Monday, March 6, 2017

Night of the Blood Beast - 1958

Night of the Blood Beast is gonna be thematically similar to the Pod People / Extra Terrestrial Visitors review because this is another film I was more familiar with from MST3K.  This episode of MST in particular is not as great as the Pod People episode, however it's still a good one that I've seen a handful of times and that I remember parts of.  The same director also did Attack of the Giant Leeches, also featured in MST.

Keeping this review pretty short, Blood Beast is about an astronaut that crash lands on Earth.  He is apparently dead from the crash, and Steve and Dave and Julie are on the scene to check out what happened.  Then they discover the body is still in decent shape, and rigor mortis and everything is going slowly, so they take it for further study.  Eventually, the astronaut John gets back up, is apparently fine, and is now linked to an alien creature that is causing chaos in the town.  John is receiving communiques from the alien, and now the humans have no choice but to listen to what he says if they wants their man back.

This is a pretty typical 50's monster movie, first off.  It's mostly dialogue, Corman was involved in it, and the effects are minimal while the drama and the build is most the flick.  I will say that it's done pretty well, in that the average 50's flick is still fun to watch, enjoyable enough.  They make it clear that there is possibly more to the story than we're let onto at first, as it seems like the alien might be good, and it might just have been an accident that it caused the death of a man.

Hmmmmm....what else to say.  Filmed in Bronson Canyon, like so many films of the era.  Oh, the alien looks fucking ridiculous, like some bizarre parrot monster:
Also of note is that this is one of the (drum roll) last THREE films on the Sci Fi Invasion Boxset and I am SOOOOOO close.  A slightly better-than-average 3 stars.


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