The Killer Shrews

The most remarkable thing about this ultra-low-budget film is the fact that the producers were able to talk a then-popular country star, Miss Universe 1957, and the father of directing legend Sidney Lumet into it. The film's production design was really poor – the filmmakers made do with a single house surrounded by a high wooden fence somewhere in a not-so-lovely looking landscape and that's basically it. The visuals are lousy and unattractive, and the monsters themselves are the icing on the cake – killer "mutant rats", i.e. small greyhounds with long hair and sabre-like fangs. Every now and then they eat someone or break through a wall, and the only way to escape from them is in garbage cans. The way the attacks of the "monsters" are filmed (we put a stuffed animal's head in front of the camera, it somehow works) is really unintentionally funny and probably the only thing worth mentioning. (12/26/2012)

A cute B-rated flick, in which a bunch of dogs posing as huge rat mutants threaten a group of people in a house on a remote island. The mediocre script is dragged further down by the low budget and the filmmakers’ ineptitude. The Killer Shrews is irresistibly naïve in everything from the horror scenes to the relationships between the characters. I don’t regret a single minute spent watching this guilty-pleasure :-) (03/13/2009)