"The most commercially successful of his early features, Attack of the Crab Monsters saw Corman refining his directorial style to produce a film in which a shock or the fear that a shocking event would take place immediately occurs in virtually every scene. As a result, in contrast to other creature-features of the period in which there were long barren periods, usually filled with speechifying, between attacks of the monsters, Corman's films have a speed and directness about them that remains appealing to this day, however tatty the films look. A further result of this strategy is an intensifying of the sense of disequilibrium that lies behind the films."
Phil Hardy, The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction Movies.

"It isn't believable, but it's fun as scripted by associate producer Charles Griffith and put on film by Corman and his cast."
Brog, Variety

"A below average exemplar of the current science-fiction vogue. The story is chaotic, the idea is wildly overexploited and the film in general verges on the lunatic, with remarkably poor playing."
Monthly Film Bulletin

"Average....suffers from a limited budget so that the monsters that provide the chief horror...are not as large or menacing as they should be."
The Hollywood Reporter

"...apart from some fairly successfully contrived trick shots, the film has little to offer. The story is muddled and scrappy; much of the explanation of the events which occur is hazy and, even when intelligible, unduly extravagant; the thrills often fail to materialize as they should and, instead, fall flat; the cast is unprepossessing and the acting rather weak. A few touches of mild spectacle are provided by some landslide scenes and by the sequences in which the crabs figure."
CEA Film Report

"Giant talking crabs with eyeballs and eyelids terrorize scientists on a Pacific atoll. Richard Garland and Pamela Duncan seem to be a couple, but she starts falling for blue-collar Russell Johnson. Ed Nelson dies early. Beach Dickerson dies in a tent. Severed heads, severed hands, and the crabs disappear when you zap them with electricity. Several descents into the pit. Several earthquakes. A giant crab claw keeps leaping into frame and attacking people. Great fun. Something suspenseful happens in almost every scene. Dickerson and Nelson played the crab. A Corman classic."
Director John Carpenter, "John Carpenter's Guilty Pleasures" in Film Comment, September-October, 1996.

"Crab Monsters has taken a certain amount of grief from filmic ignorati due to its colorful title, but it's a madly inventive film that is far better than one might expect. Like most of Roger Corman's movies, it has moments that redeem the poverty of the story's surroundings. And, as with many of his films, it's lively and entertaining, but has a premise that's incredibly grim if you stop to think about it....Due to their odd molecular makeup, human brains ingested by the crabs remain active within their bodies. In effect, each crab is now endowed with a committee of highly intelligent scientists' minds – and now they're on the crab's side. Despite the often risible nature of the proceedings, there's something horrible in this idea."
Bruce Lanier Wright, Yesterday's Tomorrows: The Golden Age of Science Fiction Movie Posters.

"[Rating: **] Interesting early Corman thriller is hampered by low budget – and some very silly monsters – but Charles B. Griffith's script has many ingenious ideas."
Leonard Maltin, Classic Movie Guide.

"The size of the crabs was less memorable than their intelligence, an idea [Corman and Griffith] developed to lessen predictability. Day the World Ended [1955] and It Conquered the World [1956] were both crammed with episodes, but certain stretches of them were tedious and suspense waned when their monsters appeared. For Crab Monsters, Griffith had to make every scene shocking or suspenseful, thinking up situations that begged imagination to wonder how the crabs could be connected. ...Suspense was built bilaterally, alternating between the disappearances and the progressive, calculated erosion of the terrain. ...Audaciously the crabs expressed the dietetic adage 'You are what you eat' – their mental attributes meant to balance limited mobility. When they first mutated, their driving force was hunger. Each consumed mind turned the knowledge of its owner to the enforcement of crustacean supremacy. Having eaten the McLean party, the male crab initiated most of the action up to Jim's disappearance. The female caught up by feeding on Weigand's associates."
D. Earl Worth, Sleaze Creatures: An Illustrated Guide to Obscure Hollywood Horror Movies, 1956-1959.

"The picture is set mostly at night, and sounds are used effectively for eeriness. There's a good deal of tension by the end, and for once it looks as if the hero and heroine might actually end up as a monster meal....In most other monster movies, the menaces are unthinking brutes. Here they are at least as intelligent as the people they are after, and have to be outsmarted as well as outmaneuvered. The idea of battling a giant crab directed by a mind that only moments before was a friend of yours is amusingly ghastly."
Bill Warren, Keep Watching the Skies! American Science Fiction Movies of the Fifties.

Compiled by John M. Miller