The Killer Shrews
I'm watching the Animal Channel (I have no life) and they ran a preview clip from the 1959 thriller The Killer Shrews.
I remember seeing the movie when it came out. I looked it up on IMDB (above) and noticed it was filmed in Dallas. Maybe I saw the world premier? I saw it in Dallas.
The movie took place on some island where a scientific experiment had gone bad and created all these Killer Shrews running around the forest (actually dogs with some kind of weird hair pasted around their necks).
My grandaddy had just gotten a job at a restaurant in Dallas and I was visiting during the summer. As she often did, my grandmother was working as a hostess at the restaurant (my grandaddy was the chef) and I was home alone for a few hours some nights. (My grandaddy was kind of a hot head and had lots of different chef jobs at various spots around Austin, Dallas, Corpus Christi, Laredo, Colorado Springs, Temple and other outposts of fine dining).
I went to the movies. There was a movie house within walking distance of the house they were renting. It was a fun movie. Walking back I had to go down a block with a line of high hedges near the sidewalk. Close enough and large enough to hide Killer Shrews. I ran down that block.
Part of the plot line of the movie involved some guy running around the island with a pistol, shooting Killer Shrews.
When I got home I played out some of those scenes with a water pistol (I was 10 years old in 1959). The house had an enclosed back porch (a wash room) with an exposed light bulb in the ceiling fixture. Before that night I didn't really know what happened when cold water hit the surface of a hot, thin, glass bulb. It shatters.
I didn't know what to do so I put away the water gun and sat down to read a Reader's Digest until my grandparents got home. My grandfather noticed the shattered light bulb and asked me what happened.
"Huh?". I said. "What are you talking about"?
I didn't know much about hot light bulbs and cold water but I knew better than to admit to anything.
I remember seeing the movie when it came out. I looked it up on IMDB (above) and noticed it was filmed in Dallas. Maybe I saw the world premier? I saw it in Dallas.
The movie took place on some island where a scientific experiment had gone bad and created all these Killer Shrews running around the forest (actually dogs with some kind of weird hair pasted around their necks).
My grandaddy had just gotten a job at a restaurant in Dallas and I was visiting during the summer. As she often did, my grandmother was working as a hostess at the restaurant (my grandaddy was the chef) and I was home alone for a few hours some nights. (My grandaddy was kind of a hot head and had lots of different chef jobs at various spots around Austin, Dallas, Corpus Christi, Laredo, Colorado Springs, Temple and other outposts of fine dining).
I went to the movies. There was a movie house within walking distance of the house they were renting. It was a fun movie. Walking back I had to go down a block with a line of high hedges near the sidewalk. Close enough and large enough to hide Killer Shrews. I ran down that block.
Part of the plot line of the movie involved some guy running around the island with a pistol, shooting Killer Shrews.
When I got home I played out some of those scenes with a water pistol (I was 10 years old in 1959). The house had an enclosed back porch (a wash room) with an exposed light bulb in the ceiling fixture. Before that night I didn't really know what happened when cold water hit the surface of a hot, thin, glass bulb. It shatters.
I didn't know what to do so I put away the water gun and sat down to read a Reader's Digest until my grandparents got home. My grandfather noticed the shattered light bulb and asked me what happened.
"Huh?". I said. "What are you talking about"?
I didn't know much about hot light bulbs and cold water but I knew better than to admit to anything.
Labels: movies
posted by Gary Carson at 12:27 PM
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