WasAnnon Slow pace in the most part of the movie.

Curapedi I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

Catangro After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

Sanjeev Waters A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

O2D I'm shocked by the low rating this movie has on here. I have to assume most of the people who voted don't watch many movies in the genre. I have seen more mutated animal movies than I can remember and this is better than most. The acting is good and the shrews don't look too bad. I mean they are just dogs with throw rugs on their backs and some fake teeth but they only attack at night(BRILLIANT!)and they move very fast so you can't see them very well anyway. The movie starts with two guys on a ship going to an island and knowing a hurricane is coming. When they get there, the captain is immediately and obviously suspicious. Other than the scientists making up a bunch of lies and having guns, there's not much of the usual giant mutated animal movie clichés. One thing you might consider a flaw is that ten minutes in, you will know who is going to die. I actually like that. This was the first time I correctly picked every character who would die. This is definitely worth seeing.

zardoz-13 "Giant Gila Monster" director Ray Kellogg's low-budget creature feature "The Killer Shrews" is a claustrophobic saga that grossed almost nine times its budget and has become a public domain masterpiece. "Creation of the Humanoids" scenarist Jay Simms spend most of his career writing episode for television series such as "Laramie," "The Rifleman," "Rawhide," "Have Gun, Will Travel," "Laredo," and "Gunsmoke." Before he graduated to less science-fiction, horror-oriented material, he wrote this chiller, and he must have been channeling H.G. Wells' "The Island of Doctor Moreau" to some extent. James Best portrays the hero in this shoe-string budget thriller, and Ken Curtis—who produced the film—cast himself as a drunken scientist. Aside from some footage of a boat on the ocean and scenes inside a scientist compound, "The Killer Shrews" could have been shot anywhere on its reported $123-thousand budget. Best and Curtis give the best performances hands down, while everybody else looks a little embarrassed by all the baloney that they try to make sound believable. According to the Internet Movie Database, the full-sized shrews were played by coon dogs, and the close-ups of the shrews were puppets. Wikipedia points out that "The Killer Shrews" was lensed in Dallas, Texas.An isolated island in the middle of the ocean is the setting for this science-fiction/horror movie where a team of scientists have been conducting experiments on tiny animals called shrews. The most outlandish aspect of this movie is the reason that prompted Dr. Marlowe Craigis (Baruch Lumet of "The Pawnbroker") to embark on his privately funded research. He intends to shrink humans to half our current size so he can ease world hunger. Craigis figures that when the human race is that reduced physically in size, people consume less and lengthen the Earth's food supply. Inexplicably, their science project gets out of hand. By the time that Captain Thorne Sherman and his first-mate 'Rook' Griswold (Judge Henry Dupree of "My Dog, Buddy") arrive with supplies, the shrews have grown to the size of dogs. Dr. Craigis explains that shrews must eat their body weight in anything alive to survive. The first half of "The Killer Shrews" is spend with Craigis delivering a plethora of expository information about these devilish critters. One of Craigis' scientist, Jerry Farrell (Ken Curtis of "The Searchers"), is particularly upset by this point by the escape of some shrews. Furthermore, his lack of vigilance regarding the escaped shrews has prompted Dr. Craigis' gorgeous daughter, Ann (Ingrid Goude of "Never Steal Anything Small"), to call off her engagement with Farrell. A hurricane batters the island, and Thorne decides to stay in the compound with the scientists after Ann reveals everything about the murderous mutants. This doesn't suit Farrell because he thinks that Thorne is making moves of his former finance. About 20 minutes into the action, Thorne's first mate encounters the ravenous shrews. He runs in panic and struggles to climb a tree to elude the hungry beasts, but several of them leap at him and kill him. Meanwhile, three other starving shrews dig under the gates to the stable and eat a helpless horse, and then they start searching for a point of entry to the compound. One shrew gains access to the compound when a shutter on a window is damaged by the high winds. The animal slips in, and Thorne and Craigis' hired help Mario (Alfredo de Soto of "The Big Steal") confront the beastly thing in the basement where the food is stored. The dog-like creature with huge fangs bites Mario, and the handy man dies from poison that was put out on the island long ago to diminish the population. Not only did the poison fail to work, but the shrews have absorbed into their system with suffering any ill effects. Thorne and Jerry trudge through the woods to the shore. Thorne whistles up Rook who is supposed to be aboard the yacht. Rook is nowhere to be found until Thorne stumbles onto his remains. Earlier, the jealous Farrell threatened to kill Thorne since he kept making eyes at Ann. Thorne disarmed Farrell. After they find Rook's empty revolver, Thorne and Farrell hear the hunger shrews approaching. They charge back to the compound. Farrell arrives before Thorne and tries to lock Thorne out of the compound to prevent more the shrews from invading the premises. Thorne scales the wall and beats up the frantic Farrell. Bristling with rage, Thorne almost dumps Farrell's unconscious body over the wall. At the last moment, he relents to everybody's relief. No sooner than everybody believes they are out of harm's way than they realize that more shrews have sneaked into the compound. Ann is poised to make coffee when she opens a door to another room, and a shrew dashes out. The animal attacks Dr. Radford Baines (producer Gordon McLendon), and he perishes from the poison in the animal's bit. However, he survives long enough to type out every symptom of his behavior before he keels over. Thorne guns down the shrew. Thorne, Ann, Farrell, and Dr. Craigis evacuate themselves from the house portion of the compound after the shrews tear apart the plaster and burrow into the adobe. Farrell appropriates the automatic shotgun that Thorne pitched over the wall before he scaled it. They find some drums later enough to each of them to crawl into and duck-walk across open ground to the shore. Farrell refuses to join them and climbs atop the roof as the shrews assemble for the final feast. Thorne uses a torch to cut oblong viewing holes in the drums. They lash three drums together and remotely open the patio gate. The shrews scramble in and tear at the view slots while our heroes laboriously make their way across uneven terrain to the shore. Believe it or not, a sequel entitled "Return of the Killer Shrews" was released in 2012, and James Best reprised his role as Thorne.

roddekker Favorite Movie Quote: "It's so quiet, you can almost smell it." The Killer Shrews from the 1950's is a classic example of American racism (in film) as it existed at that time.Of course, the prejudice here in The Killer Shrews has been somewhat disguised (notice I didn't say cleverly disguised 'cause nothing about this flick is "clever") beneath a wafer-thin plot concerning an isolated invasion by a pack of retarded-looking monster shrews upon the inhabitants of a small, secluded island. But, regardless of this lame plot-line, the racism is most definitely evident in this utterly terrible Z-Grade Horror Movie."Hey! The Killer Shrews is only a harmless, little, nothing-of-a-horror-movie." the viewer might say. Well, how wrong they could be.The Killer Shrews has a cast of exactly 7 characters. 5 of these characters (4 men, 1 woman) are all White-Folks. Of the 2 remaining characters, one is a Black male, and the other one is a Mexican male. Because I'm talking about racism here, it should be pretty obvious for anyone (without them being a genius) to figure out who is going to be the 1st person to be chewed up by the killer shrews, and then who is going to be the 2nd sorry victim.The Killer Shrews really is quite an incredible display of racism when you consider that it was, indeed, the Black, first, and then the Mexican, next, who met up with horrible deaths before any of the White-Folks actually did. And, when it did finally come down to a White meeting up with his demise in The Killer Shrews, it was, naturally, the "wicked" one who got it.Oh, brother! You know, some Z-Grade Flicks are so bad, they're good. But The Killer Shrews was so bad that it was absolutely the worst piece of movie-rubbish imaginable. Yeah. It sure was.

artpf A disparate group are trapped on a remote island by a hurricane. On the island, a doctor works to make humans twice as small as we already are. This, apparently, will help prevent over population. Unfortunately, his experiments have also created some giant shrews. As the shrews run out of smaller animals to eat, they move in on the people in the house.This is a really good low budget film from the 50's. It moves, it's scary and it's well done given the low budget.I can remember watching this as a kid on Chiller Theatre. It stands up to the test of time.