NIGHT OF THE BLOOD BEAST (1958)

Astronaut John Cochran is reentering Earth orbit when something goes wrong; he loses control of the capsule, saying that it feels hundreds of pounds heavier. He crashes in a desert area and is found by two space scientists. The ship has a huge hole in it, the outside is covered with muddy slime, and John is found dead inside. When the recoverers return with more help, much of the slime is gone and the hole is bigger. Even stranger, Cochran's body shows no signs of decomposing. Back at the tracking station, they discover that Cochran still has normal blood pressure, and a sample of his blood shows strange foreign cells in it. (A bad movie clue: the blood sample seen through the microscope is poor quality cartoon animation. Another clue: the actress playing the photographer is awful and only made one more movie.) Next thing we know, Cochran has come back to life, the communication radios aren't working, and a creature that looks like a bear is skulking around outside in the dark. In short order, we discover that the creature, who apparently hitched a ride on the space capsule, can communicate, sort of, with Cochran, and Cochran's body is now host to a number of alien fetuses (which we discover through more cheap animation). At night, the creature breaks in and kills the doctor, tearing off a chunk of his head—despite the movie's poster art showing this scene, we see nothing graphic. It consumes the head and later, when they find the monster in a nearby cave, it speaks in the doctor's voice and claims that the doctor has achieved immortality. Next, the fetuses inside of Cochran will be born and begin the task of taking over the Earth (supposedly to save us from ourselves and our misuse of scientific knowledge) unless our band of scientists can stop it.

Every October, I watch and review horror and sci-fi movies, particularly ones that might have been shown on Chiller Theater, a Friday night double feature show that aired here in Columbus in the 1960s and 70s. They mixed classics like DRACULA and FRANKENSTEIN with super cheap B-films like ZOMBIES OF MORA TAU, but as a kid, they all seemed just dandy to me. For the last few years, I have thought I was scraping the bottom of the barrel every October, but I keep finding more to watch thanks largely to YouTube. So here's to another month. This hour-long B-movie from Roger Corman and his brother Gene (though directed by Bernard L. Kowalski, who had a very active career as a TV director well into the 1990s) has some good ideas but there isn't the budget or imagination to produce a very interesting movie. It’s not a total loss: a grim and moody atmosphere is built up in the isolated tracking station, the mystery of the dead/alive Cochran is developed nicely, and some of the actors are fine. But the monster is silly, the sets are cheap, and aside from the main ideas, the script is weak, with not quite enough plot for the full hour. I imagine that the idea of a man being pregnant with aliens was either considered shocking or laughable back then, though this idea was resurrected twenty years later in the original ALIEN. Michael Emmet (Cochran) is fairly compelling as Cochran—he's shirtless for a little while, providing some OK B-beefcake, hairy if not hunky. (He's pictured shirtless in the company of the Blood Beast at top right, and his face is seen at left.) Ed Nelson (Dave, the scientist who finds the wreck), who sustained a TV career into the 90s, and Angela Greene (Julie, Cochran's girlfriend) are adequate. This is included on some lists of the worst movies ever; it isn’t that bad, and I might even say it's somewhat memorable for, if nothing else, the pregnant man gimmick. Decent watching for an October B-movie party. [Streaming]