A young girl (Melissa) is playing nearby the pond close to her family’s residence, and finds a cute little crab whom she names Pee-Wee (yeah, you could probably make some STD jokes here). She decides to keep it, and starts to feed it some of the weird fruit from her father’s laboratory where he’s experimenting on a formula to make things grow larger. Soon, Pee-Wee starts to grow much bigger (I’m talking about the crab, of course). After an accident that kills both of Melissa’s parents, she lets Pee-Wee back into the pond and goes to live with her uncle, the town sheriff. Many years later, Melissa is still caring for her secret giant crab pet (who is, despite the name, actually a female). All is well until “Pee-Wee” gets some huge crab babies that start to cause trouble all over town…
Queen Crab aka Claws is a low budget ($75.000) creature feature with old-fashioned stop-motion effects, that can easily be considered a homage to the monster movies of the 50’s and 60’s. It’s written and directed by Brett Piper, and while this movie was actually our first introduction to his work, the guy has been going at it since the 1980’s. Some of his earlier work includes titles like The Nymphoid Barbarian in Dinosaur Hell, Drainiac, and Shock-O-Rama. Specializing in low-budget horror and monster flicks with old school effects, he’s built himself quite the portfolio, and I expect that we at Horror Ghouls are likely to check out more of his movies.
Now, Queen Crab is definitely going for a “so bad it’s good” feeling, but there is unfortunately a lot of scenes with little progression, and that makes the movie feel somewhat dragged out in places. The acting is a mix of bad/laughably bad, but that’s most likely intended. I’d reckon that the customer base for movies like this are already familiar with low-budget indie horror films and their usual flaws, and if you belong to this group you’re more likely to enjoy it for what it is. There’s no denying that the stop-motion effects is the movie’s main selling point, and combined with the bad/laughable acting and goofy premise, you’re actually getting a rather decent indie monster film. Surprisingly, there’s even a certain charm to it in regards to the “relationship” between Melissa and her giant monster crab.
Not a masterpiece by any standards, but if you’re in for some campy “shut down your brain first” kind of fun with old-school effects, you’ll most likely find yourself entertained!
Director: Brett Piper
Country & year: USA, 2019
Also known as: Claws
Actors: Michelle Simone Miller, Kathryn Metz, Richard Lounello, A.J. DeLucia, Steve Diasparra, Danielle Donahue, Ken Van Sant, Yolie Canales
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt2319456/
Brodie is a heavy metal-outcast whose meth-head mom is sent to a mental ward after trying to give a mall-santa a blowjob, and thus he needs to live with his uncle, aunt and cousin. They are “some good Christians”, by the way, who thinks Ricky Martin is the heaviest thing they’ve ever heard. Not much in common between him and them, in other words. His cousin is a complete sport-idiot-psychopathic douche who calls Brodie a “devil worshipper” and bullies him at school, but at least he’s got two friends at school who thinks playing board games at lunchtime is the most badass thing to do.
Jeffrey Franken (James Lorinz) is a young medical student whose fiancee, Elizabeth Shelley, gets overrun by a lawnmower at a backyard party and gets shredded to pieces. The only thing left of her is her head, which he puts in the freezer. He’s determined to get her back in some way, and arranges his garage into a typical “mad scientist” lab. Then he drives around New York’s dark streets to pick up the finest hookers to assemble body parts for his new girlfriend.
Edward Tor Swenson (Johan Rudebeck) is editing dull swedish drama-films that nobody wants to see. When the former editor in the building’s “Splatter and Gore Department” became mad and stuffed a grenade in his mouth, Ed is set up to replace him, a task he would quickly regret. Ed gets his own, dark house in the woods where he sits through the newest film in a horror movie series called “The Loose Limbs”, which serves as a parody of all of the trashy horror sequels we got in the 1980’s. Ed becomes increasingly influenced by all the cruel violence he must sit through and it drives him crazy, or drives him “Evil Ed”, if you will. Now the world shall pay for making these influential garbage films, and he goes on a wild rampage.