As I observed above, there already is a movie about Giant Snails – 1957’s The Monster that Challenged the World. In retrospect, the movie is really dumb. In retro-retrospect, I have come to admire the guys who made it – they built an impressive, full-size, hydraulically activated Giant Snail, and managed to get the giant, uncooperative thing into situations where it could look genuinely frightening. It’s a pretty decent low-budget flick. If you remade it today with CGI and sped the little slime-racers up 9a la Turbo), it could be really freaky.
I’ve seen production drawings from a film to be called Snails, which would have involved things that look more classically snail-like. Things that looked like these African Giant Snails, but even bigger. But, AFAIK, the flick was never made. It’s possible that the recent plague of snails (there’s a bet that God and Moses missed) could trigger one, but I’m still waiting for the Giant Coconut Crab movie to be made
But where else are you going to get this kind of entertainment?
I swear, Florida’s “national pastime” is discovering all these mutant life forms AND REPORTING THEM incessantly. What happened to the dinner-plate sized, poisonous toads of a few years back? The 40-feet-long-Python infestation in the 'Glades? The yearly love-bug clouds (so thick you can’t drive your car through them)? The list goes on and on… .
There is also a surprisingly good giant snail short story, called “The Quest for Blank Claveringi,” written by Patricia Highsmith. Yes, the same Patricia Highsmith who wrote Strangers on a Train and The Talented Mr. Ripley. I first read it in one of those Alfred Hitchcock horror story anthologies when I was a kid, and it’s surprisingly scary and nihilistic. Think you could easily outpace a giant snail? Imagine being trapped on an island with hundreds of them. You will eventually get tired…
Following the theme that an alien species could destroy an environment. … there was an article many years ago in the New Scientist that gave details of how the Black Sea was changing. Apparently below a certain depth the water is heavily laiden with hydrogen sulphide and the imported species might cause an inversion of the water layers resulting in a huge cloud of the gas spreading across Europe and killing everybody.
Reminds me of the Komodo dragon: they deliver one good bite to their prey animal, and then follow it around, waiting for the resulting infection to weaken it until it can’t walk anymore, then they start ripping into it before it’s dead…
I read a story back when I was in my late teens, so the early 1970’s. It was in a magazine, and in it there were mutated, or engineered, giant snails. They were bigger than people, on some island. The last line of the story was about one of the main characters being eaten alive by the snails, something like “The last sound he heard was thousands of tiny teeth crunching his own flesh.”
Nope. Damned stupid-looking Roger Corman crab. And it never even attacked a single trash can, let alone a house.
Not even having Russell Johnson doing another of his many pre-Gilligan’s Island scientist/technician roles* could save it.
*He’s actually the hero of the film, sacrificing himself to destroy the titular ridiculous Crab Monster, but nobody remembers…
