NIGHT OF THE BLOOD BEAST
MOVIE REVIEW

		Review by E.C.McMullen Jr.
NIGHT OF THE BLOOD BEAST - 1958 USA Release: AUG! 1958 Roger Corman Productions, American International Pictures (AIP) Rated: USA: N/A

Several mighty rockets on their launch pads.

Throughout pointless narration, one of the rockets blasts off and flies through space.

The single astronaut onboard, Major John Corcoran (Michael Emmet: ATTACK OF THE GIANT LEECHES) is reckless enough to only wear a pressure suit and a motorcycle helmet without the face plate.

Upon returning to earth, his rocket nozzles stop working as does his drag chute. His rocket, which suspiciously looks like a paper cut out dragged across a picture of space, returns to earth as a damaged water heater and crashes in the mountains of Florida!

You read that right: Mountains of Florida! I didn't make the movie so shut up!

Though this is the future, rescue arrives in the form of a World War II Army Jeep, driven by the Rocket designer, Dave Randall (Ed Nelson: ATTACK OF THE CRAB MONSTERS, INVASION OF THE SAUCER MEN, THE BRAIN EATERS, TEENAGE CAVEMAN, SHE GODS OF SHARK REEF, A BUCKET OF BLOOD, DEVIL'S PARTNER, THE BONEYARD), and riding with photographer, Donna Bixby (Georgianna Carter).

Neither of them know anything about CPR or any kind of medical rescue, which is a good thing considering that John is dead. Can you imagine how awful it would have been if John was dying in agony while Dave and Donna could only sit there, smoking cigarettes?

Donna wants Dave to look at this swell dirt she found, but Dave's too remorseful. This rocket is his design and it killed someone.

Don't bother me about dirt at a time like this!

Dave radios Doctor Alex Wyman (Tyler McVey: ATTACK OF THE GIANT LEECHES), who is tooling through the switchback mountain roads in an old 1940s flatbed vegetable truck (In The Future!) with John's fiance, Doctor Julie Benson (Angela Greene: THE COSMIC MAN, FUTURE WORLD), and in the driver's seat, Steve Dunlap (John Baer).

Since Julie is John's fiance, she takes the news of his death pretty hard (naturally), but stoically bears up.

When everyone goes back to the crashed water heater, now made to look a bit more like a rocket1, Dave notices the gash in the side of the rocket is more gash-ier and Donna sees that the blanket of dirt on top of the rocket is missing.

Hey! The rocket is cleaner!

Donna, I know you're upset, so why don't you go take some pictures of something... over there?

Can't save a dead man, so they unceremoniously dump John on the flatbed and cart his corpse back to their makeshift base as military parade music plays.

Understand that this movie starts out so futuristic with its spacebase and all, and after the space crash its all rednecks and shoot 'em up.

Wyman and Benson are both doctors, but instead of doing an autopsy they just take a blood sample from John's body. Under the microscope they make an amazing discovery: After being dead for 7 hours, his blood is still alive. In fact, its coexisting with some third kind of sort of cell they can't identify (looks for all the world like a paper cut-out of a hand drawn cell, which it is).

Dr. Julie points out the obvious:

We've all been in close contact with the body so they could all be infected with an unknown contagion.

Then Dr. Julie says the dumbfounding,

We should go to the nearest town for help.

Doc Benson, I know you're in grief over Johnny and not thinking straight so... why don't you go do some medical stuff or something... over there?

Power goes out, Dave goes outside to see why, is surprised by a bear ... Or Some Thing! Shoots at it, and the rest of the gang runs outside and finds him collapsed, exhausted but otherwise no worse for wear. Not a scratch.

Okay...

Back inside, Doc Wyman suggests that they all sleep in the same room in case whatever attacked Dave comes back. Wyman volunteers to take the first watch - but from the laboratory.

It isn't long before there's a crashin' and a smashin' and when everyone runs back to the lab, Doc Wyman's body is hanging upside down, there's a small puddle of blood on the floor beneath him, and most of all, it looks like something ate half his head off. That explains the blood and why he's faceless, doesn't explain why he's hanging upside down, and then, to make matters weirder, a dead, confused, and disoriented John comes back to life and starts spouting the craziest shit. Stuff like,

Doctor Wymans dead? Well I think he lives inside me. Isn't that strange?

DaFuk?!?

NIGHT OF THE BLOOD BEAST has surprisingly little blood for a movie about a Blood Beast. That's because this is one of Roger Corman's ultra-cheapie SciFi movies, the kind of "cheapnis" that the late Frank Zappa adored and sung about. And whenever Frank sung about cheap movies were specifically about Roger Corman movies.

How cheap? $68K, which comes to about $742k in 2024. Back then, the price of film stock (5 to 15 minutes per roll and non-reusable) was a huge drain on the budget and at these prices, directors didn't think a lot of retakes and bloopers were cute, they were cause for Beating your Actors!

In the modern days of digital (1 to 4 hours per SSD, the cost of only a single 5 minute roll of 35mm film, and re-usable), the price of the recording medium is nearly insignificant.

NIGHT OF THE BLOOD BEAST has the same monster that Roger used in another movie he made that year, TEENAGE CAVEMAN 2.

NIGHT OF THE BLOOD BEAST was written by a 21 year-old Martin Varno, who got the job both because his pop was the well known actor, Roland Varno, and his good friend was the successful, best selling writer, Jerome Bixby.

Martin never had a script produced before and had no experience with how movies are made and how they change from the page to the final cut. As shooting progressed, Producer Roger Corman made changes as did his Producer brother Gene (to the point that Gene decided to give himself "Story" credit). As the actors got into their roles, as actors will do, they also made changes and of course, Director Bernard L. Kowalski (ATTACK OF THE GIANT LEECHES, TERROR IN THE SKY [the basis for the satire movie AIRPLANE!], BLACK MOON, SSSSSSS) made changes as Directors will do to make everything flow better - in their opinion.

All of these changes, made without consulting the writer first, infuriated Martin and he never wanted to work with the Cormans again. He pursued arbitration against both, won both cases, and wound up never working with anyone as a screenwriter again.3

The suits at American International Pictures took one look at NIGHT OF THE BLOOD BEAST and knew it couldn't make it on its own. So they paired it as a Double Feature with SHE GODS OF SHARK REEF, an unwatchable Roger Corman directed movie that was sitting on the AIP shelves since 1956 (18 months!), and released it largely to Drive-In theaters where couples were in the backseat, engaged in other entertainment endeavors unrelated to movie viewing.

Despite all of this, Roger Corman movies as well as other 1950s early 1960s Scifi Horror movies wouldn't remain in such high demand, 60 and 70 years later, if they didn't have an audience.

Movies ranging from THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW to CRITTERS to TREMORS to EDWARD SCISSORHANDS to IRON GIANT and way more base their entire popularity and own "Classic" status on the mysterious Fun Factor of these shlock movies. And of course, Elvira, Joe Bob Briggs, and Mystery Science Theater 3000 would have never had such enduring careers if they didn't mock, yet ultimately adore, such flicks.

I'm preposterously fond of mid 20th century SciFi Horror movies, even while I don't kid myself about the level of their quality.

Your mileage may vary, but my rank for NIGHT OF THE BLOOD BEAST is

2 Shriek Girls

This review copyright 2024 E.C.McMullen Jr.

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