Night of the Crabs

The core idea is solid: something is wrong in the coastal ecosystem, and crabs have become the vector for horror. At a smaller scale, this could have worked as a nasty, grounded creature feature. Unfortunately, the book immediately undermines itself by inflating the crabs to absurd proportions—cow-sized, then larger—at which point biology, physics, and even internal logic quietly leave the story.

Most characters exist only as scenery. People appear, react minimally, die, and vanish with little emotional or narrative consequence. The beach feels populated only when the plot needs bodies, otherwise behaving like an empty stage. This makes the danger feel abstract rather than urgent.

Cliff, the supposed marine biologist, is especially show more frustrating. He never documents evidence (no camera, no systematic observation), ignores basic scientific and safety procedures, and reacts with irritation or hostility when others don’t immediately defer to him. His authority is asserted, not earned. As the novel progresses, the world increasingly bends to validate his instincts rather than challenge them.

Pat exists almost entirely as a narrative convenience: a divorced woman on a break whose primary function is sexual availability and emotional validation. Her presence coincides with Cliff’s disengagement from inquiry, as though pairing off replaces curiosity or responsibility.

Much of the book is unintentionally funny—giant crabs lifting impossible objects, shrugging off fire, being hurled by trains, and finally reduced by weed killer—but that humor curdles as the story insists on taking itself seriously. By the end, the novel leans into a “Cliff is always right, the world is wrong” posture, culminating in a final gesture of incuriosity that retroactively empties the plot of meaning.

In the end, Night of the Killer Crabs isn’t bad because it’s pulpy. It’s bad because it refuses to choose what kind of pulp it wants to be. It gestures at science, authority, and cosmic menace, but resolves nothing, learns nothing, and asks the reader to mistake ignorance for wisdom.

A solid premise, squandered by escalation without rules and characters without consequence. show less

“Night of the Crabs” is a wonderfully old-fashioned, rapid-fire piece of trash hookum that begins with a couple of bathers disappearing off the Welsh coast. This leads to a tweedy, pipe-smoking relative, Professor Cliff Davenport, heading to Wales to investigate their disappearances. Checking into a B&B he’s introduced to young sex-bomb Pat Benson and the pair team up for the investigation. Luckily for the Prof, Pat is a bit of a nymphomaniac and the pair’s investigation is slowed down by their regular bouts of lusty lovemaking. Despite this Cliff and Pat soon discover the culprits behind the disappearances are an army of giant crabs led by a huge monster crab that Cliff names “King Crab”. The army is called in but they show more prove no match for the evil crab army and it looks as if Britain may be overrun by the, apparently, intelligent crustaceans. Cliff by now is in full action man mode and leads a dive to try and discover the crab’s lair and subsequently dives again to bomb the crabs newly discovered cave hideout – all this in between frequent sex sessions with the insatiable Pat. “Night of the Crabs” is hugely entertaining stuff, which reeks of a by-gone era and plays out like a Roger Corman B-movie. Everything about the narrative is exaggerated from the pipe-smoking professor and the sex-kitten heroine through to the action set pieces and the giant crabs themselves. There is a strange matter-of-factness about the book, which gives it a charmingly British feel. The pace of the book is relentlessly, the writing is functional at best and there is little time for any form of subtly as Smith rushes from one gory set piece to the next, by way of frequent passionate sex scenes. There is no need here for philosophising about the evolution of the crabs; to consider why nature has gone awry or to ponder the meaning of existence – the answer is simple: bomb the evil crustaceans out of existence. Fun, preposterous, lightweight, easy to read pulpy hokum – “Night of the Crabs” is a wonderful book; gory trash pulp at its very best. show less

It's war.

If this was a movie, It'd be a cult classic on Mystery Science Theater 3000.

I became aware of the Crabs series as a kid, where I found a copy of Crabs on the Rampage on a hotel bookshelf. How could a young K.T. have resisted a book with a cover like this?

I remembered my preteen self being shocked at the level of gore inside. When the crabs started to come to my attention again this month, circling by conscious on the blogosphere, I knew it was only a matter of time before I found myself reviewing them. Seeing it on Kindle was the final temptaion. Hell, I read Confessions of a Warlock; how bad could this be?

The answer: Awesomely bad.

We get crustacean-driven death in the very first chapter, and I cheer. The author knows exactly show more what I want.

As Professor Davenport learns that his nephew and his nephew's fiancée are missing, he travels to the small vacation village he was last seen in. There, he'll find both murderous crabs and a love-interest so vapid that she seems to exist only to provide a stream of sex scenes. And let's make no mistake, people, these are the kind of sex scenes that make me think the author learned about human seduction from an alien's archeologist's notes.

Screw it all; it's entertaining, so I don;t care. What about the crabs?

They are vicious, armored, deadly, and lead by a giant mastermind King Crab. Where do they come from? Hell if I know? There's talk of nuclear mutation, but that's only speculation. What matters is that they're here, and ready to test our superiority of the land by raiding military outposts head on. How does a killer crab fare when hit by a tank shell?

They all but raise their claws to flip the bird.

The way they deal with the tank had me laughing for minutes on end.

The rest of the book is dedicated to the acts of the murderizing clicky horde as the humans desperately try to find a way to fight back. When they do, it is as awesomely contrived as any 50's B-movie.

This is not great literature. This is an engaging, trashy romp of gore for gore's sake and cool monsters. I'm going to review this entire damn series, and I hope it never gets too serious. show less

This review first appeared on scifiandscary.com
Writing books that are really awful and yet also manage readable and fun is hard. Films can pull off the “so bad it’s good” thing much more easily because they require so little effort from the audience. Watching a cheesy b-movie and you can just let the bad acting, script and direction wash over you and appreciate the bits that make it great - the sex and the violence. In ‘Night of the Crabs’, Guy N Smith proves himself to be an extremely talented writer. The book is terrible, often laughably bad, but it’s also a blast.
I had it in my head that this was Smith’s first book, but in fact he’d already published at least 3 other horror novels by the time it came out: ‘Werewolf show more by Moonlight’, ‘The Slime Beast’ and ‘The Sucking Pit’. Stephen King wrote that he thought the last of those was an all time pulp horror classic title. Not book, you’ll note, just title. Whereas Smith’s previous books were something of a throwback to 50s and 60s horror cinema, ‘Night of the Crabs’ seems designed to cash in on the success of Herbert’s ‘The Rats’ with its nature on the rampage theme. The first edition even advertised it as “in the tradition of The Rats”. It’s certainly not the most blatant ‘Rats’ rip off (I’ll be reviewing ‘The Cats’ in a couple of months) but the timing of its release is pretty telling, It ended up being a hit for Smith and he wrote a number of sequels.
The plot of the book is pretty much exactly what you’d expect. Giant crabs attack a seaside town in Wales and a hero teams up with the authorities to defeat them. In this case the protagonist is botanist Cliff Davenport, who gets involved when his nephew and nephew’s fiancee are mysteriously killed at sea (spoiler: it’s the crabs). The story also pulls in a mysterious military base populated with sinister spy types and throws in some love interest for Cliff in the form of Pat.
Like Herbert’s books, the plot is very linear and pretty uninspired. What the book lacks that both ‘The Rats’ and ‘The Fog’ have in abundance is true horror. The violence here is tamer and less imaginative than Herbert’s. The rats kill people in a variety of gruesome ways, whereas the crabs pretty much just bite their legs off and leave blood pumping from the ragged stumps. It’s still fun to read, but it never gets close to getting under your skin like Herbert does at his best. The massing rodents were reasonably convincing as a monster, the giant crabs (whose size is never properly explained) are just silly.
Smith tries to make up for the absence of horror by throwing in more sex, but that’s fairly tame too (or at least boringly vanilla) and often unintentionally hilarious. His habit of using character’s full names doesn’t help.
Cliff felt that thrilling sensation of his zip being pulled down, her fingers groping inside the open vent and then the coolness of the night air on his warm moistness. He gasped with pleasure. Pat Benson certainly knew what she was doing!
That particular scene ends with Cliff exclaiming “we must still keep an eye open for those crabs” which is probably one of those things you’re not supposed to say during sex.
So ‘Night of the Crabs’ is badly written, not scary, not that gory, not very sexy and deeply silly. On its own terms, though, it succeeds. It’s a throwaway pulp novel that’s easy to read, doesn’t outstay its welcome and has giant crabs in it. Giant crabs. Job done. show less

Ok, read the title and look at the cover.........it's EXACTLY what you'd expect and I loved every page.

It's essentially a monster movie in novel form. You could take this novel and film it page-for-page and it would make a great schlocky movie. Ridiculous leaps of logic, ample gore and hot sex make for a brisk read. There's zero explanation for why these crabs are 1) giant and 2) attacking - they just are! *gasp!*

The book's a lot of fun and can be read in a few hours. I read it in January for some reason, but this would be perfect for an afternoon beach read. Loved it.

Let me preface this by saying that this book was a blast! So why am I only rating it 3 stars, you ask?

Even though this book was a lot of fun, it's not exactly well written. I wasn't expecting horror literature, so that was okay with me.

I'm not sure if it was an editing issue, or if the original text was messed up, but there are a lot of weird things going on in the Kindle edition with exclamation points, capitalized letters in the middle of sentences and other things like that.

This book was written in the 70's so I had some issues with the views on women, but I understand this book is a product of its time, so that's cool.

Other than those issues this book was a great creature feature. Lots of bloody showdowns between the crabs, show more especially the KING crab, and mankind. Man usually coming out the loser, again and again. All kinds of bloody disasters and almost non stop action-other than the main characters falling in love within like 3 pages, which made this a quick read.

You know, every once in a while I need me some cheesy horror. Not everything can be The Haunting of Hill House. Sometimes, I just want to be entertained without thinking too much. If you're in need or in the mood for the Sharknado of books, this is the one for you!

Recommended for fans of cheesy horror creature feature fun! show less

If you like Pertwee-era Doctor Who but feel all the "hapless British soldiers firing guns ineffectually at inhuman monstrosities" action would benefit from some awkward sex and bloody gore (as in "geysers of blood," not "bloody good show") then this is the book for you!