Welcome back to B-Movie Enema, Brett Piper!

We have some favorites here at B-Movie Enema Industries. Last week, I talked about one of the final films I’ve not yet covered on the site from Norman J. Warren. This week, it’s time to talk about another fave around here, Brett Piper. Waaaaay back in 2016, I looked at his 2000 flick Drainiac. That’s one that is kind of looked down on, but I like it for various reasons. I also looked at it for an episode of B-Movie Enema: The Series too. There is a bit of nostalgia for me on it, but I also fully understand it is not everyone’s cup of tea, all things considered.

Later, in 2019, I celebrated 150 reviews on the site with 1996’s They Bite. Now, this is one that is definitely much more of a wink-and-a-nod type of comedy exploitation horror for the Cinemax set. It’s about a porn production being menaced by an actual fish monster, and not the fish monster in their fish monster porno movie. But then I went back to Piper’s earliest efforts with 1985’s Battle for the Lost Planet and 1988’s Mutant War. Both of these are incredibly charming, and I love them for what they are. These sci-fi flicks both feature a lot of stop-motion animation which also revealed that Piper prefers the monster effects far more than making the movie the effects appear in. The latter film also has a villainous Cameron Mitchell, so you know we love that around here too.

We return to Piper’s love of creating stop-motion style monsters with this week’s movie, 2015’s Queen Crab.

I don’t know too much about this one, if I’m being honest. I covered four films from Piper’s first 15 years of making movies. This one comes another 15 years later when he’s likely using digital, consumer-grade cameras to shoot the movie and using whoever he can get to appear in it for the right price. There is nothing inherently wrong with either of those things. I do worry a bit about the cover art used to sell DVDs and getting clicks on Tubi because it looks and feels like a SyFy Channel movie. I am very happy to report, though, that’s not the case at all! I looked at the trailer and saw a bunch of stop-motion crabs scurrying about, and that gave me some solace knowing that I will most definitely like that element of this movie.

So… with that, I think we should dive right in and battle ourselves some cantankerous crustaceans!

The movie begins with “Crabbe Creek, Nowhere, U.S.A., About 20 years ago…” A young mother is looking for her daughter. She’s married to a guy who is a scientist. I know he’s a scientist because he wears a lab coat. He talks about having breakthroughs in his “lab” but she tells him he needs to get a new job. She’s tired of him always being around the house and stuff. We catch back up with the little girl who is playing free along the creek.

There, the little girl, Melissa, finds a crab that is stuck and can’t get back into the water. The crab just shimmies on the little dock she placed him on. The girl thinks the crab is cute and names him Pee Wee. She brings the crab home. In her father’s lab, he tells the girl that he’s working on a process to make things bigger. Specifically, he wants to make food bigger to help feed the 10 billion people who will be living on Earth by 2050. She asks what crabs eat, and he tells her they are omnivorous. She picks a few things off a weird plant in her dad’s lab to feed Pee Wee.

Two months later, Pee Wee has tripled in size. While Melissa’s mother and father argue over his work and her consistent nagging, an accident in his lab causes the house to explode. Later, Melissa is going to stay with another family member.

And so ends our cold open to Queen Crab. I should say that the Polonia Brothers are involved with this movie too. They are likely best known for their ultra-low budget, shot on video, cult classic Feeders. Mark Polonia has directed over 20 films between 2022 and 2025. It should be no surprise that a lot of his movies have something to do with sharks or cocaine. His credits include the following titles: Mummy Shark, Camp Blood: Clown Shark, Jurassic Exorcist, Cocaine Werewolf, Cocaine Shark, and House Squatch.

The movie now shifts up to the present day of the film’s release. A farmer is checking out a barn that has a giant hole ripped into the side of it. The guy who took Melissa away after her parents were killed in that accident is the local sheriff, Ray. The farmer comes to complain that someone has blown out the wall of his barn, and whoever did this has also killed some of the farmer’s livestock. When Sheriff Ray and his deputy go to investigate, Ray discovers something that could be vaguely described as tracks. However, they have no idea what could create tracks like that, as it just looks like someone shoved a pole into the ground.

These “tracks” lead to the backside of Melissa’s property. Melissa has grown up to be a really cute lady, but she is seemingly reclusive as she doesn’t take too kindly to trespassers or cops on her land without a search warrant. Sheriff Ray agrees to get a warrant, but his deputy doesn’t think they need to do that. He claims to have legal precedent to enter her property in an ongoing investigation. She claims they don’t and then shoots him in the ass with rock salt from her rifle.

Later, Sheriff Ray and Deputy Sonny take a cast of the hole left as tracks in the ground. The cast just makes a really sharp cone. They are sending that off downstate to the Wildlife Commission to try to figure out what could make a track like that.

Later, a blonde named Jennifer comes into the town’s bar looking for Melissa. Jennifer claims to be an old friend of hers. Deputy Sonny lays it on thick with Jennifer. The more handsy he gets with her, the more she wiggles away from him. Eventually, she elbows him in the face and then pepper sprays him before drying away. Jennifer sneaks around the land that Melissa owns and finds her dancing naked next to the creek. After Jennifer walks away, we learn why she dances like that as Pee Wee emerges from the creek. Pee Wee is now a giant crab creature.

Jennifer and Melissa’s reunion is… subdued. Jennifer is happy to see her old friend from high school, but Melissa is kind of cold to her. While it does seem as though these two were friends in school, Jennifer moved away. I’m guessing Melissa has some relationship issues with others because her mom and dad argued all the time and then exploded. Her best friend in school moved away. She only likes to dance naked for her crab monster. These are all things that can definitely affect a person to make them kind of reclusive and shut off from everyone else.

Jennifer is about to leave in a huff disappointed with her old friend’s cold shoulder, but they bond over both of them fucking up the town’s Deputy.

The next day, those nerds at the Wildlife Commission call with their findings on the track Sheriff Ray made at the barn. They seem really interested in where he found the track. So interested, in fact, that they are sending a guy down that afternoon.

Melissa and Jennifer catch up. Apparently, Melissa got money from her parents when they exploded. Sheriff Ray, Melissa’s uncle, invested that money so Melissa gets by without needing a job. She just hangs out at home all day and night. Melissa claims she protects the things that live around the creek.

Stewart MacKendrick arrives from the Wildlife Commission. Stewart comes out swinging by saying the track Sheriff Ray sent is from a crab. He explains that freshwater crabs are not uncommon, but maybe not this far north. He says these crabs are nocturnal. He also says freshwater crabs don’t just give birth and move on. Instead, they lay a much smaller clutch and then rear their young. Also, there are a ton of tracks from smaller creatures all around the bigger tracks that were sent to the Wildlife Commission. Stewart gets right to business following the creatures from their tracks. However, what surprises him completely is the exoskeleton of the giant crab after it has molted.

Around the halfway point of the movie, we get a lot of soap opera drama with a local girl named Daisy. Apparently, the only two places in this Crabbe Creek town are the sheriff’s office and the bar. They are the only two things we see characters going to in this movie. Anyway, she has banter with Moe the bartender (yes, I have to assume Piper named the bartender Moe as a reference to The Simpsons) about his inability to make a martini. She wants a ride home, but all the guys are goons who are either drunk or people she doesn’t want to be in a car with anyway.

As Daisy walks home on the dark road, Moe drives by to offer a ride. He then wants to sex her up, but she rebuffs that for two reasons. The first is that she’s not interested in him at all. The second is that he’s married. He then asks what 50 bucks would get him. She tears up the cash and says she’s never been paid for sex and never will be. She slaps Moe and gets out of the car. Moe tries to pursue but trips over something and then gets attacked by a bunch of the big crab’s babies. The baby crabs then chase after Daisy. Daisy is rescued by another local who starts to gleefully run over the crab babies.

But then, it’s like they say: “It’s all fun and games until a giant crab blocks the road and is really mad you ran over its babies.”

The momma crab goes over to the remains of her babies and lets out a scream of anguish over losing so many of her offspring.

Elsewhere, MacKendrick wants someone he works with to look at the pictures he sent and compile a list of things that might create mutations in wildlife. He then goes to the bar (again, it’s the only place open). Melissa and Jennifer arrive at the bar and sit right next to MacKendrick. As he explains that he’s in town looking for unusual nature activities, Melissa gives MacKendrick side-eye and then wants to leave, but not before Deputy Sonny comes in to give the girls grief. He wants to take the girls downtown and get back at them for shooting him and pepper spraying him. This leads to a scuffle between Sonny and Melissa, then Sonny and MacKendrick, and finally Sonny and Jennifer.

Hilariously, after roughing Melissa up, Sonny told Jennifer that he doesn’t fight chicks when she told him they can take their beef outside.

Anyway, the guy whose name we never heard, who saved Daisy from the crabs after they killed Moe the bartender, drives up and starts going on and on about a crab monster. Melissa tells Jennifer they need to go home right now while MacKendrick gets in the car with the nameless guy. After Jessica takes Melissa home, Melissa tells her about how her best friend in the whole world is a giant monster crab.

Now, this is strange too… By this point, MacKendrick has already seen the giant crab molt. He knows this thing is out there. Yet, he didn’t do anything previously. I feel like he just sort of gave up and decided to go tie one on at the bar and forget about it all until nameless guy and Daisy arrived shouting about giant crabs.

Anyway, the Queen Crab returns to this field they are in looking over the egg sacs and the exoskeleton the monster molted. They watch the big crab lay eggs. This other crazy lady who doesn’t like trespassing shows up with a shotgun and really pissed off about giant crabs running all over her property. She shoots the eggs with her shotgun and then gets attacked by the Queen Crab. So she tries to shoot the giant crab, but, c’mon, man! If you’ve ever seen a movie with giant monsters, you should know that no rifle or any other typical combat weapon with you at all times can deal damage to a giant monster.

Anyway, the crab monster rips through the crazy old lady’s house walls and kills her.

I guess everyone in town knows that Melissa has crabs because Sheriff Ray and Deputy Sonny go and arrest Melissa. Why? Crabs. Seriously, I am given no other indication that’s why they arrested her. While she is driven to the station by Deputy Sonny, she meditates and, I guess, communicates with the crabs via telepathy because she just sits in the back and meditates, and the crabs show up to save her. The giant crab wrecks the Deputy’s car and then chases after him, eventually catching up to him and killing him.

After killing Deputy Sonny, the crab returns to the Deputy’s Jeep and frees Melissa by using its pinchers to cut the chain on her handcuffs.

Oh, and, yeah… Melissa rides the giant crab. I really have no other words for this predicament.

Elsewhere, Sheriff Ray calls some hillbillies to gather an angry mob. He tells the guy on the phone they will have a chance to hunt something pretty unique. MacKendrick warns that the crab’s shell is extremely thick and would likely not be able to penetrate the shell with guns. The Sheriff says he’s got backup coming. When the lead hillbilly shows up, he’s driving a fucking tank.

After waiting it out for a bit, they hear the crab coming. Even though Melissa is doing her daily yoga and meditation on top of the crab, the hillbillies all start to shoot. Melissa tries telling people this is her land and property. She stands between the rifles of the hillbillies and the crab.

Eventually, Melissa is tackled which gives Sheriff Ray and his hillbillies to open fire on the crab, forcing it into the creek again. Back at Melissa’s house, MacKendrick, Melissa, and Jennifer come up with a plot to save the crab monster’s life. However, that might be a bit of a bigger task than they realize. You see, Sheriff Ray has a friend in the National Guard. He’s asked that friend to come by and bomb the shit out of the pond the Queen Crab lives in.

So here’s the Sheriff’s plan… The National Guard is going to bomb the pond. The crab will likely try to escape to land to get away from the bombing. The hillbillies are meant to keep the crab from escaping. After a brief firefight, the Queen Crab is destroyed. The hillbillies celebrate, drink beer, and crush the cans on their foreheads. MacKendrick brings a piece of the crab’s carapace to Sheriff Ray, and they agree the thing must be dead.

However, that’s not so much the case because as Melissa takes a sexy swim in the pond, we discover her best friend is still alive.

This is far from the best of Brett Piper’s work, but it isn’t that bad. Like with Drainiac, I think Queen Crab is kind of inoffensively bad. That’s also to say that I don’t dislike Drainiac. I don’t even dislike Queen Crab all that much either. But it’s not that great either. It’s a very small budget film. The stuff at the end with the National Guard bombing Queen Crab looked really bad. It doesn’t make any sense how the hillbillies could be safely in the area with the jets bombing the place. In some of the scenes, the sound is all messed up or, at the very least, uneven. There is a lot of nighttime shooting where people are walking around or meeting up with people and having whole conversational scenes with them just in the dark in the woods or on the road or something. The movie has all the hallmarks of a cheap, bad movie.

But you know what else it has? Stop-motion crab monsters. That element of this movie saves it from a totally abysmal grade. The crabs look great. They remind me of Harryhausen creatures. That’s pretty high praise. It’s obvious that Piper put all his work and attention into the crabs. He couldn’t care less about any other element of this movie. The characters aren’t that interesting. The set pieces aren’t any good. The acting ranges from not good at all to “eh, it’s serviceable.” But those monsters… They are where it’s at in Queen Crab.

Next time, I have a Hong Kong treat for everyone from the famous Shaw Brothers Productions. We’re going to 1975 to check out the tokusatsu-inspired The Super Inframan! Join me for a superhero fighting a spooky chick and her monster legion!