The Killer Shrews (1959)

• Cold War hysteria or Atomic Age menace  (none)
• Stock military film footage totally unrelated to the movie (none)
• Men and women dressed to the hilt ✔ (slight-just Ann)
• Beautiful women with big breasts who instantly fall in love with Handsome Men✔ (extreme)
• Blatant sexism and objectification of Women✔ (slight)
• A bumbling Professor or Doctor with a plan to save the World ✔ (extreme-two of them)
• Really, really bad monsters or robots in rubber suits or ridiculous, low-budget, clunky gear (none) Just the dogs, masquerading as large  shrews. 
• High-ranking, befuddled Military Officers with pointers (none)
• Giant Spiders, Bugs, Fish or Lizards that threaten all of civilization✔ (none) *But we do have giant mammal shrews.
• Cigarette smoking by everyone, except for the Monsters✔ (extreme)

This movie, The Killer Shrews sets a bar for sheer stupidity that will be hard to reach by any other Ruthless Horror Camp movie. The mindlessness is only eclipsed by the boredom of this classically bad film. Oh, boy, this movie. Here is the deal, I’m just not going to spend a lot of time on this one. 

Thorn Sherman (James Best) is the captain of a small boat that is bringing supplies to a remote island. He is accompanied by his Negro sidekick (Judge Henry Dupree). On the island is a strange crew, but not when you consider the nature of these Horror Camp movies. We have not one, but two stupid doctors, as well as a T1 beautiful woman, plus a malcontent drunk, Jerry Ferrell (Ken Curtis-Festus!). They have been conducting genetic experiments on small, furry animals (shrews), and things have gone horribly wrong. You will never guess this, but yeah, they mutate into giant, ravenous shrews!

Here is the plot of this awful movie in a nutshell. The Negro dies horribly right off the bat, chased up a tree by the giant shrews and eventually eaten. Being a Negro before the Civil Rights Act, he is not important enough to be missed or mentioned again until they need him. Too bad. Meanwhile, T1 falls instantly in love with Thorn; the stupid doctors try to figure out how to delete the monster menace; and the entire crew pouts, while drinking and smoking heavily into the night. And, of course the shrews, who aren’t even shrews, but are just dogs with really bad prosthetic big pointy teeth, try to gnaw their way into the house. 

The balance of this wretched excuse for a movie is spent on them trying to escape the island and squabbling among themselves as Festus the drunk is jealous of Thorn because Ann fell in love with him. Eventually, the dogs, I mean killer shrews, overwhelm the house and the hapless crew is trapped on the patio. Their plan to escape, minus one dead doctor and one stupid drunk, to the safety of the boat, is so absurd that it is a huge barrel of laughs.

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1.5/10.5 With The Goatesians Rating of A Movie That Is Too Stupid To Live

Special Ruthless Ratings -or- What I learned from watching The Killer Shrews

• The idiot doctors do not know the difference between venomous and poisonous
• Festus states that the killer shrews cannot dig into the house because it has tile floors, but then drunkenly leaves the kitchen window wide open
• Giant mutant shrews wear dog collars
• In this horror movie there is supposed to be a raging hurricane, but on this island the tree branches do not move in the face of a 75+ mph gale
• When you are facing terrible danger, it is a good idea to get so roaring drunk that you can’t even stand up. 
• In Ruthless Horror Camp movies the stupid professor or doctor always have beautiful daughters that instantly fall in love with the male leads