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Night of the Blood Beast/Attack of the Giant Leeches
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray ALL - America - Film Masters Review written by and copyright: Eric Cotenas (15th November 2024). |
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The Film
 "Executive producer Roger Corman unleashes hideous aqua beasts and horrors from outer space in two of his most memorable thrillers. A mutant stalks the Earth when the body of a dead astronaut is used as an alien incubator in Night of the Blood Beast (1959). Equally revolting is Attack of the Giant Leeches (1958), which stars B-movie siren Yvette Vickers (Attack of the 50-Foot Woman) in a watery scare fest about massive, bloodsucking monsters. The two features were directed by Bernard Kowalski, who went on to be Emmy-nominated for his television work, and they are truly representative of Corman's world: cheap, tasteless, and extraordinarily fun!" Night of the Blood Beast: John Corcoran (Attack of the Giant Leeches' Michael Emmet) is the first man to be launched into space and orbit the Earth; however, things go wrong as he reenters the Earth's atmosphere with the rocket plummeting towards the ground with the instruments no longer responding. The rocket crashes within five miles of the Goldenrod laboratory deep in the desert and his colleagues – his fiancee Dr. Julie Benson (Futureworld's Angela Greene), mentor Dr. Alex Wyman (Terror in a Texas Town's Tyler McVey), and scientists Steve Dunlap (Bonnie's Kids' John Baer), David Randall (Jackie Chan's Who am I?'s Ed Nelson), and Donna Bixby (Georgianna Carter) find the wreck and John's body. Returning John's body to the lab, they observe that the body has shown no signs of rigor mortis, and while there is no heartbeat or bloodflow, an examination of his blood shows the presence of an alien cell structure interacting with the human ones. Also without explanation are their stopped watches, clocks, and radio interference as if they were being bombarded by the kind of magnetic field that the rocket would have encountered in space. David is attacked by a giant animal while checking the generator and it appears that whatever attacked him has tried to get to John's corpse while they were distracted. When later that night, Wyman is killed and John has inexplicably returned to life, the group realize that the rocket brought back an alien entity with it. One of several Griffith Park-lensed Roger and Gene Corman sci-fi quickies for American International that motivated them first to scout new locations like South Dakota for the back-to-back Beast from Haunted Cave and Ski Troop Attack when they formed The Filmgroup, Night of the Blood Beast's The Thing from Another World-like premise is solely motivated by budget. While it has a ludicrous monster suit creature attacking screaming women – actually just Carter's Donna with Greene's female scientist being represented as both intelligent and compassionate – and yet it does have a message like the best humanist-oriented science fiction works of the earlier twentieth-century in the difficulty the characters have in trusting an alien intelligence, and how its motives really are benevolent yet are ultimately a threat to what makes us human. Philosophical questions aside, it is an efficient little film with some scares made only laughable by the animation used to illustrate the presence of alien cells and later lifeforms in John's system for which the term "cartoonish" is all too accurate. Like much of the cast, director Bernard L. Kowalski worked primarily in episodic television. Although he had previously directed Hot Car Girl for the Cormans, he is perhaps better known for co-feature Attack of the Giant Leeches, and of course Sssssss.  Attack of the Giant Leeches: When otter poacher Lem Sawyer (Dennis the Menace's Sergeant Mooney George Cisar) claims he shot a giant creature with human-like arms and octopus-like suckers in the swamp, none of his drinking buddies and fellow poachers who hang around Walker's General Store believe him. When his body turns up drained of blood with giant suction marks all over, only game warden Steve Benton (Savage Gringo's Ken Clark) is willing to entertain the theories of local Doc Greyson (Night of the Blood Beast's Tyler McVey) since he is seeing the doctor's daughter Nan (King Creole's Jan Shepard) and he likes getting a rise out of "fat-headed" Sheriff Kovis (Earth vs. the Spider's Gene Roth) who likes to keep the state out of county business and also holds him as an outsider with the same regard as the local "swamp trash." After Steve and Nan search the swamp themselves and find no evidence of an "alien creature" he is forced to give up the wild goose chase; that is, until cuckolded general store owner Dave Walker (The Devil's Hand's Bruno VeSota) is accused of killing his she-cat child bride Liz (Attack of the 50 Foot Woman's Yvette Vickers) and her lover Cal (Night of the Blood Beast's Michael Emmett) and dumping them in the swamp even though he swears that swamp monsters dragged them under the surface. When two poachers Sam try to cash in on the sheriff's reward for turning up the bodies from the underground gator dens and fail to come back, Doc Greyson wants to dynamite the swamp to bring up the bodies and destroy what is in there while Steve is duty-bound to protect the wildlife. While Night of the Blood Beast's screenplay was credited to Gene Corman and Corman make-up/sound guy Martin Varno as his only writing credit – although the commentary provides some interesting background on him – Attack of the Giant Leeches was penned by character actor/screenwriter Leo Gordon (The Haunted Palace), and that is perhaps why it has a bit more interesting characters rather than the exposition vehicles and screaming heads of the former film. While Clark – who gave up episodic TV stateside for peplum and spaghetti westerns in Italy during the sixties – Shepard, and McVey essay their typical fifties sci-fi characters competently, VeSota provides the human menace, Emmett and Vickers generate heat, and the grotto sequences of the leeches feeding on their victims are surprisingly grisly for the decade – comparable to the climactic scenes of Beast from Haunted Cave – making up for the above the water attack sequences which seem unclearly-photographed not on technical grounds but out of sheer embarrassment about the creature suits. Vickers gets to be more than a sexpot with a monologue about her hard life and the reason she accepted Dave's proposal that might stop any other film cold but is actually this one's best dramatic moment. Stylistically, on the other hand, the film is talky, stagey, and flat despite being photographed by Night of the Blood Beast's John M. Nickolaus Jr. who made a lot out of a little with some striking compositions and lighting in a style that anticipates his work on The Outer Limits. The film does not bother with much speculation on the origin of the giant leeches, presuming that the audience has heard all this before. More memorable for its title than much of its content, Attack of the Giant Leeches runs just over an hour but feels longer. 
Video
Released theatrically by American International, Night of the Blood Beast eventually fell intot he public domain with 16mm-sourced releases from various gray market video labels and budget DVD labels with the first half-way decent release from Fred Olen Ray's company Retromedia. The film made its Blu-ray bow in Germany as a bonus feature on this disc's co-feature Attack of the Giant Leeches (which also starred Emmett), however, the transfer was of the German theatrical version which inserted footage from the latter film as flashbacks while also trimming other scenes (audio was the German dub only as well). Film Masters' 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC Blu-ray features separate 1.85:1 and 1.37:1 encodes of the same master which was derived primarily from a 35mm print with the damaged title card inserted from an 8mm digest version source; as such, we get a fuzzy American International logo, good-looking footage of the rocket launch miniatures, the softish title card, and a couple digitally-recreated credits with modern transitions before returning to the 35mm source for the remainder of the title sequence. For the most part the transfer sports deep blacks, stable highlights, and good detail in close-ups, medium shots, and the locked-down, deep focus long shot compositions. There are several minute jump cuts throughout but almost no signs of wear around them and the audio work covers these gaps. A few shots wobble around the jump cuts but it is not really distracting and this is definitely the best the film has ever looked on home video.  Released theatrically by American International, Attack of the Giant Leeches became a public domain staple from the usual suspects – gray market and budget bin VHS including a Madacy double feature with The Wasp Woman – with the first decent-looking edition coming from Rhino Video who unfortunately duplicated the tapes for their ACME line in SLP/EP-mode and that video master was not one of the ones that they upgraded to DVD at the dawn of the format but there were plenty of PD versions including an Echo Bridge double feature with Piranha (not the licensed Corman production but the earlier Piranha, Piranha), but oddly enough no double bill with David DeCoteau's Leeches! (in which steroid-mutated giant leeches sucked on college diving team studs in speedos). We have not seen Film Masters' "Restored Classics" DVD, but their DVD-only titles have been less consistent quality-wise than their BD-R titles. The film made its Blu-ray debut on the aforementioned Anolis release, the quality of which was limited by the source. Last year, Retromedia released a double feature Blu-ray with Teenagers from Outer Space from a 16mm source. We do not know the source for Film Masters' 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.85:1 widescreen transfer which is not touted as 4K scan and only as a "newly restored HD version" but we would hazard a guess that it is also from 16mm. The image is soft overall, murky during the opening, poorly-detailed in long shots and only slightly better in medium and close-up shots, looking nowhere near as good as even the location sequences of the Night of the Blood Beast transfer. One can only assume that it was relegated to a B-feature not just because of its connection to the other Kowalski film but also because of the lack of quality materials. 
Audio
Both films feature English DTS-HD Master Audio and Dolby Digital 2.0 mono tracks that sound roughly the same given the source materials. Night of the Blood Beast sounds cleanest, and what remastering work there was is probably the reason that the missing frames and jump cuts are less distracting. Attack of the Giant Leeches sounds fine enough. Dialogue is always intelligible and the sound effects track is unambitious while the recycled score and source music is mixed low but never seems muffled. There is some hiss but any major damage to the optical track has been cleaned up. Optional English SDH subtitles are provided for both films. There are no obvious errors. 
Extras
Both widescreen and fullscreen versions of Night of the Blood Beast include an audio commentary by film historian Tom Weaver d – billed on Film Masters' site as "Tom Weaver and The Weaver Players" although this time around the vocal impressions steer clear of caricature and convey the information in a straightforward manner. Weaver reveals that screenwriter Varno was just seventeen years old when Forrest J. Ackerman tried to get him a job as a science fiction film producer and may have recommended him to Gene Corman – possibly explaining Ackerman's heavy coverage of the production – for whom Varno wrote the script when he was twenty-one (Weaver reads some of the film book of the movie published in an issue of Famous Monsters which may or may not be evidence of Varno's greater ambitions for the film or liberties by the uncredited author of the book version). Quoting interviews with Gene Corman, Varno, and Kowalski, Weaver discusses the shoot on which Corman and Varno were hands-on, including the latter securing the use of locations Corman did not even think to consider because they were owned by the city. Weaver also discusses his friendship with actor Nelson who was full of stories about his bit parts but had absolutely no memories about the film. Weaver also draws from research by Monstrous Movie Music's David Schecter about the score of Alexander Laszlo who would make his original scores part of his music library for reuse, including the film's Novachord theme which would be reused for Attack of the Giant Leeches and Beast from Haunted Cave (Weaver also points out a tonally-inappropriate piece that may have been dropped in at the last moment for a scene they felt needed underscore). Weaver's discussion also includes the broader impact of the over-saturation of science fiction films in the fifties leading to increasingly lower budgets in the studio films and even lower ones in the indies, as well as how the "Space Race" reinvigorated the genre with forty-three films announced in between the launch of the Russian satellite Sputnik and the American Explorer I. The disc also also includes the Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode of Night of the Blood Beast (91:44) as well as the 8mm silent digest version (6:56) from which the credits were derived for the HD restoration, a re-created theatrical trailer (1:33), publicity slideshow (2:22) and restoration comparison (2:38) that show the amount of image stabilization and cleaning of vertical scratches and digital patching of chipped emulsion.  Attack of the Giant Leeches is also accompanied by an audio commentary by film historian Tom Weaver who does not hold back on how boring the film is, particularly the Clark/Shepard scenes, but he does speak highly of McVey and Vickers with whom he formed a friendship that lasted until her death. Weaver focuses on the cast – including Clark moving out West to become an actor but becoming a "physical culture model" for the army leading to a contract with Fox that only resulted in bit parts before moving to television, a few films including this one, and then dropping family and all to become a star in Italy – how Vickers was game for anything which lead to Kowalski trying to use her as much as possible later on when work started drying up for her and he was working prolifically as a show runner. Weaver mentions that a quote from Kowalski is a "sound clip" so presumably that is him in an interview but it is unclear whether the quotes from Gene Corman and Vickers were interview audio or vocal impressions. He also quotes Schecter in discussing the resuse of Laszlo's score along with a handful of songs. Apart from the commentary, the disc's other major extra is "Made from T.V.: Bernard Kowalski as a Director" (27:00) in which filmmaker C. Courtney Joyner discusses the parallel careers of Kowalski and his script supervisor/assistant director father Frank Kowalski whose late life working relationship with Sam Peckinpah ended on a bitter note after the former scripted Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia. Bernard Kowalski got his start as an assistant director in television where he was given opportunities to direct pilots. The amount of them getting picked up and his reputation for efficiency reached Gene Corman who hired him for Hot Car Girl leading to an offer for the two science fiction films; however, the bulk of the piece focuses on his career after that, becoming a show runner on hit shows – after directing the pilot on Mission:" Impossible and being given a significant financial chunk of it for being a silent producer for the show's run – particularly ones with problem child stars like Robert Blake on Beretta and Jan-Michael Vincent on Airwolf. He still had ambitions to direct, and ended up directing the main unit of Krakatoa, East of Java for which the expensive special effects had been shot beforehand, and got the chance to helm SSSSSSS which was offered to him by make-up artists Dan Striepeke (The Island of Dr. Moreau) and John Chambers (Planet of the Apes) but founding funding via Richard Zanuck and David Brown who had just been ousted from Fox (by Zanuck's father) and moved to Universal. Back in television, Kowalski stepped away from show running in favor of freelance directing for the remainder of his career. The disc also includes the Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode of Attack of the Giant Leeches (91:37), a re-created theatrical trailer (1:37), and an Yvette Vickers picture gallery (2:12). 
Packaging
Housed with the discs is a 22-page booklet featuring an interview by Weaver with Varno about how he got involved with Night of the Blood Beast, the shoot, and his opinion of it seeing it again in 2002. The booklet also includes a piece on Attack of the Giant Leeches which might be seen as an outline for Weaver's commentary but he holds back even less about some of his low opinion of the film. 
Overall
The double feature of Night of the Blood Beast and Attack of the Giant Leeches might not raise one's opinions about pre-Poe Roger Corman productions but it does give us some insight into the career of the prolific Bernard Kowalski as well as the hands-on input of Gene Corman.
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