Blood Beach (1981)

Good concept, poorly executed.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Great b-movie with a good cast and typical jaws scenario. i saw it years ago on uk sat tv and stubbled about it on a cable channel this evening. if you like the classic killerfish story, then watch this - also, or because the monster is not in the water! the mood in this movie is, as you know it from A movies water & beach flicks. recommend it to everyone who, like myself enjoys such films.

I have a bit of a soft spot for this daft little B-movie because I saw it as a kid and the idea of the story really grabbed me and captured my young imagination. And now, while frankly as a movie it doesn't hold uptoo much for me at all, it is an amusing romp and I enjoy it in a harmless campy way and it makes for a very colourful and distinctive addition to the awesome creature feature movies of the time. It's very cute and has its good points, like the music score which helps to set a good sense of lurking menace and tension, and the concept of the hidden 'slayer in the sands' is very intriguing and keeps you hanging on, wondering what the creature really is, the idea of something monstrous hiding under a bright sunny beach that can swallow people alive unexpectedly is creepy...but that is all about this flick has going for it, as it is an extremely low-quality picture all around. You don't get to see the monster until the final half-minute or so, and what you do see is a big 'ol letdown and an incredibly weak climax after an admirable buildup. This movie has an awesome horror concept that's let down by a clearly low budget, poor acting, a washed-out picture, weird camera angles, the sound is really sh*tty, the story is full of holes both plot and monster-related, but the main thing that's wrong with it is that it is boring as hell! It plays out like a bad TV movie and there's no real flow to it at all, it's just one scene after another of dull police investigating, the idiotic main guy and his ex-wife reconciling their love while saxophones play, he was seriously one of the weakest male leads I've ever seen, and of course the poor saps getting sucked into the sand! They approach this silly story about a huge monster flytrap sea cucumber that's eating up sunbathers so seriously, and it could've been a lot more fun and entertaining than it is. There's some sh*t that goes on in it that would have played a lot better if the actors had tried to act it a little more schlocky, but all of the actors are so dry and dead serious that it mostly just doesn't work very well and isn't very interesting to watch.. There's this one scene where a lady describes in great detail to Burt Young what her husband was wearing at the time of his disappearance that's almost unbelievable! That scene is some hilariously sloppy writing. It does seem like the director was going for something like a Larry Cohen type of a vibe but didn't quite have the talent or money to pull it off. Cohen would have been able to gear this beach turkey into a classic. A lot of the more endearing cheaply-done horror flicks have the benefit of likeable and interesting characters to balance out the monster stuff, this film does not. They really should have done it as more of a comedy with John Saxon and Burt Young as the leads instead of just having them as minor characters. One character I do enjoy is the old quack who correctly predicts the disaster that will follow should the creature be blown to bits, as you see in the effectively eerie closing sequence where one sea flytrap has indeed become too many to handle all thanks to Burt Young being an impulsive dumbass! The monster that you do briefly see doesn't quite add up with the events of the movie and it made me wonder if at different points in the production they has planned to have it turn out to be something completely different, because there's no way that the ridiculous overgrown flower thing with no appendages or obvious intelligence whatsoever would be capable of tieing up human bodies and heads with rope or do anything as meticulous as rip out a guy's tongue, a girl's eyes, or indeed bite off a would-be-rapist's dick! It's horrible to begin with but it really falls apart with that half-assed monster reveal, the ending is the real low blow! It's not a film that I hate at all, I'm not angry whilst watching it, I'm just...disappointed because it's a waste of a good concept that could have been done much better. It's craaaap!! But I think my enjoyment of it might be on a so-bad-it's-good level! Beautifully terrible. X

This one had been on my wish-list ever since I saw a few fragments of it when I was a little kid. But being a sober guy, I wasn't expecting much of it. And that was a good thing . Basically where "Jaws" made the water an unsafe place, "Blood Beach" tries to do this for the beach. But "Blood Beach" is very much inferior to Spielberg's classic. Mainly because "Blood Beach" is rather slow and boring. "Jaws", at times, also wasn't all that about action & horror, more about the characters really, but it had a fine plot structure, good dialogues and decent acting to keep things going. But I shall not just dismiss "Blood Beach" as a bad B-monster movie (though it certainly isn't a good one). The main attraction amongst the cast is John Saxon, who is the best actor of the lot, injects a nice amount of sarcasm in his role and simply has the best lines of the movie. Then there's Burt Young, who's just great as Sergeant Royko, bragging about Chicago all the time, eating various sort of junk-food in almost every scene and referring to someone's brain as "vegetable soup". The music was pretty memorable too, with a dark cello theme and some jazzy saxophones. And the beach-monster was just too weird. It looked like a giant, dusty, plastic flower. But unfortunately it's only shown in a few shots when it emerges from the sand near the end. The shots over the end credits leave room for a sequel ("Blood Beach 2: The Offspring", would have been a very appropriate title, I believe), but that never happened. "Blood Beach" could have been a cult classic, but unfortunately the movie feels just a bit too mainstream (and too uneventful also) for it to be one.

Something or someone is attacking people one by one on the beach.Some of them are mutilated,but most of them are sucked into the sand, disappearing without a trace.What is the creature responsible?Where does it live and where did it come from?Is there any chance of it reproducing?Meanwhile David Huffman and Mariana Hill are once-almost-married old friends,reunited over the death of her mother on the beach and searching for clues in the abandoned buildings where they used to play when they were young."Blood Beach" is a cheesy monster movie with an octopus-like creature.The pace is glacial and some scenes are drawn-out to the point of being dull.The characters are flat and unpleasant.Still if you are a purveyor of trashy and cheesy 80's horror you can't miss "Blood Beach".6 out of 10.