The Blood Beast Terror Blu-ray

The Blood Beast Terror

 (1968)

The Blood Beast Terror Blu-ray delivers great video and solid audio, but overall it's a mediocre Blu-ray release
Horror icon Peter Cushing stars as Inspector Quennell, a Scotland Yard detective sent to a small town in the English countryside to investigate a series of suspicious deaths.

For more about The Blood Beast Terror and The Blood Beast Terror Blu-ray release, see The Blood Beast Terror Blu-ray Review

Starring: Peter Cushing, Wanda Ventham, Robert Flemyng
Director: Vernon Sewell

» See full cast & crew

The Blood Beast Terror Blu-ray Review

The Moth(wo)man Prophesies

Reviewed by Casey Broadwater, July 12, 2012

The Death's-Head Moth, with it's distinctive skull-patterned thorax, appears in two fantastic films—Luis Buñuel's Un chien adalou and Jonathan Demme's The Silence of the Lambs—and one that's utterly dull. That cinematic clunker is 1968's The Blood Beast Terror, a Tigon British Film production starring Peter Cushing in a role he'd later remember as one of the worst in his prolific career. That's certainly up for debate— Shatter and The Uncanny also make strong contenders—but Blood Beast is undeniably mediocre at best, a me-too picture that pales next to the most memorable British fright movies of the 1960s. It might help to think of the British horror industry in terms of levels of quality. Below relatively high-brow fare like Repulsion and Séance on a Wet Afternoon there was the vanguard of B-movie terror— Hammer Horror—and below Hammer was Tigon, mostly churning out low-budget quasi-knockoffs with cheapo special effects. Though Tigon did have a few veritable hits—the still-excellent Witchfinder General, for one—The Blood Beast Terror isn't among them. The film has some kitschy cult charm in the form of a laughable monster, and Cushing is his typically careful, considered self—his presence does elevate the otherwise ridiculous material—but this dry, poorly constructed chiller is otherwise difficult to recommend.



Like The Asphyx, another recent Kino/Redemption Films release, The Blood Beast Terror is set in the late Victorian era, when new advances in science—especially electricity—expanded the imagination about what might be medically possible. Resurrection, transformation, manipulation; playing God seemed soon within technological grasp. This was also the era of British imperialism, and the film opens with naturalist Frederick Britewell (William Wilde) in white safari garb, being paddled down a river in deepest Africa. When he enters the forest/jungle, he finds several large chrysalises, a hint at the horrors ahead.

Back in dreary old England, there's been a series of murders in the countryside on the fringes of London, and Scotland Yard Inspector Quennell (Peter Cushing) is called in to investigate with his trusty assistant Sgt. Allen (Glynn Edwards). The local mortician—the film's comic relief, eating supper amongst the mouldering bodies—explains that all six victims so far have been killed in the same way: "Drained of blood...severe injury to the cranial region, thorax severely damaged, and ribcage subjected to extreme pressures." A coachman who witnessed one of the killings raves madly about a creature with big wings and eyes, but Inspector Quennell's only hard clue is a handful of strange scales found at the scene of the latest crime.

Quennel takes the scales to an entomologist named—wait for it—Dr. Mallinger (Robert Flyming), whose evil-sounding name clues us in immediately that he's the prime suspect. Oh, and there's also the niggling detail that two of his students were the latest victims. If that weren't enough, after Quennell voices a suspicion that a giant eagle might've been responsible for the deaths, we see—dun dun dun!— that Mallinger does in fact have an enormous pet bird-of-prey.

This is a red herring, though—a dumb one, at that—and the real culprit is related to whatever Mallinger is hiding behind the locked door in the basement of his laboratory. (That's la-bore-a-tory, not lab-ra-tory, of course.) For a film the tries its damnedest to be a horror/police procedural hybrid, its first fault is that there's no real mystery here and, consequently, little suspense. At every chance, the script all-too-obviously clues us in. We get the clear sense that Mallinger himself isn't sucking blood out of innocent males—and the victims are all male—so the only questions are about who/what is actually doing the killing, and what, by Jove, is going on in that padlocked room.

Regarding the former—and this is no spoiler, I swear—it's revealed mid-way through the film that Mallinger's daughter, Clare (Wanda Ventham), is actually some sort of woman by day, blood-sucking humanoid were-moth by night. Yes, a vampiric were-moth. When she transforms—via a simplistic crossfade—she looks a bit like a costume-store version of the fabled Mothman, with ruby-red eyes and large floppy wings. It'd make a killer Halloween outfit, but the monster design is decidedly low-rent for a feature film, and director Vernon Sewell wisely only shows it in quick flashes. What's strange is that while the movie is over-explanatory in some respects, it's mystifyingly opaque in others. Is Clare the doctor's actual— i.e. biological—daughter, or did he manufacture her somehow via illicit experimentation? We never find out. As for what Mallinger is making in the basement, I'll leave that unanswered; though it's not much of one, it is the film's sole surprise.

Overall, The Blood Beast Terror is uneventful and tedious, padded with long, drawn-out scenes that do little to advance the noticeably thin plot. Characters go fishing. Quennel chats idly with his colleague. In the middle of the film there's even a stage play that seems like a cross between Frankenstein and Sewell's film to come, 1971's Burke & Hare. This is one of the best scenes in the film, oddly enough, but it doesn't have much to do with anything. Later, the story makes a poor left turn in the third act, moving the action to an entirely different location—a holiday cottage in Upper Highham—and introducing us to a whole new set of rather inconsequential characters. Cushing is a pro, as usual, at times seeming to channel his Sherlock Holmes persona from Hammer's The Hound of the Baskervilles and the 1968 BBC series, but the film needs much more than the fastidiousness and stiff upper lip of its star.

The Blood Beast Terror Blu-ray, Video Quality

 

The phrase that comes immediately to mind is "unexpectedly impressive." For a low-budget British horror film from the '60s, The Blood Beast Terror is in remarkably good condition. Whether this is due to a preternaturally clean print or some measure of restoration, I'm not sure, but either way, the 35mm image is very nearly pristine. You'll spot a few errant white flecks and some mild color fluctuations and brightness flickering, but these are fleeting non-issues that aren't distracting in the slightest. The film's cinematography was handled by exploitation/nudie-cutie filmmaker Stanley Long, who gives the period piece a suitably rich look, bringing out the warm, dense colors of the surprisingly decent set design and costumes. Contrast and color balance are excellent, and though black levels are a bit oppressive during the darker outdoor scenes, this is certainly a product of the way the film was shot. This 1080p/AVC-encoded transfer of the film seems entirely faithful to source. If you've been following these Kino/Redemption Films releases, you'll already know that the picture is untouched by excessive digital noise reduction or edge enhancement; the grain structure is fully intact, and the picture is sharp enough as is. Yes, there are some noticeably soft shots, but close-ups almost always display a fine degree of clarity, with visible facial and clothing textures. As you'd hope, there are no compression/encode issues to report.

The Blood Beast Terror Blu-ray, Audio Quality

 

The film's uncompressed Linear PCM 2.0 stereo track isn't quite as impressive, but it's certainly functional and listenable. Though dialogue is always easily understood, the voices do occasionally sound distant and/or slightly muffled and/or brittle in the high end. You sometimes get the sense that some of the audio was recorded on set, while other snatches of conversation were dubbed in later in an ADR booth. This is par for the low-budget vintage horror movie course, so fans of the genre are probably so used to it that they won't even notice. The rest of the mix is suitably clear and substantial sounding— i.e. not thin—from the rare effects to the original music by Paul Ferris, who also scored Witchfinder General. There are no loud hisses, sudden dropouts, or pervasive crackles or pops. My lone complaint with these Kino/Redemption titles, on the audio front, is that there are no subtitle options included for those who might need or want them.

The Blood Beast Terror Blu-ray, Special Features and Extras

 

• Trailers: Includes trailers for The Blood Beast Terror and other Redemption releases, including Burke & Hare, Killer's Moon, Virgin Witch, and The Asphyx.
• Gallery: A user-directed stills gallery with sixteen photos.

The Blood Beast Terror Blu-ray, Overall Score and Recommendation

 

The Blood Beast Terror is certainly one of the lesser British horror films of the 1960s, with a lackluster story, poor pacing, and a severe lack of excitement. The movie does muster up an appealing Victorian-era science-meets-the-unexplained atmosphere—there's a neato laboratory and an X- Files-style monster—but neither this nor Peter Cushing's performance can make up for the film's deficiencies. Still, Blood Beast does have its cult fans, who perhaps love it precisely because it is so shabby, and they'll be more than pleased with Kino and Redemption Films' Blu-ray release, which is in almost shockingly good shape. Seriously, I imagine the film looks better here than it ever did during its theatrical run. For Anglo-horror collectors only.

Next month, Kino Video's Redemption label will bring both Burke & Hare and The Blood Beast Terror to Blu-ray. Director Vernon Sewell's gothic horror chillers deal with, respectively, a grave robbing duo in 1820s Scotland and a rash of mutilated dead bodies left ...