Night of the Blood Beast

Director - Bernard L. Kowalski (Attack of the Giant Leeches)
Starring - John Baer (The Beverly Hillbillies), Angela Greene (Futureworld), and Ed Nelson (Police Academy 3: Back in Training)
Release Date - 1958
Genre - Horror/Sci-Fi
Tagline - "No girl was safe as long as this head-hunting thing roamed the land"
Format - DVD (Personal Collection) (15 Horror Movie Set Volume 3)

Rating (out of 5):

      When anyone thinks of classic monster and sci-fi movies they often think about the drive-in b-movies from the 50s and 60s.  Those times are now long since passed but the charm of those films still remain regardless if you are a fan of the bloodiest and goriest films Italy has to offer or the campy and cheesy films of America.  When you think of the films from that time you often think about Plan 9 from Outer Space, Attack of the Giant Leeches and so forth.  Until I grabbed this box set I had no idea that this one existed but I was pretty damn excited to see it with hopes that I had discovered a classic monster movie gem.

     The film follows John Corcoran, the first man to travel to space, as he prepares to head back to Earth.  However, things do not go according to plan and the spacecraft crashes killing John.  A response team head to the wreckage along with John's lover to recover the body.  The body shows no signs of trauma and they take it back to examine.  A doctor discovers that he is indeed dead but the body is not dying.  After sometime John awakens and the team discovers that an alien has snagged a ride to Earth and impregnated John with a lizard-like fetus.  As the team scrambles to kill the giant beast, John tries to talk them out of harming it and instead study the creature from another world.  Things turn bleak when the creature kills members of the team forcing the survivors to eradicate the beast.
     If anyone can call me anything it would have to be stubborn.  When I come across movies I have never seen before I often get excited.  Not because it is new, but because it is new to me.  I should have learned the lesson by now that if I have not heard about a film released in 1958 then it is probably a big load of shit on film.  That is what happened with this one.  I started watching it and quickly discovered it would be a chore to finish.  The acting is atrocious even by b-movie standards.  The acting also added to the difficulty of watching it.  The story is original but not very entertaining.  Who would really want to watch a movie about about a male astronaut carrying an alien's baby?  Dennis Quad could barely make a movie with that storyline entertaining so this one had no chance.  If I knew before hand that this was what the film was about then I would have avoided it regardless of how bad I wanted to complete this box set.  Finally, those looking for amazing special effects and an amazing monster might want to look somewhere else because you will not find it here.  The monster is completely absurd and laughable but not in a campy and cheesy way.  More artistic thought and know-how could have been applied to the monster's costume but if that happened it would not have been a Corman production.  Overall, this is a low budget flick that offers nothing entertaining but does succeed at killing time.  Ignore it like that rash you have...