Yes, the Sci-Fi Channel has come out with its own recent versions of Swarm and “Bug,” but you can’t beat this William Castle classic (his final film), about flying giant mutant cockroaches that kill by shooting fire out of their butt. An earthquake releases the monsters and soon they are setting people, animals and other assorted objects alight with their deadly butt-fire. Yet they are so intelligent that they spell out words with their bodies like an insect Super Bowl half-time show or the singing dancing cockroaches in MonsterVision’s Joe’s Apartment (or do you prefer the deadly mutant cockroaches of MonsterVision’s Damnation Alley?).

It was filmed in Riverside, CA, and featured a scene with Mayer Ben Lewis playing himself. As an actor, he apparently didn’t make the grade, because all his lines were cut out of the final movie. The no-star cast included Alan Fudge, who is better known these days for big-budget TV mini-series (usually with Nazis in them).

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