ATTACK OF THE CRAB MONSTERS
(1956; d. Roger Corman, w. Charles B Griffith)

The labyrinthine way is always the first part of the night sea voyage,
the descent of the male following the sun into the devouring underworld,
into the deathly womb of the Terrible Mother…
[T]he terrible gullet of death or the devouring womb that he must pass through
consists of the two crescent moons that are everywhere connected
with the great dark Goddess of the night and are identical
with the shears of the crab monster.
Erich Neumann

Following stock-footage typhoon (+ Genesis quote on Flood [template for scriptural Giant Behemoth opening?]: repurposed film à la 2 expeditions) caused by Bomb blasts (torrential mental effect of elemental division w/i Self as on sleep-separation of mind + body), boatful of scientists arrives (psychic agents come to analyze cause + effect of cataclysm aka trauma) to replace disappeared 1st cadre (dream-figures replaying archetypal/dayworld action in order to amplify/reveal meaning behind upheaval), botanist Jules Deveroux (Mel Welles soon to become florist Gravis Mushnik) noting their "bodies gone – but souls?" (student of extrusions – plants from earth as spirits from body; he ideal for understanding/articulating pathology; introduction of dualistic issue, division usually emasculating, here empowering [he getting best line "dreaming of all the things that I might do w/ only my one hand"]) moments before crewman goes overboard (1st of many death/amputations: the mind’s gradual shirking o/t physical, + the ego’s whittling self down to core i.d.: resolving disturbance thru process of elimination) + comes up decapitated (mind’s shirking of body on dream-descent), which leader Dr Karl Weigand (German, after French Jules: troupe Western world post-WWII, adrift + searching for answers) hopes was no omen (he in tune with island/action, aka ego in whose consciousness all takes place [last 2B consumed into mass-consc'ss]).

Arrive at rebuilt outpost (reconstructed Self, soon 2B de-constructed) where they hear no animal noises (separation f/t physical world; amplifying origin of trauma, also, in man’s atomic division from nature) + where only precursor McClain’s journal survived (memory from which dream fabricated), "technician + handyman - no scientist" Hank (motor-functioning part of brain, as opposed to reasoning) + sailors (similar) hearing blasts while transporting dynamite (intuition of upheavals – transposed from w/o to w/i, mind internalizing + replaying trauma to attract attention to self), his voiceover introducing mission + dramatis personæ (secondary ego + communications expert [cf RC/CBG It Conquered the World’s Lee Van Cleef similar] again linking outside + in): Deveroux, geologist James Carson (earthly body – 1st among pro’s to go), biologists Martha Hunter + Dale Drewer (life; erotic union vs atomic dualism [tho she questioning relationship: estranged from Other aka Self]), + nuke physicist Weigand (cause/analyst of psychic split), who all turn to wave plane off (as it explodes: abandonment of/by the transporting body).

During night storm (panic setting in as mind settles in to unfamiliar unconscious), Hank tries to restore radio contact (reverse isolation) while scientists puzzle out forerunners’ disappearance (parallel tasks: atom-division 2B solved by re-connecting, he harboring secret jones for Martha) by reading journal (artifact from conscious world; cf opening scripture, characters humans abandoned by smiteful God + turning to Bible for explanation) describing discovery of fragment (as is abbreviated entry itself: humanity clutching after remains) from 5ft earthworm (extrusion from earth/unconscious: what remains o/t self-destructing [+ -regenerating] phallus after its ultimate, nuclear demonstration), interrupted by mild quake (emotional reaction to new info); next morning, Martha + Dale dive (she frightened by his appearance below: shock at recognizing her inevitable mate i/t depths) + she gets waylaid by moving landmark (mind’s confusion at unsettled position in shifting landscape, + own indeterminacy re beau), he observing black shape near her (she vaguely associated w/ complex), both summoned by Carson to see former path now pit (old ways outmoded + in fact a trap; yawning hole à la yoni, Dale’s "shape" emerging fem-issues amplified in later RC [Bloody Mama; Ligeia]/CBG [Little Shop of Horror’s voracious Audrey Jr]).

Martha awakened by McClain-voice (anima/feeling-self 1st to respond to "call" o/t unconscious, from archetypal explorer + "ghost" of Atomic Man) in middle of day-for-night (cinematographic equivalent of hypnagogic dream-consciousness), meets Jim outside (heard it, too; voice also o/t earth, w/ which he shares affinity, calling for help), he descending into pit (heroic aspect o/t unconscious, "not afraid of a cave-in") just before quake (emotional response, again, to danger of being found out; premonitory blasts fugue-state mind continually replaying original – far-off – trauma) makes M faint (having served purpose as link btwn unconsciousness + drm-exploration, she also conking out to allow him access to her psyche [pit]); rescue team takes caves into crater (which Weigand knows – as does Carson – was created from below: 2nd of 3 or 4 insights into others’ professions, all being aspects of his overarching consc'ss) but can’t find Jim (leg broken: immobile à la dreamer, but shifting à la M’s marker – the i.d. in flux), Dale back at shelter (central ego) responding to noise in room (house à la chambered pit, investigations occurring on separate planes of consc’ss) + finding giant CLAW! (narrowly escaping agent of separation, he not recognizing menace same way oblivious to M’s straying affections) which severs wiring + roaches radio (driving mind into deeper isolation/ineffectuality).

Morning reveals hole in wall (ego manifesting trauma, external i.d. now reflecting cratering in-) + Martha’s observation of missing mountain outside (ditto; her melancholy tone suggesting personal loss – hollowing out w/i her biological clock ticking [+ overall emptiness of inevitable marriage to DD, shared w/ many unfulfilled wmn of era]; w/o, mountain-breast further dissipation of her nurturing/fecundating pwr); resumed Jim-rescue results in avalanche-loss of Jules’s hand (parallel emasculation: beau’s unspoken/unrealized fear of castration in feminine pit), sailors that night (they transient figures on periphery of personality) roused from tent (dual aspect vestige of united ego + suggestive juvenile homosexuality not yet resolved) to meet Claw (…till now: submerged into Unconscious) while Jules called away to similar end (swaddled, rotund dependent in M’s care the infant also 2B transcended), all waking back at station (again, led by M) to Jules’ self-inflated taunts (empowered by castration, ethereal presence Dale's intuition of own noble domestic fate) coming f/t ashtray (not-the-radio: dream speaking thru imgs/icons now, film’s audaciousness transcending all rationality).

Speaks thru pistol next ("Hearken to all things metal for I may be in them" – biblical tone degraded God now expressed in material goods), drawing men into cave (as US seduced into Vietnam by French ca ’56, rumblings somewhere out there the country gearing up for new round of devastations) where bullets + grenades ineffectual against CRAB! (pass thru like water: monster symbol + phantasm, absorbing victims/energy à la contemporary Kronos, Gog + Magnetic Monster; each sex’s paranoia o/t power-draining Other), tho claw can be removed for study (representative icon 2B analyzed à la dream symbol; see Neumann above for significance); Weigand surmises "no cohesion btwn atoms (already split, monsters fallout itself – psychological awa radioactive) + ability to assimilate anything (all-consuming Complex [of which caves physical manifestation]), explosions caused by crabs’ "sending out arcs of heat" (not via missing dynamite: point not the Bomb but its inference + impact), Martha informing "we're on the verge of a blessed event" (that tone, again – both trepidation + envy) – crab pregnant (ambiguous, man-voiced female à la LSoH Audrey Jr: gestating the New Male + Female both [cf RC-produced Night o/t Blood Beast + its pregnant male], response to men’s nuclear bottom-out).

Hank reduces claw to ashes (prefiguring climactic act; he communicative agent, + intermediate figure à la ambiguous crabs) w/ electric current (verifying Weigand’s "negatively charged" theory, also anticipating penultimate img [see also Bert Gordon’s next-yr Spider + its similarly charged – both electrically + symbolically – cavedweller]) + so rigs electric-eye trap of positive energy (turning frown upside down) he + Martha set up (his yen for her similar trap for envy eating him inside à la crabs/island) in caves she describes as lonely (own wanting womb, admitting Dale not her special someone similarly "setting up" ambiguous finale), Hank about to smooch her when disrupted by waking crab (he mother-associated boy-child jealous of mom + dad, mission to destroy pregnant crab desire to thwart procreation + preserve idea of virginal mother); finally pulls in radio broadcast (Self moving back to association; still only reception, not transmission, mind not yet achieving full consciousness) as Weigand + Dale discover oil stream (Y formation intuition of both developing triangle w/ Hank + eventual union of hero/ine) + each pursues separate vein to cave (so W can sabotage trap: contrary urge to be absorbed into womb-unconscious), where W claimed by crab (dissolution of ego in anticipation of new personality).

Weigand + Deveroux communicate thru Morse code transmitter (Europeans old ways 2B transcended in final showdown) before avalanche destroys outpost (last façade falling) + trio climb to highest point (purpose of tunneling to isolate victims on shrinking island of consciousness [cf similarly collapsing House of Usher] in sea of unconscious – to narrow various personæ down to core material/i.d.), where W/D speaks thru transmitting tower (phallus ultimate icon film leading twd) wounded Hank brings down (demolition of which whole point of investigation, he à la LSOH’s Seymour Krelboin + It’s Van Cleef, self-sacrifice preoedipal oblivion-desire + elimination of ambiguous middle ) to kill last crab (he, rather’n Jim Carson, in world where man has replaced opening God as possessor of destructive pwr), leaving Martha + Dale to embrace (union of not + and – charges but equally empowered new personalities) at pinnacle of island (the exalted couple, ambiguities resolved [yes?]).