The Vampire Beast Craves Blood

I'm not a scientist, but a couple of things bother me about 'Blood Beast Terror'. I can can just about believe that a professor of entymology could create an enormous man, sorry, woman sized Death's Head Hawkmoth in his laboratory but why would it specifically crave human flesh and blood? That's one thing. The deal breaker is how the hell he could create a massive, murderous acherontia lachesis that, most of the time, is actually a pretty, if rather forward, young woman? It just doesn't make any sense - and even if you disengage the make sense meter before you press 'play' it still itches your udders, especially as the film makers make no attempt whatsoever to show us their workings out.

So, yep, fundamentally flawed, and that's before we take into account the numerous non sequiters and dead ends, the characters who are given elaborate back stories just to be killed five minutes later, and the scenes that go on just a fraction too long, or start about a minute too late. Oh, and Roy Hudd's in it, providing comic relief (it's certainly a relief when he stops). It's all a bit of a mess and, fatally, gives what it has away far too soon.

Wanda Ventham plays the deadly girl moth, and although she's in 'UFO' and is attractive and all that, she's just too arch and knowing for the role. The moment she sashays onscreen, all cleavage and cow eyes, you know she's a wrong 'un. The supporting cast is good, but not given much good to do. Even the super reliable and sharply intelligent Peter Cushing plays a policeman who, knowing he is on the trail of a killer beast, takes his daughter (pouty Vanessa Howard, from 'Girly') along as cover and then acts surprised when she disappears.

'Blood Beast Terror' is undeniably slow and slightly defective, but it carries its insane (il)logic through to the very end, when the psychotic half human furry thing catches fire after, yes, making the school moth error of flying too close to a flame. Priceless, absolutely priceless.

PS The title of this post comes from the re-named US version of the film, which makes even less sense.

The Blood Beast Terror

High Priestess Of Evil

‘Curse Of The Crimson Altar’ makes very little sense, but the occasionally amateurish production is punctuated by interesting scenes of pagan ritual and partial nudity imbued with a sickly green hue and the blurred, disjointed feel of a particularly vivid nightmare.

The cast, which includes Boris Karloff, Barbara Steele, Michael Gough, Christopher Lee and Alan Bradley from ‘Coronation Street’ is pretty impressive on paper, but they seem under-rehearsed and disengaged. Karloff is obviously in poor health (he was 80, with a year to live) and Lee is, as usual, awful.

I do like this film, of course (I like everything I feature on the blog, god help me), but it’s a little too contrived and arch to be loveable. The ingredients are there, but the finished dish is strangely unsatisfying. Anyway, here’s an interesting scene of pagan ritual and partial nudity imbued with a sickly green hue and the blurred, disjointed feel of a particularly vivid nightmare

Curse of the Crimson Altar