A 1957 Sci-Fi Horror B-Movie produced and directed by Roger Corman and released by Allied Artists. The cast includes Richard Garland, Pamela Duncan, and Russell Johnson.
A group of scientists land on a remote Pacific island after it was irradiated in the Bikini Atoll nuclear tests, in search of a previous group who disappeared while studying the radiation's effects on its ecosystem. It turns out that they were eaten by Giant Mutant Land Crabs(!), which have absorbed their intelligences by eating their brains. The crabs then go about killing the humans one by one. Once the humans learn of their weakness, the crabs step up their plan to hunt them down, using dynamite to destroy the island bit by bit. With the humans cornered and on the run, the crabs close in for the kill...
This work provides examples of:
- Assimilation Plot: The Crabs do this whenever they eat someone. Absorbing them into their collective consciousness of each individual crab.
- B-Movie: The former trope image.
- Eat Brain for Memories: When the Crabs eat someone's brains, that person's consciousness is assimilated into their hivemind and their memories are at the Crabs' disposal.
- Exactly What It Says on the Tin: It's a film about giant crabs attacking people.
- Giant Enemy Crab: Giant mutant crabs who attack people on an island.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Hank Chapman destroys the final crab by crashing an antenna on it, frying them both.
- Island of Mystery: The island the crabs are on.
- Nigh-Invulnerable: The crabs are immune to all physical attacks—which just pass through them as if they were globs of mercury. Elecriticy, however, kills them instantly.
- Off with His Head!: One of the seamen is decapitated by a crab when he falls from a boat.
- Playing with Fire: The Crabs can produce "arcs of heat" which they use to detonate dynamite.
- Touch of the Monster: The poster features a crab monster holding a distressed female in peril, which doesn't occur in the film at all.
- Voice Changeling: The crabs can mimic the voice of any person they hear by vibrating any nearby metal. This creates an echo to the voice that serves as a haunting tip off.
