Beast of Blood (1970)

Memorable, crazy movie

Tells a fascinating and unsettling true story, and does so well, without pretending to have all the answers.

The acting in this movie is really good.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

Please forgive me but what follows are my memories encountering this movie 30ish years ago as a teenager of about 13 who had never seen an R-rated movie. I suspect only those of you who lived in the middle of North America cut off from the coasts will really appreciate this story. I lived in Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada just above the barren expanses between us and North Dakota so that map goes. One of our main contacts with the outside world was a US border TV station with the call letters KCND. KCND knew Canadian advertising was central to its bottom line. It served admirably as a cross border institution serving both southern Manitoba and Northern North Dakota with offices in both countries before switching call letters to CKND. I don't know if K/C-C/K-ND survives today either as a US or Canadian outlet. Anyway this station had a movie on Saturday night at 10:30 PM which I think was called Chiller Theatre or something like that. As I remember, the movies were the usual stuff for the time, mostly 1950's fare which I still enjoy to this day. Then one night Beast of Blood appeared. From the opening I knew this movie was completely different. The camera effects, a hideous and to this day still frightening, dripping, oozing chlorophyll monster, a guy falling into a pit of wooden stakes pumping-- no gushing-- blood from his wounds... and John Ashley and Celeste Yarnell naked. I had never seen anything like it. The other two "Blood" movies followed on CKND one of which featured the mamorable, I mean memorable, Angelique Pettyjohn from Star Trek naked with John Ashley. Beast of Blood stayed with me for 30ish years. Then I saw the DVD and confirmed that in in the 70s my prairie TV station showed it completely uncut! I miss the renegade drive-in days. This, even though I saw my drive-in movies on TV.

Although the second film in the Filipino Blood Island trilogy, "The Mad Doctor of Blood Island" (1969), has no relation at all to the original picture, "Brides of Blood" (1968), "Beast of Blood" (1970) picks up mere seconds after part 2's conclusion. In this final part of the trilogy, John Ashley returns to Blood Island, in pursuit of the chlorophyll monster that had wrecked the ship he'd been sailing on. He is accompanied this time by a sassy newspaper columnist hot on the trail of a possible scoop, and played by the scrumptious Celeste Yarnall. Once back on the island, we learn that Dr. Lorca (played here by Eddie Garcia, not Ronald Remy) survived the inferno that had culminated part 2, and is keeping busy by trying to attach a new head onto the chlorophyll monster's torso. (Well, everyone needs a hobby, right?) Anyway, this film is as pulpy as can be, and dishes out more of the same mix of blood, guts, mutants and jungle adventure that were the hallmarks of the previous installments. It manages to incorporate maggots, quicksand, pitfalls, cobras, gorgeous native girls, gross-out surgical sequences, and a battle royale with hand grenades, knives, spears, machine guns and rifles...all to guarantee a rousing show. The chlorophyll monster himself is not given much screen time this go-round--the picture is more of a jungle adventure, and was filmed, Celeste tells us in an interesting interview segment on the DVD version, four hours in from the nearest dirt road! I'm happy to report that the great Bruno Punzalan returns in this, his third Blood Island film, and will likely strike most viewers as a kind of Filipino Oddjob. Please don't get me wrong...these films are guilty pleasures at best, and are hardly exemplars of the cinematic crafts. Still, they're presented with a good deal of panache, and "Beast of Blood" brings the series to a fitting close. Plus, hearing that gorgeous Filipino gal say "un-com-FORT-a-ble" is worth the price of admission itself!

BEAST OF BLOOD (3+ outta 5 stars) This is one of those iffy movies that I just can't quite bring myself to recommend to other people... though I have seen it many times and will probably see it many more. It is just so cheesy... the acting and voice dubbing so poor... the dialogue so overwrought... the storyline so clichéd... sex and violence for no reason but to show sex and violence... I mean, what's not to love about a movie like that? (Well, if you're in the mood for it, that is.) This is one of those cheaply-made horror movies from the Phillipines in the early 70s starring John Ashley. (Didnd't *every* movie made in the Phillipines in the early 70s star John Ashley?) In this sequel to "Mad Doctor of Blood Island" (which I have never seen, but, really, I don't think I need to) Ashley once again fights a monster inadvertently created by a mad scientist and tries to put a stop to his insidious experiments on human beings. That's all you need for a plot, right? So there's lots of fighting... and shooting... and lovemaking (Ashley manages to find not one but TWO willing females on the remote island... what luck)! I thought the movie was pretty cool when I saw it at the drive-in when I was 14... and dang it, I still think it's pretty cool! Why is it that bad movies made 30 or 40 years ago are so much more entertaining than bad movies made NOW?

We start where the previous film, Mad Doctor of Blood Island (1968) finished with Dr. Bill Foster (John Ashley again) and Sheila Willard although she is never seen, escaping Blood Island on a boat. However, escaping with them is the mutant green chlorophyll contaminated monster. It starts to kill the crew, they shoot at it. In return the monster throws a barrel of petrol at them, the barrel bursts and petrol spills everywhere. One of the crew attacks the monster with a naked flame, it gets knocked out of his hand and the entire ship blows up and sinks. Only Foster and the monster survive. The monster is washed up on a beach. Foster is rescued and sent back to the mainland for treatment. Foster decides to return to Blood Island, and hires a small cargo ship to take him. When he arrives on the ship he finds a newspaper reporter Myra Russell (Celeste Yarnall) waiting for him. She thinks there might be a story and travels with Foster to investigate. Once at Blood Island Foster, Russell and the ship's Captain (Beverly Miller) find the tribes Chief Ramu (Alfonso Carvajal, another returning cast member from the previous film) is apprehensive and unfriendly. Foster starts by heading to Dr. Lorca's (this time played by Eddie Garcia) old house that was supposedly destroyed by fire. There he runs into an old enemy, Razak (the returning Bruno Punzalan) Dr. Lorca's henchman who had previously tried to kill him. With the discovery of Razak, Foster manages to convince Ramu to help him. They go in search of Razak and leave Myra behind in the village. However, Razak and his men kidnap her and take her to Dr. Lorca's elaborate hideout in the Valley of the Red Mist who is still alive and still conducting experiments on the unlucky locals, and keeps the green monsters decapitated head and body alive with the help of medical devices, for reasons which aren't really explained that well. It's up to Foster to finally put an end to Lorca's horrifying experiments and save the girl! Written and directed by Eddie Romero I thought it was a pretty decent film, but not as good as Mad Doctor of Blood Island. This one plays more like a jungle adventure for the most part, with Ashley trying to save Yarnall's dopey reporter. The green monster has even better make up than the first, even though those eyes are still a problem, you can the actors eyelids, again. The problem is that it's barely in the film, after the cool opening sequence the monster doesn't attack anyone else in the whole film, the monsters headless body just lies there and it's head just sits on a table doing nothing in particular, a complete waste. The monster attacks were the best feature of the previous film and this feels like a bit of a disappointment. Dr. Lorca and his experiments are also almost completely ignored, he doesn't even turn up until about half way through the film. There is also a serious lack of blood and gore, which doesn't help it. The end sequence in which the locals fight Dr. Lorca's gang isn't very exciting and a little dull, a bit more imagination would have helped. Acting, again is OK, as are the effects, music, sets and editing, but non of it's brilliant. The Philippine jungle locations are again nice and colourful. It's a reasonable exploitation film, but overall I was a bit disappointed. There are better out there, but this ain't too bad.