When the world's smallest mammalian carnivore, the diminutive shrew, grows to monstrous proportions on a remote island the result is a real hoot: Dogs were used to double as the shrews and outfitted with rubber masks and funny faux fur coats. The ferocious, wooly critters have to eat twice their body weight everyday just to survive... so how ever will the small group of people stranded on the island avoid becoming shrew-snacks?

Hilarious, so-bad-it's-good schlock classic.

Staci Layne Wilson
Author of Staci's Guide to Animal Movies

The Killer Shrews is one of my favorite B&W Sci-Fi films ever. Sure it's bad but it's supposed to be. The idea of giant shrews eating everything they can just gets under my skin. There is some very effective imagery that genuinely creeps me out. For the price you can't go wrong. A perfect film for large gatherings of people, probably best viewed under the influence of something or anything. Alternately funny and scary, the title alone should make anyone curious. Go on you know you wanna watch it.

"...the wildest and most vicious..."

"...some call them bone eaters..."

No question, people watch this movie to enjoy the "badness." And it is bad. A small group of people stranded on a tropical island (where there is a lab conducting suspiciously silly experiments with Shrews) because of a Hurricane must fend off marauding gigantic Shrews. Just that basic idea, to say nothing of the title, are enough to start giggles.

I particularly liked the fact that although there was a horrible hurricane, one can scarcely sees the trees blowing in the wind or detect any bobbing of the small boat in the bay. I guess we just have to take their word for it. Perhaps it was a Category "Negative 5" hurricane.

The movie mostly consists of ridiculously stilted dialogue, much of it with the characters crowded around a very flimsy looking bar. We don't see much of the scientific facilities. Guess all these guys like to do is drink. Our hero makes eyes at the heroine, the daughter of the scientist, and she responds with incredible blankness. Frankly, the acting is barely noticeable. No one really manages a single believable moment. The reason PLAN NINE or ROBOT MONSTER are such hoots is because the "acting" is insanely unpredictable and laughable. Everyone in those films is fully committed to their "art"...they just don't have any actual skills. In SHREWS, I was tempted to skip ahead frequently...hoping for some KILLER SHREWS.

When they come...dogs in furry costumes...they are laughable and not terribly scary looking. Yes, I'm sure they could deliver a nasty bite, but they also look like a quick kick to the head would kill them. Lucky for the shrews, no one on the island is capable of even aiming a gun, much less hitting a shrew. The characters are constantly firing guns that are obviously directed no where near the villians.

It has its moments of camp, and its short, but I can't wholeheartedly recommend the movie for the bad-movie buff. I CERTAINLY can't recommend it to someone actually looking to have a good time!

Watched this the same day as Plan 9 From Outer Space. It's almost a dead heat as to which one is worse. Plan Nine is so bad that there shouldn't be any real competition, except for maybe Robot Monster, but this is at least in the running. Wow. what an afternoon. I felt so bad, so used, that I had to watch an Abbott and Costello movie afterward. then I felt better.

The photography was horrible, the lines were spoken rather than acted, the shrews were about what you could expect for the budget (obviously low). The story line was about average for a "B" movie. Nevertheless I liked it and don't regret buying it. It is typical midnight monster movie fare, the kind I used to fall asleep in the middle of as a kid. If the production values had been better I would have given it 4 stars.