killer shrews

In an age when boutique labels are blessing some of the worst B-movies ever made with outrageous special editions, does anyone even bother with the bargain bins anymore? There was a time when public domain horror and sci-fi titles were overflowing from their wire-domain holding tanks, plastered with corny new cover art in an attempt to pass them off as current releases. Now fans know better. Even the most obscure title is likely to turn up on a better disc someday. It just depends on how long one is willing to wait!

In the case of The Giant Gila Monster and The Killer Shrews, a classic drive-in double-feature shot back-to-back in 1959 just outside Dallas, Texas, there might be some light at the end of the tunnel in the form of Bayview Entertainment and Retromedia's new DVD release. Sporting the first widescreen 16 X 9 anamorphic transfers, it's certainly the best looking presentation to date for the pair that seemed condemned to public domain purgatory. But

The films lend themselves to easy mockery (in fact, both ran the MST3K gauntlet in season 4), but that's what makes them so much damn fun. The Giant Gila Monster dives headfirst into the drag racing, disc jockey, teenage gene pool as local kids run afoul of a giant lizard feeding on livestock and any helpless vehicle that wanders in across its path. Created by plopping an actual reptile on a miniature set, the effects are entirely underwhelming, but the cast of colorful local talent (including a crooning car mechanic and French exchange student) is endearingly quirky. Director Ray Kellogg, who also supervised the effects, follows the standard monster-on-the-loose protocol, but settles for a budget-friendly climax rather than calling in the National Guard.

The Killer Shrews saves money from the get-go by stranding its cast of characters on an deserted isle where genetic experiments have created rodents the size of labradoodles (ironically played by canine stunt doubles) who must eat 3X their weight in food every or starve to death. Captain Thorne Sherman (played by James Best, better known as Roscoe P. Coltrane from The Dukes of Hazzard) finds himself trapped with a team of scientists, pinned down by an impending hurricane and fighting for survival as the shrews chew their way past the makeshift barricades.

Shrews is the better of the two films; or at the very least, its Night of the Living Dead scenario was more influential. Covered in shaggy costumes and dragging wire tails, the stunt dogs produce more chuckles than scares, but there's still a palpable tension to the movie no amount of poor effects work cancels out entirely. It's scenario would copied almost note for note in Island of Terror (1966) with Peter Cushing and on into the nature run amok films of the 1970s.

It's tough to judge exactly how much restoration went into the new disc...if any. But both films look a good deal better their appearance on MST3K (although Shrews' audio has a distracting "tunnel" effect throughout) and, if the back cover specs are correct, are finally sourced from a 35mm print with a 23.98 progressive scan 1:66:1 transfer. It's not Blu-ray, but it's a step in the right direction!