Directed and written by Brett Piper, starring Michelle Simone Miller, Kathryn Metz, Richard Lounello, A.J. DeLucia, Steve Diasparra, Danielle Donahue and Ken Van Sant.

A girl rears a giant crab as her pet in a local pond, feeding it special food linked to her scientist father’s growth experiments, but, years later, the time comes for the crustacean to spawn and its existence can no longer be kept a secret…

Brett Piper, the king of low budget stop-motion monster FX, is the man behind this production, which is maybe too talky at the start, requiring some filler scenes to pad out the running time, but the flick does boast a very fine-looking crab creature!

I’m not anti-CGI, okay, but I just love the look of a nicely-animated stop-motion monster – and this killer crab looks pretty damn great.

Along with the huge queen crab we get a bunch of baby monster crabs too. The stop-motion shots of these crab offspring were achieved by utilising the same stop-motion model used for the momma crab.

There’s a scene with baby crabs being run over by a car. These splatting crab shots were achieved by Brett using models, about a foot across the back of the shell, made of plaster and filled with pudding. They go splat real nice in the film!

I enjoyed the movie and, as I probably always say when reviewing a Brett Piper film, though this production is really super low budget, you do get a lot of lovingly-animated creature hijinks as compensation.

Also known as CLAWS, this flick, which is full of barely passable performances, multiple stop-motion scenes, pincer attacks and a shoot-out near the huge crustacean’s pond, is a crab-tastic viewing experience best enjoyed with your brain switched off and a beer in your hand.

Finally, here’s a behind the scenes shot of the stop-motion crab puppet and a nicely-detailed miniature wrecked building that features in the film…