Night of the Blood Beast

Oddly compelling tale of astronaut (Emmett) who crashes back to earth following a failed mission into space, apparently deceased but showing no signs of rigor mortis or decomposition. His unusual state co-incides with the appearance of a large, alien creature that wants us to believe he's here to co-habitate with the human race, and that we should fear no evil. Scientists John Baer, Ed Nelson and Angela Greene disagree.

There's some sense in this nonsense, the dialogue, cinematography and suspense is generally pretty coherent and effective, but the second half of the movie descends into an abyss of absurdity from which there's no return. Baer, Nelson and McVey all deliver watchable performances and director Kowalski displays some skills, but the plot becomes puerile with the appearance of the creature and its suspicious motivations to rear its young on earth as a means of improving inter-galactic relations. So to does Emmett's laboured insistence that everyone should stop picking on it and just give it a fair go to prove its intentions are honourable. No mention of the poor victim sans head.

It really does deteriorate badly, which is a shame because the first thirty minutes promise a rousing climax, reminiscent of "The Thing", but ends up looking more like "Attack of the Crab Monsters", only minus the humour. Not the best AIP-Corman collaboration conceived.

An entertaining piece of low budget schlock. Despite the cheesy production values, it's quite well done. A zombified, hairy chested scientist, denied the opportunity to wear a shirt after his pseudodemise, is impregnated with alien sea monkeys, clearly an homage to the ads inside comic books of the era. Why is it that, when Roger Corman is involved, there's a always a shirtless, hairy chested scientist, e.g. Giant Leeches, Crab Monsters? I don't get it, but thanks a million, Roger. The plot and characters are no worse than in any other sci-fi from the fifties and all the actors are veterans of genre TV and movies. The lighting is sometimes good, the score is theremin heavy with an occasional moment of Felliniesque jauntiness. The monster is post-nuclear Sesame Street, but after all the money spent on the sea monkey x-ray scene, you can't have everything. If you pay attention to the opening title sequence, you'll note that the rocket ship separates from its booster rocket and looks amazingly like the space shuttle. Sometimes they get it right.

The astronaut Steve Dunlap (John Baer) dies after crashing his rocket on Earth. His body is recovered by the base rescue team and examined by Dr. Alex Wyman (Tyler McVey) and Dr. Julie Benson (Angela Greene), who is Steve's fiancée. Out of the blue, Steve resurrects and Dr. Benson discovers that his body is impregnated with Alien embryos; further, the team finds that an alien (Ross Sturlin) has arrived in Steve's spacecraft.

When Dr. Wyman is murdered by the alien, Major John Corcoran (Michael Emmet) and Dave Randall (Ed Nelson) decide to destroy the creature. But Steve is mentally connected to the alien and believes that the creature has peaceful intentions and tries to protect it. But when Steve learns that the alien is an invader, he takes an ultimate decision to protect the earthlings.

"Night of the Blood Beast" is a funny and underrated low-budget sci-fi produced by Roger Corman. This type of black and white Z-movie, with bad acting and poor special effects, is part of my childhood and maybe that is the reason why I find most of them cult. "Night of the Blood Beast" is a sort of grandfather of 1979 "Alien" or 1999 "The Astronaut's Wife" and entertains. My note is five.

Title (Brazil): Not Available

This interesting little abomination is easily the evil twin of BEAST FROM HAUNTED CAVE, another Corman low-budgeter from this memorable late 5O's drive-in golden era. There were many major and minor film gems, but not all were so bad, they're great. Some were interesting failures (like this Putrid Preciousness) and some simply sucked (like everyones' personal favorite, "The Cape Canaveral Monsters", whose prints need to be honorably enshrined - in embalming fluid).

NIGHT OF THE BLOOD BEAST (As a kid, I just loooooved titles like that, fearfully imagining what that monster from the dark really looked like), due to its early scenes of eerie paranoia mood and subtle moments of terror, managed to humbly and very economically achieve this kid-scare trick, thus being reprieved from the embalming fluid fate. That impressivly irritating cheesey-weird organ (also used in SISTER BEAST'S HAUNTED CAVE) evoked the proper creepy atmosphere, which Corman was an efficient wiz at.

Those scary shots in the isolated woods in the Bronson Cave hilled area (interesting location with strange, silent mood as if there is some other lurking ominous presense nearby, watching) were nightmarish. That moment when something moved up right before the camera, blocking everything out was a surprising frightful moment - and those dark chilling shots of the woods, as something moves through the bushes - and that shadow of something very unworldly moving across the ground (actually the first monster 'Shadow Shot' filmed from that particular angle) - that shot of a giant shape moving outside along the window and that quick glimpse of IT! creeping down that dark claustrophobic hallway - BRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!

At 2:OO AM, in pitch black, that can cause those under-the -cover shivers (all I need is the proper female companion to hold dearly to). Then when poor old kindly Dr. Wymann loses his head - LITERALLY - when the two male leads find his body slumped over the bunk, with a fresh supply of high volume blood spilling down with major drip-drips. UGH! That was an early decapitation scene that really freaked me out. Maybe a life of crime would be safer than being an adventuresome scientist.

Then the "ALIEN" scene, with the mysteriously revived "deceased" astronaut standing behind one of those 5O's Whateverscopes, revealing utterly revolting animated parasites being bred in his body. (Are there any other kinds?) The alien blood beast is sure having its night: It impregnated the trespassing, intrepid astronaut - and made him bear its delightfully disgusting offsprings. Planned Parenthood miserably backfired with the worst grim forms of total dysfunction. What do you think of that? Any "hmmmmmmmm's" out there - or just prowling alien blood beast rapists. (AHHHH!!! NOOOOOW I GET THE TITLE! - DUH!!!). This is true science-fiction horror on its own gruesome little B-minus terms.

Well, I won't go on. You'll just have to see for yourself as to the mysterious fate of our scientific ground crew - and that enormously rude and overbearing blood beast. It's an old cheap B&W minus-B, but interesting if you happen to be in that certain 2:OO AM monster mood. LONG SHOCK THE BEAST BROTHERS!

P.S. That college age lady scientist was quite personally appealing to me at that formative late show age. The blood beast attacks her in the woods - maybe IT got infected by all that human contact - OR maybe it really does possess superior intelligence! Perhaps that's why this was her one and only film appearance. That's BEAST BIZ BABY! It's back to that bloody haunted night cave. GIVE BEAST A CHANCE!

America's first orbiting spaceship collides with a mysterious object and crashes to Earth, bringing with it an alien mother and her parasitical brood who are using the undead astronaut as an incubation chamber. After a number of inexplicable deaths, the humans decide to destroy the intruder but pause when the alien claims to be on a goodwill mission to save our species from ourselves. The film is a bargain-basement, Bronson Canyon blend of the vastly superior "The Day the Earth Stood Still" (1951) and "Alien" (1979), but typical of a Corman opus (auteur brothers Roger and Gene were producers, Bernard L. Kowalski was director), is watchable in an eye-rolling way. The special effects aren't really special: the monster (recycled from a previous Corman film (typical)) is a hairy, beaked, lump that you never get a really good look at and the alien embryos look like fat seahorses. The acting is on par for a '50s B-monster outing, with the usual characters delivering the usual material (the 'science' in the script varies from reasonable to ludicrous (somehow eating a brain confers the power of human speech through photosynthesis)). 'Night of the Blood Beast' is a silly but short and watchable, although it never lives up to the lurid imagery on some of the posters and DVD covers.