Plot Details: This opinion reveals major details about the movie's plot.
Trapped on an island and surrounded by hundreds of starving, mutant rodents, six people must survive, not only the poisonous bite of the animals, but a hurricane, and each other as well. From start to finish, director Ray Kellogg’s 1959 debut THE KILLER SHREWS is pure shlock, and it’s also pure awesome.
Boat captain Thorne Sherman (James Best) has bought a supply run from a colleague, delivering goods to Dr. Marlowe Craigis (Baruch Lumet) on his island. Thorn and first mate Rook (Judge Henry Dupree) arrive just as a hurricane is beginning to blow in and decide they’ll have to spend the night, then unload and set sail in the morning. When they arrive, they also learn they’ll be taking the doctor’s daughter Ann (Ingrid Goude) back with them. To pass the time, Dr. Craigis tells Thorne about his experiments and explains his theories of over-population, and how, if he can breed a smaller human, half the normal size, he’ll be able to double the life-span. To test his hypothesis, he’s been experimenting on shrews, tiny mammals (according to Wikipedia, they’re THE SMALLEST mammals), but somewhere along the way he’s goofed and created a mutant strain, hundreds of times larger than normal. The shrews must eat three times their weight every day or starve. They have a birth cycle of 10-14 days, and they breed within three weeks of birth. By the time Thorne arrives on the island there are about 200 of them out there and they’ve just finished off the last of the animals on the island. All that’s left are the humans.
It’s not high art. It’s not original. Hell, it’s not really even that good. But THE KILLER SHREWS delivers absolutely everything a person could hope to find when looking for a cheap, goofy horror flick.
The dialogue is awkward (“If we were half as big as we are now, we could live twice as long on our natural resources.”), and the performances are laughable. James Best makes a good country sheriff, but action hero he is not. The shrews in this movie were dogs with fake “shrew pelts” draped over them, with models used for close-ups. I do give Kellogg credit for showing them, though. A lesser director would have tried to hide the flaws by keeping them in shadow, but Kellogg bares all to convey the terror our characters feel--or would feel if the shrews weren’t so goofy looking.
Writer Jay Simms (THE GIANT GILA MONSTER and various TV westerns) was obviously working from a formula when it came to creating his characters. Dr. Craigis is the old foreign scientist with the pretty daughter (and no wife), while Ann is the pretty daughter with the fiancee (Ken Curtis as Jerry Farrell), although as a twist the engagement has ended the day before we meet them when cowardly Jerry shoved Ann out of the way when the shrews rushed them outside the gate. The doctor has an assistant, Mario, while Thorne’s first mate is black and also serves as the movie’s first casualty (yes, Mario is the second to go). Thorne is at times smarmy, a little cocksure, and most likely a bit of a sexist, but he’s the great white hope so of course everyone does what he says.
For the sake of brevity, we don’t spend a lot of time on character development in THE KILLER SHREWS. Everyone has their model and they play it and that’s that. The real star, and point, of this movie are the shrews and our characters’ desperation to survive their attack. If I had to liken it to anything, it would be NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (or, really, any of the Living Dead movies) . . . except with killer shrews instead of zombies.
This movie serves one purpose and one purpose only, to rock. It’s the perfect example of just why this genre is so much fun when a product this cheap and badly-done can still be so entertaining and beloved. It’s a delicate balance, being able to produce something this bad without overdoing it. It’s bad, but that’s why I love it.
Product DetailsOriginal Title:The Killer ShrewsActors: Baruch Lumet - Gordon McLendon - Ingrid Goude - James Best - Ken CurtisCondition: NEWFormat: D...More at iNetVideo.com
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