The Killer Shrews

When will the doctors learn? On a desolate and exotic island a doctor with a heart of gold screws up and damn near destroys the world. Am I referring to Fulci's Zombie, no? How about that island with Marlon Brando? Nope, wrong again.

In the Killer Shrews this tome around on that deserted tropical island as seen a hundred times we have mutated shrews threatening to chomp down on our trapped scientists and a boat crew unlucky enough to be carting supplies to the island. Poisonous and hungry these shrews are gonna clean the island and suck the marrow from your bones…burp.

This fun little clichéd cheese fest moves along are a pretty quick pace. The acting is on par with the era, a bit over blown, but who cares. You have to love those shrew monsters. The effects are a bit *ahem* shrewd and laughable. Not to mention the long shots of the animals that appear to be dogs or maybe pigs dressed up in costumes, complete with tail. Good fun to be had by all with a hankering for b-grade sci-horror.

Having seen any number of bad movies, I can state that this is significantly better than most of them, and even better in part than movies not considered bad at all. However, in those aspects in which this movie is bad it is not merely bad, it is awful.

We have the usual formula of two-fisted hero (James Best), damsel in distress (Swedish Ingrid Goude), the damsel's mad-scientist father (non-Swedish Baruch Lumet), and the villain (Ken Curtis). The formula in this case is less clichéd than usual. The hero is fairly articulate and the mad scientist is actually quite urbane, tossing off his creation of hundreds of giant, poisonous, man-eating shrews with the line "unusual experiments lead to unusual results". The dialog is competently written and the acting is above par (with the exception of the Swedish eye-candy, who is at least good eye candy).

The general concept is compact and dramatically efficient: a group of people are trapped first by a hurricane and then by an outside menace in a stronghold which gets less and less strong as time, ammunition and group cohesion all grow short.

However the execution is at times illogical. One problem is that the stronghold is made out of...adobe. On a rainswept island crawling with usable timber? The thrilling conclusion is also somewhat implausible.

The main reason for the film's abysmal reputation is the legendary and quite obvious use of ordinary dogs in bathmats to play the part of giant shrews. I suppose this just has to be overlooked.

As a sidelight, it is interesting to see Dukes of Hazard sheriff James Best tall and handsome as the hero, and it is apparent that producer/villain Ken Curtis labored long and hard in the trenches before gaining fame as Festus.

I'm shocked by the low rating this movie has on here. I have to assume most of the people who voted don't watch many movies in the genre. I have seen more mutated animal movies than I can remember and this is better than most. The acting is good and the shrews don't look too bad. I mean they are just dogs with throw rugs on their backs and some fake teeth but they only attack at night(BRILLIANT!)and they move very fast so you can't see them very well anyway. The movie starts with two guys on a ship going to an island and knowing a hurricane is coming. When they get there, the captain is immediately and obviously suspicious. Other than the scientists making up a bunch of lies and having guns, there's not much of the usual giant mutated animal movie clichés. One thing you might consider a flaw is that ten minutes in, you will know who is going to die. I actually like that. This was the first time I correctly picked every character who would die. This is definitely worth seeing.

I got this movie from the 100 pack at Wal Mart. once I found out who was in it I just had to jump right in,, James Best.. Sheriff Roscoe P. Coltrain. apparently on an island somewhere, overpopulation has become a real problem, and these Giant Killer Shrews are taking over the population and the island. just imagine yourself on an island like that where you are being over run by these huge gigantic shrews, I thought James Best did a wonderful job in this.. he was very funny, and his acting was also pretty good,, I guess back in the late 50's you could say that the undertone to this movie was a warning about overpopulation and what it will mean in the future if we as humans try to take over a certain land mass or area... very decent film from the 50's that isn't Oscar material, but not bad either,, I would recommend it even if I never heard of James Best.

The Killer Shrews (1959)

*** (out of 4)

You'd think a hurricane coming through would be the most dangerous thing for a small group of people on an island but it isn't. No, it's the giant killer shrews that are going to be the most dangerous for the people who soon find themselves trapped inside a house with the creatures trying to get it.

This film was shot around the same time as THE GIANT GILA MONSTER from the same production company who planned on using them as a double feature. I will gladly hold my head up high and admit that I really love both of these pictures. Yes, both are extremely low- budget pictures that has countless flaws but at the same time both of them are so darn entertaining that I can't help but have a good time with both of them.

THE KILLER SHREWS is notorious for the fact that the giant shrews are actually played by dogs with costumes. These costumes look incredibly fake and more times than not they're crooked on the dogs or falling off all together. I'm sure you could cry foul at this but if you do so then you'd be taking the film way too serious. These types of movies were meant to fill up drive-in screens so they weren't meant to be Oscar-winning movies.

One thing I really like about this film are some of the performances. While there are many issues with some of them, the cast is still quite likable and that includes James Best as the leader, Ingrid Goude as the semi love interest and Gordon McLendon and Baruch Lumet as the doctors. At just 68 minutes the film moves at a very good pace and even the dialogue is slightly entertaining in its own way. Still, the main reason to watch THE KILLER SHREWS is for its "dogs/shrews" and they are worth the price of admission alone.