‘No girl was safe as long as this head hunting thing roamed the land!’
Night of the Blood Beast is a 1958 sci-fi horror film about an astronaut who is killed on reentry to Earth but his body is seeded with rapidly gestating aliens.
The movie was directed by Bernard L. Kowalski (Attack of the Giant Leeches; Sssssss) from a screenplay by first-time screenwriter Martin Varno, who was twenty-one years old.
The Roger Corman Productions film stars several actors who had regularly worked with executive producer Roger Corman, including Michael Emmet, Ed Nelson, Steve Dunlap, Georgianna Carter and Tyler McVey. Roger’s brother, Gene Corman, was the producer.
The eerie soundtrack score was composed by Alexander Laszlo (Attack of the Giant Leeches; Beast from Haunted Cave; The Amazing Mr. X).
Varno wrote the script in six weeks with an original working title of Creature from Galaxy 27. Screenwriters Jerome Bixby and Harold Jacob Smith gave Varno uncredited assistance with the dialogue. With a budget of about $68,000, it was shot over seven days at the Charlie Chaplin Studios, Bronson Canyon and a television station on Mount Lee in Hollywood.
The Blood Beast alien costume was also previously used in the Roger Corman film Teenage Cave Man (1958), which was filmed just two weeks earlier. Art director Daniel Haller, who built the rocketship and other props, slept at the sound stage between work sessions.
Following dissatisfaction with his treatment by the Corman brothers, Varno pursued two successful arbitration cases, one of which was for underpayment. The other was in response to producer Gene Corman‘s original story writing credit, even though Varno claimed to have written the entire story himself.
Cast and characters:
Michael Emmet … Major John Corcoran; Angela Greene … Doctor Julie Benson; John Baer … Steve Dunlap; Ed Nelson … Dave Randal; Georgianna Carter … Donna Bixby; Tyler McVey … Doctor Alex Wyman; Ross Sturlin … The Creature
Filming locations:
Bronson Canyon, Griffith Park, Los Angeles, California
Film facts:
The alien costume featured here was the same as the one used in another Roger Corman film, Teenage Cave Man (1958). This was done to save money, as Corman and his brother Gene Corman often tried to incorporate existing sets, costumes and other elements from previous films into new ones for financial savings. Screenwriter Martin Varno said the Corman brothers were so conscious of their spending that “‘cheap’ was the main word in their vocabulary”. The monster costume scenes in “Teenage Caveman” and this film were shot within about two weeks of each other. The costume was modified slightly for this film. Ross Sturlin wore the costume for the scenes in both “Teenage Caveman” and this film. Flming was very difficult for Sturlin because it got extremely hot inside the costume during the exterior shots.
John M. Nickolaus Jr. was director of photography for the film, and Jack Bohrer was the production manager. Daniel Haller, who went on to become a film director himself, worked as art director on this film. He did much of the manual construction work on the set himself, and brought a trailer in to the sound stage so he could sleep there and between work sessions. Among the props he built was the rocket-ship, the frame, which was made of plywood that had been cut into circles, then covered with a plastic sheet and spray-painted to look metallic. Haller also created blood cells that the characters looked at under a microscope, and the baby aliens they look at under a fluoroscope. Almost the entire crew went on to work on Attack of the Giant Leeches (1959) with the Corman brothers and Kowalski.
Technical specs:
1 hour 2 minutes
Black and white
Audio: Mono
Aspect ratio: 1.37: 1
Trailer:
Free to watch on YouTube [1080p HD]:
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