Amadan na Briona

GIANT, EVIL CRABS INVADE WALES!

This is Guy N. Smith:



I can't tell if he's trying to be serious here, but he's a very seriousprolific author who seems to be going gangbusters with the ebook rights to his out-of-print pulp paperbacks.

So, is he a sadly underrated British writer whose work deserves wider literary acclaim? You be the judge!

“I don’t, I can’t believe it!” Pat Benson was close to hysteria. “It’s just not possible! It’s a nightmare! Cliff, please tell me it isn’t real!”

“It’s real enough,” he said grimly. “I wish to God it wasn’t, though! Just look at the size of that one!”

King Crab! Nobody could have doubted the latest arrival’s right to rule. Half as big again as the rest of those nightmarish creatures, this one was the very personification of evil. It waddled slowly to the front of the others, its pincers waving menacingly as though defying any one of them to challenge its authority. Some of them moved back, huddling together.

This is a really dumb book. And apparently it was a best-seller in 1976. Oh, the 70s... the Decade That Taste Forgot.

Oh wait, now we have the Doritos Locos Taco. So never mind... at least Night of the Crabs will not give you orange fingers and heart disease.

But really, GIANT EVIL CRABS. They're intelligent and they have glowing red eyes. Could you possibly make this book dumber? Yes, yes you could - you could make the goddamn things indestructible - they take direct hits from tank guns and mortars and then pick up the tanks and toss them in the ocean. At one point the British Army is talking about using nukes to get rid of GIANT CRABS. And you could add pointless sex scenes that are almost charming in their businesslike fumble-thrust-and-moan details, and you could make everyone kind of stupid so that every time the crabs go back into the ocean, even though they laid waste to the coast last time, everyone just kind of says, "Well, maybe they won't come back." Uh, really?

And yet, I'm giving this cheesy pulp ridiculousness 3 big stars. Why? Well, because it was fun and entertaining, even if ever-so-bad, kind of like a Doritos Locos Taco. Night of the Crabs is a B-monster-movie, with an obligatory dose of 70s soft porn (which is really pretty mild compared to porn today — I mean, 50 Shades of Gray?). GIANT CRABS come out of the ocean and eat people, they rampage about for a bit destroying trains and tanks and bridges (I cannot get over the crabs picking up a tank...), until a brainy scientist figures out how to kill them. And you know how in those monster movies there's always a final scene after the monster is "killed" where you see it open its eyes or a claw bursts out of the ground or you see its spawn crawling off to new hunting grounds? Yeah, an ending just like that, which is why apparently these books actually became a series. Hey, it was the 70s, go figure.

"I’m more than glad I let you come with me tonight," he whispered as he zipped himself up again. "I’m afraid, though, that we must still keep an eye open for those crabs!"

You know, that is not exactly a line I'd want to use immediately after having sex.