Night of The Blood Beast – Aliens Impregnate Space Traveler

Review by Steve D. Stones

With titles like Hot Car Girl (1958), Attack of The Giant Leeches (1959) (aka The Giant Leeches), Blood and Steel (1959) and this 1958 film – Night of The Blood Beast, how could any cult movies viewer of forgotten low budget gems not want to be a fan of director Bernard L. Kowalski's films? These lurid titles are enough to attract the attention of any obscure movie fan.

A young astronaut, John Corcoran (Michael Emmet), loses control of his space rocket while en route back to earth. He crashes near Walker's Pass in Florida, where the spacecraft was launched. A photographer, Donna Bixby (Georgianna Carter) and technician Dave Randall (Ed Nelson), arrive on the scene from a nearby space agency tracking station to investigate the damages. The two discover a large hole in the side of the spacecraft as if something forced its way out, and Corcoran lying dead inside the spacecraft. Bixby photographs the wreckage for future investigation.

Astronaut Corcoran's body is brought back to the space tracking station in Florida for an autopsy performed by Dr. Alex Wyman (Tyler McVey) and his assistant Dr. Julie Benson (Angela Greene). Although his body appears to be deceased, his blood pressure and heart rate appear to be normal for a living person. A blood sample from his body reveals strange, abnormal cells that show he is infected with something foreign. Dr. Benson and Corcoran were engaged to be married, so Benson is very emotional about his death.

Later that evening, an unseen creature attacks and kills Dr. Wyman by decapitating him and suspending his body in a medical examination room. Astronaut Corcoran comes back to life at the time of Wyman's death, and the group immediately thinks he's responsible for killing Dr. Wyman.

After an x-ray of Corcoran's chest reveals alien embryos impregnated in his body, the strange creature that killed Dr. Wyman bursts into the room again to communicate with the group, but Randall and Steve Dunlap (John Baer) fire shots at the creature, forcing him to flee the room. The entire room becomes engulfed in flames.

The space tracking station has lost all communications with the outside world. Electrical power has also been knocked out. Randall, Dunlap and Bixby leave the station to track the creature and to discover the source of what knocked out their radio communications. While tracking the creature, Bixby is attacked as Randall and Dunlap fire shots over the creature's head. The creature flees once again.

In a third attempt to track the creature, Corcoran pleads with Randall and Dunlap to not meet the creature with violence, but instead attempt to communicate with it. Randall and Dunlap agree to Corcoran's plan, but are still skeptical, so they take along Molotov cocktails to saturate the creature with gasoline and to ignite him with flames. The group tracks the creature to a nearby cave, where it communicates to the group its plans of an alien race coming to earth to dominate. Corcoran kills himself at the cave to prevent the birth of the alien embryos in his chest.

Night of The Blood Beast had an original working title of Creature From Galaxy 27, and was produced by Gene and Roger Corman. Director Kowalski was only 28 years old at the time he directed the film. The film played on a drive-in double bill with another Roger Corman produced film – She Gods of Shark Reef (1958). She Gods is a complete yawn-fest compared to the superior Night of The Blood Beast.

Watching this film, I can't help but think that perhaps director Ridley Scott may have been inspired by at least the story of Night of The Blood Beast when he created Alien (1979). Many sources report that Scott received most of his inspiration from Mario Bava's – Planet of The Vampires (1965) and perhaps Edward L. Cahn's film – It! The Terror Beyond Space (1958).

The Alexander Laszlo music of Night of The Blood Beast was also featured in Kowalski's 1959 film – Attack of The Giant Leeches. Laszlo's score can also be heard in the 1950s TV space adventure – Rocky Jones - Space Ranger and the 1959 drive-in hit - Beast From Haunted Cave.

Most exterior shots were filmed at Bronson Canyon caves at Griffith Park in Los Angeles. This location was also used in many other cult classic films of the 1950s, such as Unknown World (1951), Robot Monster (1953), The Day The World Ended (1955), I Married A Monster From Outer Space (1958) and Teenage Caveman (1958). Speaking of Teenage Caveman, the creature costume used in Night of The Blood Beast will make an appearance in Teenage Caveman.

Night of The Blood Beast would certainly make an excellent double-feature with Kowalski's other lurid sci-fi adventure – Attack of The Giant Leeches. Happy viewing.

Teenage Caveman – Corman’s Least Effective Film

By Steve D. Stones

The problem with most cave men movies is that they portray women as curvaceous cuties with make-up and well groomed hair, and men with barbershop haircuts and Harvard accents. Roger Corman’s 1958 film – Teenage Caveman is difficult to take seriously because of this problem. Actor Robert Vaughn even called it “the worst movie of all time,” and never includes it on his resume of films he has starred in. The one thing going for Teenage Caveman is that it uses the bizarre monster costume seen in Bernard Kowalski’s 1958 film – Night of The Blood Beast.

Vaughn plays a bored teenager (in case you didn’t know already, even though he was well into his 20s when this film was made), who breaks the law of his tribe and wanders beyond the river in search of “the God whose touch kills.” In his first attempt, the tribe sentences him to death, but does not follow through with the sentence. Vaughn tries a second time, and confronts the monster known as “the God whose touch kills.” The monster is killed and revealed to be a caveman from another tribe in a costume attempting to scare off Vaughn’s tribe from traveling beyond the river.

When the monster is unmasked, Vaughn discovers a book inside the costume with images from the 20^th century, such as a picture of an atomic explosion, the United Nations building in New York, and two military men shaking hands. We then realize that Vaughn and his tribe are not prehistoric men, but surviving members of a post-holocaust, post-nuclear war society. Maybe that accounts for their clean cut haircuts and fluent use of the English language?

Some accounts of this film have suggested that its original title was – I Was A Teenage Caveman, to cash in on the success of the 1957 Michael Landon film – I Was A Teenage Werewolf. However, no one has ever been able to verify this claim. In his autobiography – How I Made A Hundred Movies In Hollywood & Never Lost A Dime, director Roger Corman mentions that the original title of Teenage Caveman was Prehistoric World, and was shot at Bronson Canyon above Los Angeles in just ten days for $70,000. The sequences of prehistoric monsters fighting each other is taken from an early 40s caveman movie – One Million B.C.  Happy viewing!!