The Killer Shrews is a 1959 American independent science fiction horror film directed by Ray Kellogg, and produced by Ken Curtis and Gordon McLendon.

The story follows a group of researchers who are trapped in their remote island compound overnight by a hurricane and find themselves under siege by their abnormally large and venomous mutant test subjects.

The film stars James Best, Ingrid Goude, Ken Curtis, McLendon, Baruch Lumet and "Judge" Henry Dupree.

Now in the public domain, the film has been issued multiple DVD releases and was lampooned in the fourth season of Mystery Science Theater 3000.

Captain Thorne Sherman and first mate Rook Griswold deliver supplies by ship to a research compound on a remote island.

The station inhabitants (consisting of scientist Marlowe Craigis, his research assistant Radford Baines, Marlowe's daughter Ann, her fiancé Jerry Farrel, and a servant Mario) give them a cold welcome and direct them to unload the ship and leave immediately with Ann, even though a hurricane is approaching the island.

She explains that Marlowe's experiments have created a batch of mutant wolf-sized shrews that escaped due to Jerry's drunken negligence and are now reproducing in the wild.

Thorne points out that while the main building's floor is too hard for the shrews to dig through, the walls are adobe and the storm will turn it to soft mud.

As more shrews chew through the walls, Thorne hits upon the idea to fashion impromptu armor by lashing together empty 50-gallon chemical drums and then duckwalking to the beach.

A colorized version of The Killer Shrews was released on DVD by Legend Films in 2007, again as a double feature set with The Giant Gila Monster.

MST3K's version of The Killer Shrews was released on DVD by Rhino Home Video as part of the show's Volume 7 boxed set.