Starring James Best, Ingrid Goude, Ken Curtis, Gordon McLendon, Baruch Lumet
Directed by Ray Kellogg
(actor & director credits courtesy IMDB.com)
A ship captain becomes stranded on an island where a scientist has transformed tiny shrews into giant ravenous creatures whose bite causes instant death.
One of a pair of low budget horror films produced by Gordon McLendon and his father for the chain of theaters they owned, the other being The Giant Gila Monster, the movie is often ridiculed but I've always found it very enjoyable. Dogs in costume pass for the shrews, but some very creepy puppet heads with menacing teeth are used effectively in closeups, and the sound effects that accompany their attacks are definitely unnerving. Best, later to attain greater fame for playing Sheriff Rosco Coltrane on The Dukes Of Hazzard, is fine in the lead, and the supporting cast isn't bad either, with Gunsmoke's Ken Curtis playing a drunk coward, Sidney Lumet's father Baruch playing the cultured scientist, and McLendon more than serviceable as one of his excitable assistants. Goude, a Swedish model turned actress, whose accent is mentioned but never explained, is capable, but saddled in the script with an odd engagement to Curtis' reprobate that doesn't really make sense. This is definitely low-budget movie movie making, so the sets are limited, and the threat of an oncoming hurricane is beyond the filmmakers' abilities to depict convincingly. It's also unfortunate that Judge Henry Dupree's character isn't much more than a stereotype and dispatched so early in the film. However, I'm still fond of the picture, and would judge it as a more than diverting piece of entertainment.
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