By Hank Reineke
In case you were wondering, the answer is “yes.” That is Christopher Lee’s visage featured on
the slipcase of Kino Lorber’s Blu ray issue of Vernon Sewell’s The Blood Beast Terror. Now, ordinarily, displaying Sir Christopher’s
image on a Gothic horror film release wouldn’t make for bad marketing. The problem is that Lee doesn’t actually appear in The Blood Beast Terror. The
team at Kino curiously chose to use the poster art of Distribuzione Italiana
Films Internazionali, the distributor readying the film for European release as
the Mostro di Sangue.
The artwork procured by D.I.F.I. for The Blood Beast Terror was, at the very least, familiar: a reverse-image
lifted from the Italian poster of 1958’s Horror
of Dracula (Dracula il Vampiro). Kino is taking a fair battering on fan sites
for their packaging of this 2022 issue. But let’s be fair. Kino’s decision to forego the original British poster
art for the imagery of the Italian campaign might be a bit odd but not technically incorrect. Moviegoers in Italy had, in fact, been lured
into visiting their local cinema with such eye-catching - if misleading -
artwork.
Though Tigon’s The
Blood Beast Terror has a core of supporters – perhaps defenders is a better term - I find the film a mild amusement at
best. Which is a shame as I really want to like it. In a sense, it’s a film conceived from a time
out of mind. Some critics suggest that’s
exactly the film’s failing. Upon UK release
in the early spring of 1968, stately Gothic horrors were seemingly growing
stale amongst horror film fans. Critics
argued a new era of more edgy, sadistic and blood-letting horrors was in the
ascendant, old costume-drama gothics now too tame to frighten. While that’s not necessarily untrue, there’s
no denying The Blood Beast Terror is of
middling interest simply due to it not being terribly involving.
While it’s true goth-horror had lost some of its courtly appeal
with a large sect of cinemagoers, the sub-genre was hardly dead. A case in point: upon original release The Blood Beast Terror was paired as the
undercard to Michael Reeve’s brilliant Witchfinder
General, a film set circa 1645. This too was a Tigon release of Tony
Tenser’s, a Vincent Price vehicle far superior to The Blood Beast Terror on every conceivable level. I might be wrong, but I suspect if not for
the presence of Peter Cushing in The
Blood Beast Terror, Sewell’s more modest film would have far fewer
champions than it enjoys today.
So what’s wrong with it? I admit to moments of melancholia when watching The Blood Beast Terror. For
starters, it’s difficult to watch old pros Cushing and Robert Flemyng (known
best to horror film fans as the titular necrophagic M.D. The Horrible Dr. Hichcock) try their best to rise above the
mediocre material they’ve been given to work with. The film’s Director of
Photography, Stanley Long, recalled Flemyng complaining “how shit the script
was, how shit the effects were.” Even director
Sewell wasn’t spared the castigations of an unhappy cast member. He recalled the famously gentlemanly Cushing mildly
offering only a couple of days into the shoot, “Vernon, I think this is perhaps
the worst film I have ever made.” Sadly, in a few years’ time there would be new
challengers to Cushing’s lament. Such
clunkers as Tendre Dracula (1974) and
Blood Suckers (1971) would prove short
term contenders to that particular title.
I won’t give away anything important about the film’s
flimsy plot – just in case you’ve yet to see the film and still wish to after
reading this review. I’ll just say the
trail of mutilated bodies scattering the English countryside are – as ever –
the result of bad science gone horribly wrong. In this case entomological science. As transformative feminine-insect monsters go, Wanda Ventham’s fetching “Clare”
in The Blood Beast Terror is, IMHO, a
far less interesting or menacing creature than Susan Cabot’s “Janice Starlin” in
Roger Corman’s low-budget The Wasp Woman
(1959). But, again, the fault here lies
not with Ventham or Cushing or Flemyng, but with a script riddled with excessive
verbiage and slow-moving, sluggish plotting.
Peter Bryan’s screenplay ultimately dooms The Blood Beast Terror as the scenario he
creates never builds tension or mystery. This shouldn’t be the case as Bryan had previously penned a number of
worthwhile scripts for Tigon-rival Hammer Films (The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959) and The Brides of Dracula (1960), the latter picture an all-time
favorite of mine. Perhaps I’ve simply sat through The Blood Beast Terror too many times in my sixty-odd years. Perhaps one’s interest level wanes with each
successive viewing. Or perhaps I am not
enjoying the film as I know what to expect – or perhaps more importantly, what not to expect? In any case, partway through watching the
film again for the umpteenth time, I found my mind drifting to what snacks
might still be found in the pantry or of what film I might watch next.
Upon its release in America, Sewell’s film was exploitatively
rolled-out to drive-in theaters and neighborhood flea pits. Pacemaker Pictures would announce in
September 1968 that they had acquired U.S. distribution rights to the film,
releasing it under a revised title, The
Vampire Beast Craves Blood. Upon
release in the UK, The Blood Beast Terror
was conferred an “X” certificate. Which
is interesting since the Motion Picture Code and Rating Administration found
the offered “horrors” so benign the film (lightly edited) was certified as a
“G” release in the U.S. Pacemaker would pair
The Vampire Beast Craves Blood with an Italian import Curse of the Blood Ghouls. The company would unleash the package in the
summer of 1969 for regional exploitation.
Though the U.S. pressbook for the skin-crawling twin-bill
promised “2 New Powerhouse Pulse-Pounders
from Pacemaker,” the blood that flowed was mostly anemic. The 1962 Italian Gothic Curse of the Blood Ghouls (later broadcast on late-night television
in the U.S. as Slaughter of the Vampires)
would prove – as had Witchfinder General
in the UK - a more atmospheric and memorable horror-thriller.
As the film was inauspiciously dumped on the U.S. market,
The Vampire Beast Craves Blood –
probably for the best – was not properly scrutinized by a large battery critics
upon arrival. But a brief notice
appearing in the Boston Evening Globe was
indicative of the attention the film might have garnered: “It is difficult to judge the value of the vampire picture since even
the producers obviously think no explanations are necessary for most of the
action, and the characters themselves are as three-dimensional as a paper
doll.”
The U.S. posters for The
Vampire Beast Craves Blood certainly promises more than the film delivers,
but you can’t say Pacemaker wasn’t trying to put bums in the seats with its blood-pumping,
enticing campaign: “NO ONE IS SAFE…from
these DEADLY VAMPIRES!! A ravishing Psycho-Fiend with the diabolical power to
turn into a giant DEATHSHEAD VAMPIRE feasts on the BLOOD of her Lovers before
clawing them to death! Hey, if I had
a driver’s license back in June of 1969, rest assured I would have packed myself
into the family’s Ford Falcon for a night of spooky thrills at the drive-in.
I will say this. For
a film that’s not particularly memorable – at least not memorable for the
“right” reasons – The Blood Beast
Terror/Vampire Beast Craves Blood deserves credit since it enjoyed a long
theatrical run 1968-1973. During this
time the film was subsequently paired on dozens of frightful co-bills with such
thrillers as Paranoia and The Sorcerers. Under its original title, the film would make
its debut on television in early winter of 1974. I don’t recall seeing The Blood Beast Terror on TV back then. If I had, the film made very little
impression on me. So it’s somewhat
amusing that in 2022 I have somehow managed to own no fewer than five copies of
a film that I don’t really care for on three different formats: VHS, DVD and
Blu ray. I suppose if Peter Cushing was
not in the film I wouldn’t have purchased any of the above. But I love Peter Cushing and such is the
curse of unreasonable fandom and film collecting madness.
This Kino Lorber Studio Classics Blu-ray edition of The Blood Beast Terror is presented in
1920 x 1080p, with a ratio of 1.66:1, dts sound, and removable English
sub-titles. The film looks brilliant,
Kino engineering this new issue from a 2K restoration. The set rounds off with
several theatrical trailers, including one for the feature. There is also reversible sleeve artwork.
Though this Kino Blu offers a commendable audio
commentary courtesy of critic Kim Newman and Stephen Jones, if one really wants
to really delve deep into the
minutiae and mechanics of Tigon’s bringing The
Blood Beast Terror to the screen, you might wish to seek out John
Hamilton’s exhaustive and meticulously researched thirty-two page treatise on
the film in the October 2019 issue of Little
Shoppe of Horrors magazine. The long
essay – which also includes illustrative sub-feature interviews with Blood Beast director Vernon Sewell and
SPFX technician Roger Dicken – is far more entertaining and illuminative than
the film itself.
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