h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

"by the late 1950s, when The Killer Shrews was made, there had already been a number of films about homicidal wildlife,"

And Hitchcock had yet to make "The Birds."

"The mutant shrews have escaped and bred wildly, eating all the local wildlife,"

Either humans are not as smart as the wildlife that has survived, or this movie disregards
the fact that, once an animal eats all edible prey, it will either die out or go vegetarian.
Well, the first part of the above sentence is probably orrect, as humans should be smart
enough not to leave th cages open.

"The budget of this movie clearly could not extend to trained giant mutant shrews, and so the roles of the shrews are played by – take a deep breath – dogs in shrew costumes"

Which is an insult to dogs *and* shrews. I hope they got some nice treats.

"all the people you would expect to get eaten by the shrews are eaten, and the survivors sail away happily enough."

Probably within a few months the shrews will have starved because of no remaining prey for food.

Generally? "Killer" is redundant when talking about shrews, given that shrews are pretty killing machines.
I can think of only one great work with the word "shrew" in the title: Shakespeare's "Taming of the shrew."
Could more tickets have been sold by retitling this "Taming of the giant shrews?" Ah, but the giant shrews
do not get tamed. A pity, but it would have been less effective as a blood-and-gore spectacle....

But thanks for diverting me for a while.