8mm Forum: NIGHT OF THE BLOOD BEAST Super 8MM Sound

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Topic: NIGHT OF THE BLOOD BEAST Super 8MM Sound

Brian Paul Cook
Film Handler

Posts: 54
From: Champaign, IL 61820
Registered: Feb 2010

posted May 25, 2010 03:07 AM

While not a great movie by anyone's standards, this late fifties American International released feature isn't really bad either, and actually is kind of fun to watch. It is the first time a man was impregnated by an alien on screen, no doubt having served as some sort of inspiration to the creators of ALIEN. Anyway, there are some good scenes and some excellent performances in this feature.

When it comes to the hard-to-find in sound 200 foot condensation, it's quite another matter. Instead of logically following the progression of events as they take place in the original film... an astronaut crashes to earth and appears not to have survived the crash. There are some eerie scenes with Michael Emmett returning to life which easily could have been used to get the story going and take us right to the X-ray machine scence revealing all of the alien babies floating around inside of his body. In the original film the adult Alien of the title bursts into the science lab and is set on fire ala THE THING. Instead of using this effective shock scene to introduce the alien and jumpstart this version, the film editors opted to put this near the end of the film and inexplicably stack the later various scenes involving the monster up front of the film and proceed in no particular order. You see the monster in clear view jumping around and carrying on with no motivation in several scenes and then he is re-introduced as though you have never seen him. It really makes a mess out of what could have been a decent condensation of the feature. They unneccessarily chop up the climax of the film and insert a totally unnecessary voiceover that seems to be designed to make you think about what you have just seen in a more serious light. It's too bad that so few of the fifties science fiction titles were released in any form on 8mm and then when it was done, it wasn't given much care. The picture quality however is excellent, but the soundtrack is a bit boomy.

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Brian Paul Cook

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Adrian Winchester
Film God

Posts: 2941
From: Croydon, London, UK
Registered: Aug 2004

posted May 27, 2010 07:20 AM

I sometimes have twinges of regret that I sold my print years ago due to the incomprehensible editing, so thanks for reminding me that this was as poor as I thought!

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Adrian Winchester

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Terry Lagler
Jedi Master Film Handler

Posts: 525
From: Ontario, Canada
Registered: Apr 2008

posted May 27, 2010 09:37 AM

I too have a sound copy of this title and enjoy it too, although a much better edit could have been achieved. Extra points for the lurid box art, even though it is completley unrelated to the film.
I usually play this as a double feature with 'The Monster Of Piedras Blancas"

Cheers
Terry

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John Hourigan
Master Film Handler

Posts: 301
From: Colorado U.S.A.
Registered: Sep 2003

posted May 27, 2010 01:17 PM

Thanks for the review -- I've always been curious about this digest!

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Joe Taffis
Phenomenal Film Handler

Posts: 1592
From: United States
Registered: Jun 2003

posted May 27, 2010 04:32 PM

A Roger Corman classic. [Smile]

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Joe Taffis

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Douglas Meltzer
Moderator

Posts: 4554
From: New York, NY, USA
Registered: Jun 2003

posted May 28, 2010 07:31 PM

Brian,

Thanks for the review! I've never seen the feature so I find it fascinating that Ken used scenes out of order. I agree about the the lab sequence. There's a nice camera move that makes the alien's entrance pretty startling.

Doug

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I think there's room for just one more film.....

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