Director/Screenplay/Photography – Chuck Magee. Production Company – Wounded Rat Productions.
Chuck Magee (Detective Charlie Reese), Kate Andrews (Alex Bailey), Brent G. Baker (Captain), Doug Hoffman (D.J. Coswpank), Bo Bolin (The Cocaine King), Robert McMonarch (Chad), Austen Berndt (Brad), Brandon Conrad (Tad), Garrett Hayes (Larry)
Two crabs from the planet Crabulon leave on an expedition to Earth but end up crashing in Louisville, Kentucky. They departed before being given a warning against ingesting cocaine. After wandering into the backyard of a frat boy house and being fed some cocaine, the crabs turn murderous. Police detective Charlie Reese investigates a string of killings and realises the crabs are responsible. Fearful of being ridiculed, he recruits veterinary assistant Alex Bailey to advise on crab behaviour. Tripped out on cocaine, the crabs multiply and produce a whole cast of other crabs that proceed to overrun the town.
The mainstream-released Cocaine Bear (2023) was a modest hit based on a real-life incident where a bear ingested a haul of cocaine. The bear was killed by the drugs, but the film made up its own story with the bear running amok while high. This seems to have given inspiration to a host of low-budget filmmakers. Mark Polonia made Cocaine Shark (2023) and Cocaine Werewolf (2024), Dustin Ferguson made Cocaine Cougar (2023), along with other drug-affected animal films with Methgator (2023), Crackcoon (2024) and Cocaine Roaches (2025).
The surprise is that Cocaine Crabs from Outer Space has a 2022 copyright and release date, which means that it predates Cocaine Bear. Certainly, Cocaine Bear was shooting in 2021 and the true story behind it had gone viral on social media during that time, so it is not too much of a stretch to think that director Chuck Magee managed to cannily jump aboard a looming trend.
It is hard to know if Cocaine Crabs from Outer Space was intended as a Deliberately Bad Film or not. The special effects are really poor – the crabs are just plastic toys being pulled along where you can sometimes see the wires doing so. The opticals are even worse. And there is some really bad acting where a number of the people in the supporting cast are total amateurs.
Some of this seems to be intended this way. Chuck Magee features his crabs doing as many deliberately ridiculous things as possible – crabs going to dine in a top hat and with a rolled-up dollar bill to snort cocaine; crabs conducting high wire and trapeze acts, including diving from a ladder into a dog bowl; wielding baseball bats and riding skateboards. Unlike the nearest equivalent, the films of Mark Polonia, you can see that Chuck Magee has a sense of humour and at least making an effort with some of the effects.
However, there are times that the bad movie nature is being signalled far too obviously. Like when characters hold up a sign saying “Ridiculous isn’t it?” or opine “This is stupid. I’m not afraid of these things. They just look like a bunch of plastic toy crabs.” All of which just seems to be far too clearly pointing out that what we are watching is a bad movie trying to get by but giving up on the effort.
On the plus side, director/writer Chuck Magee, who also plays the lead detective, and Kate Andrews as the veterinary assistant sidekick are okay. She shows reasonable promise and could well have an acting career ahead of her.
Trailer here