The Killer Shrews [PG]

Narrowly escaping a hurricane, a captain lands on an island where a scientist is working to solve the world’s population problems. Not initially very interested in the scientist’s work, the captain is soon forced to when night falls and he gets holed up in the house with the scientist, his daughter, and fellows, as a large number of giant, mutated shrews besiege them. Newly escaped from the lab and having already exhausted the island’s food supply the shrews have marked the team as their next meal and, with the hurricane weakening the house, it’s only a matter of time before they break in and the captives became a midnight snack. 

Despite the fact that this film is called The Killer Shrews, which just screams ridiculousness right from the get-go, I was actually quite impressed with how invested everyone was who worked on it. It delivers some solid performances, some good resourcefulness considering it was probably made on a budget of nothing, and it’s shot in quite a decent way. It’s almost like everyone knew how stupid the content was so they tried extra hard to make it at least an enjoyable ridiculous horror flick. 

I want to first start with the script. Despite its slightly predictable and ridiculous content, it’s actually written really well with the right amounts of information dumps, build up of tension, and establishment and build up of relationships between the characters. The story itself, whilst being pretty simple, makes for good entertainment and intrigue because the true horror is not so much what’s outside waiting to disembowel you, but inside the house where rationality breaks down. What sets this aside from films like Night of the Living Dead, which deals with a similar thing only the threat is zombies, is the fact that these people aren’t all strangers: we’ve got one newcomer and the remainder of the characters are people who have been working together for ages, there is even romantic history between two of them. As a result, some of the things that happen between them all make for a good, fun lot of intrigue. 

Everyone in the cast delivers solid performances, something that has been unseen for quite a while in the string of B-grade horror movies I’ve been working my way through. For the first time in what seems like ages, I actually found myself becoming attached to and developing feelings towards the characters: they were three dimensional and not just flat, generic tropes of the genre. I found this good and refreshing. 

As I mentioned before, applause has to be given to the resourcefulness of this film regarding the ‘special effects’. For the close-ups of the shrews we’ve got these ugly and freaky-looking puppets that must have had very meagre robotics in them to get them to move their heads as they do. For the shots of the shrews storming the house and running about outside it, I don’t know for sure, but it looked like they got dogs and just dressed them in ‘shrew’ costumes. Because these live-action shots are quite short and we don’t see very many of them, it’s hard to tell for sure what animals are used for the hunt and chase scenes, but this is another thing that keeps you watching because you’re trying to make sense of what you’re seeing. 

Starring James Best, Ingrid Goude, Ken Curtis, Gordon McLendon, Baruch Lumet, Judge Henry Dupree, and Alfredo DeSoto, The Killer Shrews is a silly, but surprisingly solid B-grade movie filled with suspense, horror, drama, and romance. I think the best thing about it is that everyone seemed to really want to make the most out of it and that attitude really shines through despite the ridiculous title.