Attack of the Crab Monsters (1957)
Directed by Roger Corman
A group of scientists travel to a remote island to study the effects of nuclear weapons tests, only to get stranded when their airplane mysteriously explodes. The team soon discovers that the tests have given rise to crabs mutated into intelligent, impervious, telepathic giants intent on increasing their numbers by breeding, then travelling to populated areas to feed, and which do not intend to be stopped by their discoverers.
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What critics compared Attack of the Crab Monsters to
Even “Jaws” and “Attack of the Crab Monsters” get a wink of approval here as Dylan O’Brien stars as a nebbish 20-year-old survivor of an asteroid attack that led to the mutant critters roaming the earth.
The eloquently simple premise presents Lee and Evelyn Abbott (director/co-writer Krasinski and his wife, Emily Blunt), parents struggling to raise and protect their three children Regan (Millicent Simmonds), Marcus (Noah Jupe) and Beau (Cade Woodward) from lightning-fast critters resembling a mash-up of the Predator, the Deadly Mantis and the villains from "Attack of the Crab Monsters."
True, many 1950s horror and science-fiction movies tried to suggest their radioactive bugs and resurrected dinosaurs were more apocalyptic than comic-book; the most famous example of this occurs in 1954's "Them!," when scientist Edmund Gwenn, dumbfounded by the presence of giant ants, intones: "We may be witness to a biblical prophecy come true -- 'And there shall be destruction and darkness come upon creation, and the beast shall reign over the Earth.' " Even so, there's something particularly wonderful and shameless about Corman linking the Western World's most sacred text to his cut-price tale of crustacean telepathy and carnage, as if an Old Testament context might actually cause the Saturday-sinnin', Sunday-forgiven teens at the local drive-in to react with awe rather than guffaws when Corman's giant prop crab claw swings into the frame.