Night of the Blood Beast (1958)

Sadly Over-hyped

Fresh and Exciting

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties. It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.

Night of the Blood Beast: In this 50's sci-fi Roger Corman quickie a returning astronaut (Michael Emmet) crash lands in the hills outside of Cape Canaveral and is discovered by a rescuer (Ed Nelson) and his photographer (Georgianna Carter).The astronaut appears dead and they bring him back to base camp/shack. After a more thorough examination, it turns out he isn't dead after all, but pregnant with what appears to be six sea monkeys. Then the father shows up (An Owlbear) who is an alien that may or may not have peaceful intentions.Is the Alien really peaceful? Will the astronaut's fiancee (Angela Greene) still go through with their wedding now that he is no longer "pure"? Who decapitated and ate the brains of the doctor (Tyler McVey)?The Good: For a quickie Sci-Fi film this has some pretty good mind-bending adult themes. For starters we have a man becoming pregnant by an alien creature and he defends this creature as a teenage girl would defend a delinquent to her parents. The alien talks in quiet tones and proper English about family and immigration as he makes the case for him and the astronaut to raise the babies on their own. We have the hot-headed men who want to kill them just for being different ( The rescuer above and John Baer). The fiancee is conflicted, happy to have her man back but feeling he has changed and is no longer the alpha male she was going to marry.I would be remiss to not mention Georgianna Carter. She is beautiful yes, actually quite stunning, but that is not unusual in fifties sci-fi. She has a more out of time quality. Have you ever seen those shows that purport to show a woman using a cell phone in a silent film from the twenties or a photo of a modern traveler during the construction of the Panama Canal? With her hairstyle and mannerisms and even dress, she seems to be from at least two decades in the future. You just don't expect a character in s fifties Sci-fi quickie to have Rachel Hair.I know it gets a lot of flack but I like the alien's Owlbear costume. I had to smile every time it showed up.The Bad: Night of the Blood Beast is a low budget quickie. It's barely an hour long, the spaceship is a septic tank and there are six people in the entire film.In Conclusion: A somewhat well written (not shot mind you) sci-fi story that muddies the water of whether aliens are good or evil and bluntly muddies the water on a lot of gender roles as well. Clearly grading on a curve for a Roger Corman quickie, the film has a fun monster, a beautiful woman from the 90's and doesn't overstay it's welcome.

I first saw this Roger Corman production on "Mystery Science Theater 3000." Despite the best efforts of Mike Nelson and his robot pals, NIGHT OF THE BLOOD BEAST was excruciating. So what made me sit through the original, unriffed version? The same thing that once made me lick a cheese grater, I suppose.The film had an imaginative storyline for 1958: an astronaut crash- lands on Earth and is killed. There's just one problem: hours after death, his body stays warm and his blood cells remain alive. That's because there are alien embryos gestating inside him, which will soon exist independently of the astronaut. There is also a full-grown alien roaming the countryside who absorbs human knowledge by killing people and cutting their heads off.Though the title suggests a horror film, it's really sci-fi. However, unlike the best sci-fi, NIGHT OF THE BLOOD BEAST offers nothing to think about once the film is over. The bland script serves up dull dialogue and characters, while the $68,000 budget ($578,000 in 2017 dollars) allowed for just a couple of sets. The director must have seen little need to move the camera, or else couldn't afford a dolly. In either case, the camera frequently locks in and doesn't move for minutes at a clip. The musical score has little to do with what's happening on screen. The monster is hilarious-looking, as are the shots of the dead astronaut's blood cells under the microscope. And the script leaves numerous questions unanswered:How was the astronaut impregnated?How was he supposed to give birth to those alien babies?Why do the aliens have to cut people's heads off to absorb their knowledge?Why don't the aliens simply come to Earth instead of hitching rides on our spaceships?Did the aliens wish to live in peace or to conquer us? The script is annoyingly vague in that regard.I'll end with the most quotable line of this 62-minute miasma: "A wounded animal that large isn't good!"

One of the things that I enjoy most about watching old, low-budget B-movies is discovering moments that may have proved influential for the following generation of film-makers, those who made the movies I watched while growing up; sadly, in the case of Night of the Blood Beast (1958), spotting one such scene is the ONLY thing I enjoyed.Apart from the aliens gestating inside the body of unfortunate astronaut Maj. John Corcoran (Michael Emmet), which appear to have inspired the 'chestburster' of Ridley Scott's classic sci-fi horror Alien (1979), there really is very little of interest about this Roger Corman-produced cheapie. The action plods along at a stupefyingly slow pace, the acting is basic, and the special effects are weak, with the main 'monster' being a particularly poor example of the 'man in a rubber suit' variety.A silly, supposedly ambiguous ending is intended to leave the viewer questioning the alien's real intentions: did it want to help the human race (as it claims) or was it out to dominate us? Considering that the thing had laid its young inside Corcoran, causing his body to shut down, and then proceeded to tear the head off poor Dr. Wyman (Tyler McVey), hero Steve Dunlap (John Baer) does the wise thing and roasts the ugly SOB.

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.