Attack of the Crab Monsters

The other day, the students of the 6th, 7th and 8th grades watched To Kill a Mockingbird together. 

It’s a wonderful movie with moving performances by a number the actors. The students had read the book and they were tracking differences between the movie and text.

After the movie I had a discussion with my homeroom about movies, and what constitutes a great movie and where certain movies rank on the American Film Institute's list of 100 greatest movies. My student’s know I have a real thing for bad science fiction movies from the 1950’s and 1960’s and they often ask about them.

Afterwards, I asked the 7th and 8th grades, “If we watched one movie at the end of school as a reward for your hard work, would you prefer one of the all-time greats or one of the all-time worst movies?

Nearly all of them want to watch a truly awful movie, so I made a few suggestions for them vote on:

Plan 9 From Outer Space - Aliens resurrect dead humans as zombies and vampires to stop human kind from creating the Solaranite (some sort of super duper weapon). Considered by many critics to be one of the worst movies ever made. The director’s ineptitude makes the whole thing so bad, it’s good. It’s amusing in a truly awful way. In honestly, it is really bad, but I have seen worse.

Attack of the Crab Monsters - People are trapped on a shrinking island by intelligent, brain-eating giant crabs. Directed by Roger Corman, king of the B-movies, this awful picture has a certain charm. People of a certain age will recognize one of the actors as The Professor from Gilligan’s Island.

The Brain that Wouldn’t Die - A doctor experimenting with transplant techniques keeps his girlfriend's head alive when she is decapitated in a car crash, then goes hunting for a new body. Gruesomely awful. Everyone gets their comeuppance in the end.

And the verdict?

Attack of the Crab Monsters - 63 minutes of awful acting and a ten-foot papier-mâché crab.