This movie is often paired up with The Giant Gila Monster in DVD collections and on TV. It's easy to see why since they were both made by the same guy, Ray Kellogg. While I personally think the other movie is the better film, this movie is an enjoyable bit of sci-fi shlock. It's one of those movies where you can just tell that it was made for no money whatsoever, shot entirely in one location, and with really laughable special effects. But there's a certain charm to these types of movies that I can't quite put my finger on. Like movies by Ed Wood or even Roger Corman, I feel it's enchanting that these people had no money but decided to make their movies anyway. That said, The Killer Shrews is still pretty amateurish and I do think there are more enjoyable bad movies.
The plot is simple: a blue-collar captain arrives on a tiny island to deliver some supplies to a doctor and his assistants. However, with a hurricane coming soon, the captain and his friend decide to stay the night and wait for the storm to blow over. Unfortunately, they picked the worst time to do so. Due to an oversight on one person's part, hundreds of wolf-sized shrews are now loose on the island. With dark approaching and their natural food supply dwindling, the monsters are out to to eat anything they can find. Now the people must hold up inside the modest house and survive the night. Too bad there's a girl involved and two of the men don't like each other.
The characters in this film are pretty bland. Veteran actor James Best plays Thorne Sherman, the captain who ends up stuck on the island and has to take charge of the group to survive. Not the deepest character. He's the typical hero of these types of movies. But, even though he makes it clear he's not interested in anything but himself, he's good enough to try to protect everyone when the shrews start attacking. Ingrid Goude is one of the blandest women ever to appear in one of these movies as Ann Craigis, the daughter of the scientist who created the killer shrews. She doesn't do much except latch onto Sherman the minute things get hairy or scream when the monsters attack. She tries to be deep by talking about how the wind has a lonely sound or about the wonders of life but it doesn't work. Very uninspired character. Ken Curtis' role of Jerry Farrell is the typical drunken asshole who is antagonistic towards Sherman almost from the get-go, especially when Sherman starts getting cozy with Ann, who's supposed to be engaged to him. It's Farrell's fault that the shrews are loose because he was drunk and left the gate open, letting the monsters escape into the island. He's also a coward and won't hesitate to let someone die in order to save his own skin. He apparently did so to Ann the night before the film starts and does the same to Sherman when they're trying to escape to the boat.
Gordon McLendon plays a somewhat interesting character as Dr. Radford Baines, assistant to the creator of the shrews. He's focused on his work so much that he often doesn't hear other people talking to him and gets excited about the success of their experiments, even if it means death for them. Clinical to the end, he's bitten by one of the shrews and as its poisonous saliva kills him, he types out the symptoms he's feeling up tp his death. Can't help but admire someone that passionate about their experiments. I feel he should have been the one that is the head of the project, instead of Dr. Marlowe Craigis, played by a bland old actor named Baruch Lumet. He's not a mad scientist but he's not exciting in the slightest. All he does is spew out endless technobabble about his experiments and never acts that concerned when the monsters start breaking in. One character I wish was in the movie more is Sherman's assistant, Rook Griswold. There's not much to him but what little he's in the film, Judge Henry Dupree plays him as a funny, likable character. I wish he hadn't gotten killed so early. Finally, there's Alfredo DeSoto's role of Mario, the Spanish assistant to Dr. Craigis. Not much to say other than he does come across as a decent, reliable guy that I wish had lived. But, he's also the type of character in these movies that when you see him, you know he's lunch meat.
As I've said before, a monster movie only works if its monsters do and the reason The Killer Shrews is a bad movie is because of its lackluster monsters. As has been said many times, it's obvious that the shrews are dogs dressed up in really fake looking pelts. Closeups are really bad puppets of the shrews. Given the limitations of the budget, you can forgive the filmmakers for not being able to afford convincing effects but it really does hurt the film. The shrews never come across as threatening. When the dogs are used, it's obvious from their body language that they're more than likely playing with what's in front of them and the puppets are stiff with no life to them whatsoever. Ann says that there are like 200 or 300 of them but all we ever see are three to six at a time. If there's no more food on the island except for the people, wouldn't all of the shrews be gathering around the house? They try to give the shrews the added threat of them having poisonous saliva (the explanation for which I doubt is scientifically accurate) but it doesn't come into play except for two isolated incidents. That would mean more incentive for the characters to not even let themselves get scratched by them but it never comes across as that big a threat. Finally, they say that the shrews only forge for food at night. But there are a lot of shots of the shrews in broad daylight. Okay, maybe they're so hungry that they decide to just deal with the sunlight. (More practically, you can't have your monsters just disappear for the rest of the film.) Still, it does fly in the face of what's been established about the shrews.
There are some instances of really poor editing in this film. One occurs when Mario is attacked in the cellar by a shrew that got into the house. We don't even see the shrew actually climb in through a small kitchen window that is opened by a falling branch. We just see a shot of the window and boom, there's the shrew in the kitchen. As Mario is doing his patrol through the house, we see a random shot of the shrew hiding under the stairs that lead down to the cellar. That's when Mario notices that both the kitchen window and the cellar door are open, puts two and two together, and goes to get Sherman. That brief shot of the shrew hiding beneath the stairs ruined a chance for some suspense. Why not just have Mario discover that the shrew is in the house by seeing the open window and cellar door, got get Sherman to investigate the basement, and then show the shrew hiding under the stairs. We already know where the shrew is because of that clumsy edit so it's not a surprise when we see him leap out of the dark to attack Mario. Not only that but after Sherman kills the shrew and is helping Mario, there are some quick, random clips of people running down a hall and then a quick one of them standing at the cellar door. Later, when the remaining characters are building a contraption to help them escape, half of a sentence is cut off between cuts. It's like the editor fell asleep in the middle of cutting those moments. Also, speaking of that cellar scene, the music that plays is really inappropriate and doesn't fit well with the scene at all. Despite the budget, they could have at least tried to make more suspenseful music. The entire score in general is just bland.
Interestingly enough, despite being a shlocky monster movie for the most part, the film does make a small comment on overpopulation. Dr. Craigis' ultimate objective for his experiments is to find a way to lower the metabolism so people won't have to eat as much. With the shrews having eaten all the food on the island, the scientists say it won't be long before they finally resort to cannibalism to stay alive. Dr. Baines says that the situation on the island will be a miniature demonstration of the effects of overpopulation. Once the remaining characters, Sherman, Ann, and Dr. Craigis make it to Sherman's boat, Craigis says that within twenty-four hours, there will be only one shrew left on the island and he'll die of starvation. If Dr. Baines was right, then one day, there will only be one person left on Earth and he or she will die of starvation. Not that it matters to Sherman, who before kissing Ann, makes his intentions clear when he says that he's not going to worry about overpopulation just yet.
Yes, The Killer Shrews is undeniably a bad movie. The actors are forgettable for the most part, the monsters are not that threatening, and the film has a lot of shoddy editing, effects, and music. Stephen King wrote that he thinks it's actually a pretty scary film! I respect Stephen King but I'm ashamed of him for saying that. I don't see how anybody could be scared of this film. (But what do I know? I was scared of The Blob for years!) By this point, you probably think I hate this movie. I don't hate The Killer Shrews but it's not a movie I watch that often. To me, Ray Kellogg's other monster movie of the same year, The Giant Gila Monster, while still being quite shlocky, is a better film. I'll talk about it next.
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