Horrified that I haven't posted anything here in over a year.
I'm going to change that in 2019, starting with the "it totally should be a classic, why isn't it?" Island Claws from 1980.
On a small Florida coastal island, bad things are happening. First, there's been a leak at the local nuclear plant. Then, the local crab population, the subject of a biological experiment, seems to be getting out of control.
The ominous massings of crabs, click-click-click click-click-click, are the first indicators. The death of the town banjo playing idiot at the hands of a crab swarm let's us know they're not playing around. To really raise the stakes, a pretty blonde girl is their next victim.
Just to cement the fact: the crabs then kill a dog and cause a small girl to lapse into a coma.
Evil, evil crabs.
Not until the third act do we get to see the kicker that'd been foreshadowed... a GIANT crab. As fine a special effect as anything seen in a Roger Corman movie (see Attack of the Crab Monsters), Island Claws is a fun romp that harkens back to the fifties nature-gone-wild, like Them! and The Deadly Mantis, with an ensemble cast including Nita Talbot (the Russian woman from Hogan's Heros), Barry Nelson (Mr Ullman from The Shining), and Robert Lansing (Gary Seven! from Star Trek).
What really surprised me about Island Claws, other than seeing Ricou Browning (Creature from the Black Lagoon) in the writing credits, was how subtle and timely some of the bits were and still are- yes, the Three Mile Island-ness of the local power plant was reminiscent of Fukushima and a subplot involving Haitian refugees echos some of the recent issues with Nicaraguan asylum seekers.
No comments:
Post a Comment