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 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.
( )

Easily the quickest read of the year - a single 90 minute sitting. There’s no pretention about this book. It is what it looks like on the cover. A schlocky basic monster invasion story worthy of a 1950s B-movie. There’s no metaphorical musing on man vs nature here, nor any real plot, or characterization. The prose style is basic at best (and that’s being kind) - yet it’s sort of a fun read if you enjoy tales of giant crabs invading the beaches of North Wales! ( )

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. ( )

Terrible, cheesy dialogue and writing aside, it was a fun afternoon's read. Immediately bought the next one ( )

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, 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! ( )