The Killer Shrews (1959)


It starts off with a short movie (six or so minutes)about a couple of boys trying to tie a can to the tail of a horse, but gets caught by the "Old Timer Billy Slater" and more or less forced into setting up a junior rodeo, which they do and of course hilarity ensues and "Old Timer Billy Slater" has never been happier...which might be the reason it looks like he was on laughing gas a lot of the time.

Well, as the title hints, this movie is about killer shrews. Yes, that's right, SHREWS! (this is your cue to run screaming btw.) Although, the plot is thin, hell, it took ages before I even figured out what the plot was! Which is basically, killer shrews! Yeah, that's the plot. But it's anything BUT boring, seriously, they're shrews, right, and they kill, and yeah, shrews, god, I'm such a bad liar. This is quite possibly the worst movie ever made.

Anyway, what happens is that a captain and his aid comes to an island where some scientist is making some experiments on, you guessed it, shrews! They talk, explain just what a shrew is while the girl of the place, the scientist's daughter almost look like she's about to crap herself. My advice, cut down on the caffeine!

The first two victims, the captain's aid, a black man, and the helper for the scientist, a mexican guy, gets knocked off one after another and no one of the other thinks much of it at all. Then, when there are only caucasians left they really start to get going, realizing that one of them may die too. Can you see where I'm going with this? The black guy is portrayed quite stupidly too, like he has an IQ of 50ish. Like for instance in the chase sequence he finds literally THE weakest tree around to climb up in, even though there are plenty of other, better suited, trees around.

After about an hour in the house the captain is already an expert on shrew behaviour and concocts plans on how to get away from them, basing it of course on one single attack he witnessed.

The shrews, or should I say dogs in shrew costumes, fail to be threatening at all, but I guess that's to be expected too. Hell, they even bark at times, ever heard of a barking shrew?

The acting is flatter than flat, totally without emotion, even in the scenes that are supposed to be loaded with any emotion, be it happyness, anger, sadness, fear and so forth.

The movie is shot in gray, gray and gray, that's right, three whole shades of GRAY...it really sets a mood you know, of extreme boredom.

"The Killer Shrews" is so bad it passed good, went back to bad, passed that and went past good once again to reach that mellow state of abhorrant! Even grading this movie would be a insult to cinematography, past, present and future!

I won't give away the ending, how many people survive and so forth, but there is NOTHING about this movie that is worth watching. Except the dog-shrews maybe, but that's about it. Well, come to think of it, that's not enough reason to see it, so here you go, an image of a shrew.


...and I've never been happier

(26/02/03)

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