Night Of The Blood Beast!

It seemed that once upon a time people were really really scared of what was waiting for mankind in the depths of space. I've always grown up surrounded by science fiction which took man into the depths of space for good or ill or mostly both and science fact which took man to the Moon, so space has always seemed just one more landscape against which the human drama played itself out. It was not a dark enigma filled with mere danger and death, but that seems to be what motivated any number of movies such as The First Man Into Space and The Quatermass X-periment and more. It seems to be the genesis of this story too told with the tools of the low-budget filmmaker. Night of the  Blood Beast sounds like it ought to be a horror movie and in many respects it is one, but it's varnished with the shiny newness of science.

A brave man returns from space and crash lands. At first he seems dead, but then improves and there's also evidence that something else is lurking about, something that came from inside the man and from space too. That thing ultimately takes shape and the small cadre of researchers who worked to recover the spacecraft find themselves fighting for their lives and as it turns out so often in these yarns the fate the world too. There are more than a few details in this story which reminded me of other later sci-fi shows such as Lifeforce and Alien.

This is a movie in which the actors are above average and help to kindle an involvement with the weird doings that makes you care. The director seemed to take more care with shot composition than seemed typical of movies of this type and budget. Watching the film again, I was often struck by the detail in the backgrounds and the depth of field which added context to an image. Most cheap movies don't do that or not well.

The monster in this one is pretty obligatory and the costume works better here than it did in Teenage Caveman where it was first used a few weeks before. Bronson Canyon is put to solid use and on the same ground  on which Ethan Edwards found redemption these brave folks save the world. This is a smarter movie than its lurid title suggests and the fact that it's in public domain makes it seem less worthy of our respect.

I recommend this one and it's easy to find as it's fallen in the public domain.

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