Roger Corman is a director that gets a bum rap. Sure, his films were cheap, but the man could churn out a film and still have change left over. It may not be a good movie, but he knew what he was doing. The end results could be uneven and cheaper than you would believe, but he still manged to wring a few scares out of most of the material.
Atomic testing has been all the rage lately. One island in particular has soaked up enough fallout to make the higher-ups curious as to what the results would be. A team of scientists is dispatched, but they are all killed in a sudden typhoon...at lease that's the official story. A second team is dispatched, consisting of:
Karl Weigand (Leslie Bradley)-nuclear physicist
Jules Deveroux (Mel Welles)-meteorologist
Jim Carson (Richard H. Cutting)-geologist
Dale Drewer (Richard Garland)-biologist
Martha Hunter (Pamela Duncan)-also a biologist
Hank Chapman(Russell Johnson)-radioman
And for comic relief we have Seabees Jack Sommers (Tony Miller) and Ron Fellows (Beach Dickerson)
Their mission, continue the research of the first team.
Things get off to a bad start when a sailor dropping the last of their supplies trips in roughly knee deep water...and is decapitated by something unseen. Ensign Quinlan (Ed Nelson) vows to fly back for help, but whatever else he promises dies with him as the Navy plane goes up in flames with everyone else moments after takeoff.
The team gets settled, and it is soon clear that whatever did in the first group wasn't a typhoon or any kind of weather. The first team's cottages are still standing, for one, and their surviving notes make no mention of any bad weather. They do, however, make mention of a strange object. Large and flesh-like, it healed as the other scientists cut it. The island is also prone to strange earthquakes that hit at random, to say nothing of the voices Hunter and Carson hear at night. Voices that sound like members of the first team.
Carson seems to be signaled out. Exploring the island, he gets trapped in a recently opened pit. Despite hearing his cries for help, the team can't find a trace of him. Sommers and Fellows are next to go, as well as all of their explosives.
Drewer and Hunter have an encounter with something monstrous. Whatever it is spares them, but takes care to destroy the radio. What is hunting them, and can they stop it?
I suppose that is the film's biggest weakness. It's pretty effective at keeping the monster's off camera and giving no clue what is hunting them...except for the title. It kind of defeats the supposed shock when we see the Crab Monsters when the film names drop them right off the bat.
Corman works his magic with the budget though. We never see the monster right away, but the creature's habit of mimicking the voices of their victims is still powerful even today. It's an honest attempt at being scary, even if the shot suggests killer Muppets more than anything else.
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