Nummy Nummy In The Tummy!
Plot holes are rife in Attack of the Crab Monsters (1957), one of those mildly meaningless horror thrillers of the period. A science team arrives on an island that has been exposed to nuclear radiation in order to search for their predecessors, who have disappeared body and soul, as well as continue their research. The first body is produced immediately as one of the sailors falls off their little landing boat and is missing his head when his fellows pull him out.
Why no immediate investigation takes place, not to mention a rapid abandonment of the island, is unclear and left us with feelings of ennui and disinterest. Even the unexplained explosion of their seaplane as it attempts to leave with the body aboard did little to heighten the tension.
One more example of a plot hole: in the middle of the night, a hole opens up in the land. Never mind that it has vegetation growing on its side, never noted by the biologists – the team geologist immediately decides he needs to make the 50 ft descent using nothing more than a rope. His plunge, triggered by monstrous explosions that draw curiously little interest from the team, draws more tsking than anything from the audience.
It’s possible to justify his actions using the antagonists’ capabilities noted below, but at the time, and given the reputation of Director Roger Corman, I just wrote it off as another silly blooper that definitely deflates the credibility of the story.
And as the plot holes and illogical character actions pile up, there was a certain sense of regret, because the central plot mechanism is the idea that the monster crabs, upon consuming their victims, actually acquire their victims’ personalities and at least some of their knowledge, and that makes for a creepy effect. The tendency of the crabs to bait the humans, both literally and in wordplay, has its virtues. The two sides engage in the inevitable tug of war between predators and prey, and, taken in isolation, it’s not a bad little struggle, as each sides’ plans encounter the others, fail, change, and fail again, until the final engagement near the radio tower, which I suppose could be taken as symbolic of, well, something to do with the telepathy of the crabs. Don’t ask me what, though. That there was enough juice in the transmitter (that I thought didn’t work) and the radio tower to produce crab fricassee was surprising enough.
But the final straw is the wretched special effects. While Corman is smart enough to hold off on a full monty of his critters from hell initially, he eventually does give in to the urge to show off his crabs in full detail, and this doesn’t work out well for Corman or his audience. They’re simply too amateurish.
If you are one of those individuals afflicted with the need to see all the work of Mr. Corman, this is not the worst of his output. You may enjoy it. But I’d recommend just a wee dram of the good stuff to help this porcupine of a movie slide down the old gullet.
A note from the arts editor:
While the movie itself is fairly ho-hum, it had one of the best movie posters in the genre:
The overall design is very cool, and the color is spectacular. It is, of course, pure schlock, which holds much of its charm.
Also fun to note: the blonde bimbo in the poster does not appear anywhere in the movie, and the brunette female lead in the film was never in a scene similar to this.
But the poster does make a great visual.
