Атака крабовых монстров: История создания фильма Роджера Кормана

1957 film by Roger Corman
It was Duncan's first film for Corman, followed by The Undead a month later. David Arvedon provided the voice of Hoolar the Giant Crab.

Griffith directed some underwater sequences (and also appeared in a small role). Griffith said,
"I had just read The Silent World by Jacques Cousteau and found it to be new and exciting. So when that picture came along, I wrote all the underwater stuff and went to Roger and told him I’d direct all the underwater parts for $100. He said 'okay.' If I had just asked, he would have said 'no.' I had to put it in a way that he would jump at. So I directed all that stuff and it was rather funny. I’d be down at the bottom of the tank at Marineland trying to get actors to do something while (director of photography) Floyd Crosby was hammering at the glass window trying to get them to do something else. (Laughs.) It was all pretty silly".

The film was distributed as the main feature on a double bill with Corman's Not of This Earth. Earning an estimated $1 million, Corman:
This was the most successful of all the early low budget horror movies. I think its success had something to do with the wildness of the title which, even I admit, is pretty off the wall. However, I do think a lot of its popularity had to do with the construction of the plotline. I've always believed that, in horror and science fiction films, too much time is usually spent explaining the characters in depth and developing various subplots. Genre audiences really come to these movies for their science fiction elements or their shock value. Of course they want to understand the characters and want to empathize with them all in order to share the emotions present. But they don't wish to do that at the expense of the other aspects of the picture. I talked to Chuck Griffith about this. Chuck and I worked out a general storyline before he went to work on the script. I told him, 'I don't want any scene in this picture that doesn't either end with a shock or the suspicion that a shocking event is about to take place.' And that's how the finished script read. You always had the feeling when watching the movie that something, anything was about to happen. I think this construction, plus the fact that the creature was big and ugly, won audiences. Corman has stated that the success of the film convinced him that horror and humor was an effective combination.

According to Tim Dirks, the film was one of a wave of "cheap teen movies" released for the drive in market. They consisted of "exploitative, cheap fare created especially for them [teens] in a newly established teen/drive in genre". Film reviewer Glenn Erickson, writing retrospectively in DVD Savant, noted that for Corman, Attack of the Crab Monsters was " (a) more ambitious production, it covers the methodical destruction and inundation of an entire island – all of which occurs off screen. Charles B. Griffith's screenplay keeps the story hopping for just over an hour but limits the show to a minimum of locations". In his book Horror and Science Fiction Film IV, Donald C. Willis noted that a "spare script gets a lot mileage out of the eerie idea of the disembodied voices" and that "the film "in fact has several interesting ideas, but generally perfunctory action and dialogue, and the monsters are visually unprepossessing". At the film review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 67% based on 6 reviews, with a weighted average rating of 6.95/10.

Jim Wynorski, who remade another Corman/Griffith film, Not of This Earth, for Corman, loved Attack of the Crab Monsters and wanted to remake it. He said a script was written, but "he (Corman) didn't want to do it he thinks too much of the original film to do a remake".