Attack of the Crab Monsters (1957) on Netflix
A team led by Dr. Karl Weigand lands on a Pacific island to find a missing expedition and continue radiation studies from the Bikini Atoll tests. Their seaplane explodes, stranding them.
- Netflix3.0/5
- IMDb4.9/104,516 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes71%
Trailer
Plot summary
Dr. Karl Weigand leads a second group of scientists to the island, sent to learn what became of the first expedition and to keep studying how radiation from the Bikini Atoll tests has affected the plants and sea life. Biologists Martha Hunter and Dale Drewer, geologist James Carson, and handyman Hank Chapman are among them, with Ensign Quinlan and five sailors as support. A sailor falls into the water and is killed. Two sailors stay to guard the scientists while the others try to fly out, but the seaplane explodes, and a storm keeps them from reporting it. They remain on the island and read the earlier team's journal entries about killer worms. That night, Martha hears a voice call her name.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Attack of the Crab Monsters (1957)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Charles B. Griffith wrote and directed the film's underwater sequences himself, offering to do the job for $100 after reading Jacques Cousteau's The Silent World; he said that if he had simply asked Roger Corman, the answer would have been no.
- Roger Corman told writer Charles B. Griffith that the film was "an experiment" and demanded suspense or action in every scene; Griffith said the experiment talk was a trick, since Corman did not want to bother cutting out other scenes.
- The underwater scenes were shot in a tank at Marineland, with Charles B. Griffith at the bottom trying to get the actors to do one thing while cinematographer Floyd Crosby hammered on the glass window to get them to do something else.
- Attack of the Crab Monsters earned an estimated $1 million and was Roger Corman's most profitable production up to that time, a result he credited to the wildness of its title and to structuring every scene for horror and suspense.
