathically and seem to have all of the knowledge of the previous team's members. Soon the scientists are hearing the voices of members of the previous scientific party, calling to them in the night.
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Bradley), they find the journal of the previous team, but no explanation of what happened to them, only that they'd noticed evidence of strange creatures and inexplicable physical phenomena on the island. Led by Dale Drewer ( Richard Garland) and Dr. Then the navy plane that carried them there is blown out of the sky before it can get airborne, leaving them stranded and unaccounted for.
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The group's arrival is marred by the death of one of the navy crewmen accompanying them, who falls into the ocean and comes up with his head taken off. They island is uninhabited and devoid even of most animal life, except for a few land crabs. A group of scientists arrive on a remote Pacific island to investigate what became of the previous team, which was sent out there as observers of American hydrogen bomb tests and disappeared without a trace.
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