ALL SCI-FI

[Bud Brewster]

I wasn't sure I wanted to watch this one, since I'm not actually a horror fan. But the opening scene is a rocket launch that looks pretty darn good, so I'm grateful to Jimbo Berkey's website, Free Classic Movies for including Night of the Blood Beast in its library of movies.
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Roger Corman Classic Horror

On October 4, 1957 the Russians lofted Sputnik 1 into outer space and it fell to earth on January 4, 1958 . . . the first step by mankind to leave the earth and boldly go where no man has gone before.



The fertile minds of Roger Corman and brother Gene Corman went to work and in August of 1958 brought us a peek into the future -- or the mind-stretching possible future of man in space . . . and space aliens in man!

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Astronaut Major John Corcoran is in a U.S. rocket ship, and things are not going well. His rocket ship crashes into the wilderness, and when a rescue team reaches the rocket ship they discover that the astronaut is dead.

But hours later when Doctor Julie Benson and Doctor Alex Wyman reach the dead astronaut they discover that his body has not started to decay with rigor-mortise, and although there is no trace of a heartbeat, his blood pressure is near normal!

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Two things happen that bring us to the edge of our seats.

A mysterious large monster is around that isn't fazed by gunshots, and the 'dead' astronaut comes to life. An examination determines that he is carrying several small fetuses of a strange alien creature.

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He is the first mother of outer space monsters that comes to earth.

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What follows is a tale of science fiction that -- even many decades later -- can bring bumps of the goose to our flesh and thoughts of real outer space creatures among us.

Pop a big bowl of white kernel popcorn with plenty of warm melted butter on it and enjoy the show.

____Jimbo Berkey
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Bud Brewster]

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Not a great movie, but if you've been squeezing the dwindling supply of classic sci-fi for decades like me, hoping to find something you've missed, you won't be expecting too much from this Roger Corman example of shoe-string-budget film making.

The spectacular rocket blast-off at the beginning is part of a Russia movie Corman bought for a song (one of several he acquired).
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_____________ Night Of The Blood Beast trailer


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_____________ Night of the Blood Beast (1958)


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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Gord Green]

What this movie lacks in effects it makes up in the psychological interactions between human and alien intercommunication.

Not a bad film by any means, but the viewer requiring the fast moving splash and slash of contemporary moviemaking will find it slow and plodding. The thinking man will find it interesting at least.

[filmdetective]

Night of the Blood Beast is the MST3K feature film for tonight on Comet TV, at 10 PM, followed by the Best Brains treatment of Indestructable Man at 12:15 AM tomorrow morning.

While Indestructible Man is my favorite of the two, I did watch it for the firstime in the mid 1960s on TV (and it was still playing on a drive-in program of "Hemoglobin Horror" films with "blood" in the title.

Within the past few years, I re-watched NOTBB, when going thru my Mill Creek two sided DVDs, and thought it was an OK film, although I remain less familiar with it than I am with Indestructible Man.

I don't know if any of you have read any "fan fiction" stories, but I did write one based on a fantastic kids show from Canada, and I noticed on the long list of topics for the fan fiction webpage that "male pregnancy" was a fairly common topic, something that really surprised me, since NOTBB was the only previous example of that topic I had heard of before.

Shows you just how out of touch and passed by in time I am.

[Bud Brewster]

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On the subject of fan fiction and male pregnancy, I concocted a story idea in the 1960s called Starchaser (which I never actually wrote a single word about — it was all in my head), and one of the key elements of the story was an alien creature called an [orgadon, and extremely intelligent being which stood about thirty feet tall.

When I was about fifteen I sculpted it out of modeling clay and kept it for a few years . . . until my father tossed it out while I was in the Air Force, because he didn't think I wanted it anymore.

To be fair, he made this assumption because it was stored in an old refrigerator in his basement workshop, and he thought I'd just forgotten about it. Modeling clay becomes hard when cold, and I thought my sculpture would be safe in the old fridge downstairs.

Dad apologized when I came home from the Air Force in 1971 and he found out that he'd made a mistake.

Anyway, the orgadon was asexual — which of course meant it was both male and female (or perhaps neither one, technically speaking), so it could become pregnant without the need of a sexual partner.

Here's one of several drawings I did of the orgadon a few decades ago. I also have one of a young offspring, but I don't have a jpeg of it, darn it . . .
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[ralfy]

720p resolution:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1t-4gMtae_M

[Bud Brewster]

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IMDB has 14 trivia items for this movie/series. Here’s a few of the ones I found the most interesting, in the blue text.
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~ This was released in one of American-International's prepackaged double features. It was paired with Roger Corman's She Gods of Shark Reef (1958), which had been sitting on the shelf for 18 months.

Note from me: Leave it to good old American-International to have a few extra movies lying around on storage shelves whenever they needed to throw together a crappy double feature they could pawn off onto an unsuspecting public.

~ Produced by exploitation filmmaker Roger Corman and his brother Gene Corman, it was one of the first films directed by Bernard L. Kowalski and was written by first-time screenwriter Martin Varno, who was 21 years old. It starred several actors who had regularly worked with Roger Corman, including Michael Emmet, Ed Nelson, John Baer, Georgianna Carter and Tyler McVey.

Note from me: Unpacking the above info, we discover that this was produced by the cut-rate Corman brothers, directed by a first-time director from a script by a first-time screenwriter who was barely out of his teens, and starring actors who were desperate for work!

Boy, what a pedigree . . .

~ It took screenwriter Martin Varno six weeks to write the script, the working title was "Creature from Galaxy 27". The story was partially influenced by the real-life "space race" and Christian Nyby's The Thing from Another World (1951). Screenwriters Jerome Bixby and Harold Jacob Smith gave Varno uncredited assistance with the dialogue.

Note from me: Boy, this story just gets better and better. It took young Martin Varno six weeks to write bad script, allegedly inspire by a great movie, and he needed help from by two great screenwriters who didn't get any credit.

Poor Martin just does impress me at all . . .

~ Due to his dissatisfaction with his treatment by the producers, screenwriter [Martin Varno] pursued two successful arbitration cases. One was for underpayment, the other in response to producer [Gene Corman]'s original story writing credit, even though Varno claimed to have written the entire story himself.

Note from me: Hmmm . . . maybe I'm wrong. It sounds like Martin gave it best shot and then saw his creative efforts seriously mishandled! By gum, I AM impressed that young Martin won his arbitration case!

This next item is long, but when I read it I was impressed by the way Martin handled a tricky Hollywood deal that treated him badly.

Behold!

~ Jerome Bixby, the science-fiction screenwriter who wrote It! The Terror from Beyond Space (1958), was originally approached for the job, but was working on another project and recommended his close friend Martin Varno for the job.

Varno, the son of veteran actor Roland Varno, met with producers Roger Corman and Gene Corman , who discussed with him what Varno called "some sort of a weird idea for the picture". They offered Varno a couple hundred dollars for the job, which was below the minimum compensation rates known as "scale", but Varno was not part of the Writers Guild of America at the time and did not know about the guidelines.

He accepted the offer and signed a contract.

Although Varno had a rough idea it would be a low-budget film, he said the Cormans set no specific guidelines for him.

"I gave them the impression that I knew pretty much what I was doing, and they sort of got the idea that I wasn't going to use 50,000 extras and things."

Note from me: Wow, it sure looks like I was wrong about young Martin. Obvious he did his best to craft a good story, but it was turned into cinematic feces!

~ Producers Roger Corman and Gene Corman cast the film together with director Bernard L. Kowalski, who was 28 years old at the time.

Kowalski also directed Roger Corman's Hot Car Girl (1958). Night of the Blood Beast was one of Kowalski's first directorial credits and his first science-fiction film, although he later went on to direct Attack of the Giant Leeches (1959).

Note from me: The idea of having a 28-year-old guy direct a movie about horny teenagers and hot rods seems a bit like turning a kid loose in a candy store . . .

The YouTube clip I found of this movie was not very impressive. But I took a quick look at a similar movie from 1956 movie I found, shown below.

______________________ Hot Rod Girl (1956


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This one actually looks pretty good, with a cast that includes Lori Nelson (Revenge of the Creature), Chuck Connors (The Rifleman), Dabbs Greer (It! The Terror from Beyond Space), and Frank Gorshin (the Riddler from Batman).

If you're in the mood for a Drive-in feature from the middle 1950s that's much better than Night of the Blood Beast, I think this one fits the bill!
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)