The Killer Shrews (1959)

Genre: Horror, Monster, Mad Scientist

Source: My Own Collection

Grade: A+

When I first picked this movie out to watch I thought it was going to either really suck, or at the most be just OK. I never once suspected this movie would be Freaken Amazing! It was a truly classic monster movie, pretty much everything about it was perfect. I don't regret one minute of watching this truly amazing monster flick. And no I am not at all being sarcastic, I truly do love this movie.

The story is a pretty well known style of 50s monster movie, if you know what I mean. Except its much more thought out and way more well done than many other 50s monster movies, like for example its 10x better in quality than "The Giant Gila Monster" and "Attack of the Giant Leeches". Reason being is this movie has such a great creepy atmosphere and is full of great suspense, it focuses on the horror and the monsters as opposed to a the drama of the characters or other random things, that the two movies I mentioned above made the mistake of doing.
Anyways the films basic synopsis is the main character and his assistant sail out to a remote island (somewhere near Alaska I think based on the terrain) to deliver supplies to the scientist's living and operating there, not knowing that the scientist's have been conducting strange experiments on shrews, that have mutated them and made them extremely hostile and very big. And unfortunately for our main characters a  hurricane blows in stranding everyone on the island with all these mutant shrews, who by the hour keep getting more savage and keep gaining more "ability's" such as being able to see in the daylight which regular shrews aren't able to do and best of all if you just get bit once by these critters your dead, because their bites contain an extreme amount of poison. Plus they are a truly scary looking bunch of creatures. Though an interesting thing I read was, that the way they created  these creatures for the movie was the filmmakers just shaved a bunch of coon dogs.
This movie is also packed with great scenes, like when this one scientist gets bit by a shrew he writes down all the feelings he experiences up until his death, one symptom he wrote was "chilling" and then all scenes were people get devoured by these things were very freaky. And of course all the action used throughout the movie were just plain entertaining. But what`s most entertaining of all might have been the finale, its hard to explain really what they did, you would really have to watch it to understand it. But basically they make this tank/armor thing out of trash cans and fight their way to beach and the safety of the boat through all the killer shrews, I thought it was pretty cool.


The cast was pretty well made up you had James Best as the main character and hero of the movie, fans of "The Dukes of Hazard" will probably recognize that name, as the sheriff Rosco P. Coltrane from the show. Then there was Ingrid Goude as the female protagonist, she was actually 1957s Miss. Universe. As for the rest of the cast they were all good, bringing on some very unique and different characters through there performances.
So in conclusion I would say this is a must see movie, one of my favorite 50s monster flicks. Everything from its creepy atmosphere, awesome terrifying suspense and  flat out scary looking monster shrews make this up as a grade A+ movie.