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ATTACK OF THE CRAB MONSTERS (1957)
Why do I feel like I'm reviewing the same movie over and over again? Grab your bingo card. Attack of the Crab Monsters hits all of the notes you would expect, and to top it off, this crustacean's exoskeleton is drizzled with Roger Corman flavoring. For the record, Corman has the same general taste and mouthfeel as orange dreamsicle shaved ice. Now that I'm hungry, let us continue. The "plot" serves up standard fare, but these crab monsters are clairvoyantly possessed by their victims. I'll give b-scribe Charles B. Griffith this much; he makes dubious quasi-science sound plausible. Looking at his track record, it's no wonder. He also wrote 1960's Little Shop of Horrors and 1956's It Conquered the World. When his characters discuss the effects of radioactive fallout on seafood, you believe them.
Russell Johnson (a.k.a. The Professor from Gilligan's Island) anchors the cast as an insufferably dull geologist. Or maybe he's a seismologist. I don't know. I drifted from time to time, which again, could be found on my horror bingo card. I swear, it's not my fault. The exposition is the very definition of tedious. On the bright side of the carapace (I'm running low on crab terminology), the deaths are quite brutal for 1957. It's hard to believe that this is the one Corman quickie that was never given the remake treatment. I suppose I shouldn't give anyone ideas. Attack of the Crab Monsters is hardly mandatory viewing, but at just over an hour in length, I wouldn't call it an exasperating experience. It falls somewhere between "okay" and "hunky-dory."
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