I love comic books in all their myriad forms, be they mini-comics or big thick graphic novels and everything in between. However, my second great passion is the cheesy monster movies, especially when these films involve giant monsters. You would expect no less from the pastor of the First Church of Godzilla. All honor to the Great Scaly One who protects us with His fiery atomic love.
One of the joys of watching cheesy monster movies is writing about them in this bloggy thing of mine. The press of other business has kept me from doing this for too long, but I’m back in the cinematic saddle today with my thoughts on...Queen Crab.
Here’s the Internet Movie Database summary of the movie, which I’m sharing with you sans spoiler warning on account of it doesn’t bear any resemblance to the actual movie beyond being set in a somewhat remote countryside:
A meteor crashes into a quiet lake in the remote countryside and awakens a centuries-old beast, who tears through a nearby town and its inhabitants, who must fight for their lives and stop this Queen Crab before she can hatch an army of babies.
Sounds like a swell movie that someone should make some time, but it’s not this movie. Adding to the false advertising, the summary also appears on the back of the DVD case.
Queen Crab is from Polonia Brothers Entertainment, the low-budget movie makers who unleashed Jurassic Prey on the world. I reviewed that film last September. This movie, written and directed by Brett Piper, is much better than that movie, especially when it comes to the stop-motion animation used for the title characters and several smaller crabs. Now it’s time to warn you there are...
SPOILERS AHEAD
SPOILERS AHEAD
SPOILERS AHEAD
SPOILERS AHEAD
SPOILERS AHEAD
SPOILERS AHEAD
SPOILERS AHEAD
SPOILERS AHEAD
No meteor disturbs the quiet lake at the beginning of this movie. The disturbance comes from a bickering married couple. The husband is a scientist trying to increase food growth so humanity doesn’t starve by the year 2050. His wife objects to him spending all his time working and not doing the household chores. They are terrible parents whose default positions are to either scream at their young daughter (Mom) or tell her to stop bothering them in the lab (Dad), However, to be honest, the scientist does talk to his daughter just long enough to insert the “increase growth” element into the plot. Like I said, no meteor.
Daughter Melissa [played by Michelle Simone Miller] finds a crab, which she names “Pee-Wee” and takes as a pet. She feeds Pee-Wee berries from her dad’s experiments. Pee-Wee grows to about the size of a Roomba Vacuum Cleaner Robot. Mom freaks, distracting Dad from his work. Explosive chemicals mix and, well, explode, killing Dad and Mom. Melissa will be raised by her uncle [Ken Van Sant], who is the town sheriff.
Time passes. After high school, Melissa returns to the family house and, apparently, renews her relationship with the now-gigantic Pee-Wee. I can relate. I have crabby friends and I am the crabby friend of others.
Pee-Wee turns out to be female and gives birth to a dozen little-but-still-Roomba-size crabs. A cow is killed and eaten. The sheriff investigates with his douche bag of a deputy [Richard Lounello]. Douche-bag deputy gets shot with rock salt, courtesy of Melissa’s exercising her Second Amendment rights. Melissa’s best friend from high school - “B” movie actress Jennifer Kane [Kathryn Metz] comes to visit. In a bar, she elbows the douche-bag deputy in the face, then pepper sprays him. These are not the worse things that happen to the deputy in this movie.
A scientist [A.J. DeLucia] comes to check things out and finds one of Pee Wee’s old shells. A bartender-slash-wannabe-rapist gets eaten by the baby crabs. Other characters kill all the baby crabs, which pisses off Pee-Wee. The giant crab goes on a rampage, but, despite what it says on the back of the DVD case, she never gets anywhere near the town itself. I suspect this was a budget matter...as in this movie had a really tiny budget.
Since I’m going to recommend this movie, this is as far as I will take the plot synopsis.
SPOILERS OVER
SPOILERS OVER
SPOILERS OVER
SPOILERS OVER
SPOILERS OVER
SPOILERS OVER
SPOILERS OVER
SPOILERS OVER
One of the joys of watching cheesy monster movies is writing about them in this bloggy thing of mine. The press of other business has kept me from doing this for too long, but I’m back in the cinematic saddle today with my thoughts on...Queen Crab.
Here’s the Internet Movie Database summary of the movie, which I’m sharing with you sans spoiler warning on account of it doesn’t bear any resemblance to the actual movie beyond being set in a somewhat remote countryside:
A meteor crashes into a quiet lake in the remote countryside and awakens a centuries-old beast, who tears through a nearby town and its inhabitants, who must fight for their lives and stop this Queen Crab before she can hatch an army of babies.
Sounds like a swell movie that someone should make some time, but it’s not this movie. Adding to the false advertising, the summary also appears on the back of the DVD case.
Queen Crab is from Polonia Brothers Entertainment, the low-budget movie makers who unleashed Jurassic Prey on the world. I reviewed that film last September. This movie, written and directed by Brett Piper, is much better than that movie, especially when it comes to the stop-motion animation used for the title characters and several smaller crabs. Now it’s time to warn you there are...
SPOILERS AHEAD
SPOILERS AHEAD
SPOILERS AHEAD
SPOILERS AHEAD
SPOILERS AHEAD
SPOILERS AHEAD
SPOILERS AHEAD
SPOILERS AHEAD
No meteor disturbs the quiet lake at the beginning of this movie. The disturbance comes from a bickering married couple. The husband is a scientist trying to increase food growth so humanity doesn’t starve by the year 2050. His wife objects to him spending all his time working and not doing the household chores. They are terrible parents whose default positions are to either scream at their young daughter (Mom) or tell her to stop bothering them in the lab (Dad), However, to be honest, the scientist does talk to his daughter just long enough to insert the “increase growth” element into the plot. Like I said, no meteor.
Daughter Melissa [played by Michelle Simone Miller] finds a crab, which she names “Pee-Wee” and takes as a pet. She feeds Pee-Wee berries from her dad’s experiments. Pee-Wee grows to about the size of a Roomba Vacuum Cleaner Robot. Mom freaks, distracting Dad from his work. Explosive chemicals mix and, well, explode, killing Dad and Mom. Melissa will be raised by her uncle [Ken Van Sant], who is the town sheriff.
Time passes. After high school, Melissa returns to the family house and, apparently, renews her relationship with the now-gigantic Pee-Wee. I can relate. I have crabby friends and I am the crabby friend of others.
Pee-Wee turns out to be female and gives birth to a dozen little-but-still-Roomba-size crabs. A cow is killed and eaten. The sheriff investigates with his douche bag of a deputy [Richard Lounello]. Douche-bag deputy gets shot with rock salt, courtesy of Melissa’s exercising her Second Amendment rights. Melissa’s best friend from high school - “B” movie actress Jennifer Kane [Kathryn Metz] comes to visit. In a bar, she elbows the douche-bag deputy in the face, then pepper sprays him. These are not the worse things that happen to the deputy in this movie.
A scientist [A.J. DeLucia] comes to check things out and finds one of Pee Wee’s old shells. A bartender-slash-wannabe-rapist gets eaten by the baby crabs. Other characters kill all the baby crabs, which pisses off Pee-Wee. The giant crab goes on a rampage, but, despite what it says on the back of the DVD case, she never gets anywhere near the town itself. I suspect this was a budget matter...as in this movie had a really tiny budget.
Since I’m going to recommend this movie, this is as far as I will take the plot synopsis.
SPOILERS OVER
SPOILERS OVER
SPOILERS OVER
SPOILERS OVER
SPOILERS OVER
SPOILERS OVER
SPOILERS OVER
SPOILERS OVER
There’s lots to recommend this fun movie, even though it falls more than a bit short of being any kind of classic. The acting and the writing are decent. The 90-minute length is just right. The stop-motion animation is pretty good for what often seems to be a lost art. The movie has a satisfying ending. I liked it.
Queen Crab is available on DVD. It wouldn’t be out of place on the SyFy channel. Whether you buy, rent or watch it on TV, if you are a devotee of this kind of film, as I am, I think you’ll have a good time with it. Hey, for an hour-and-a-half, it kept my mind off the monsters running for the Republican Party presidential nomination. That is no small feat.
I have - literally - stacks of movies like Queen Crab sitting on my shelves waiting to be viewed and reviewed. I’ll try to write about them on a more frequent basis in bloggy things to come.
Aa for tomorrow...saddle up for so hard-riding adventure, cowboys and cowgirls. Because another “Rawhide Kid Wednesday” installment is coming your way. See you then.
© 2016 Tony Isabella
I've been a fan of filmmaker Brett Piper for about 25 years. I've found all of his movies to be entertaining and imaginative, but the really admirable thing is that Brett is virtually a one-man show. He writes, shoots, edits and directs his own movies AND does all of the special effects himself (and almost always, by hand). He's created man-in-suit monsters, space battles, and hundreds of stop-motion critters for his movies (and for others)... and all on budgets that wouldn't cover catering on a studio film.
ReplyDeleteHis latest, TRICLOPS, a homage to Bert I. Gordon's THE CYCLOPS, is due out on DVD soon.