Astro-Vampire - Todesmonster aus dem All

Ah, they don't make them like this any more.

Horror of the Blood Monsters is truly a crazy film. It's a biscuit-taking exercise in Z-Grade film-making of the variety that makes you say, 'I cannot believe they did this!'. It's a curious mixture of ineptness and experimentation that results in a somewhat unforgettable cinematic experience. Whether that's a good or a bad thing is entirely down to your tolerance for premier division crapola.

As has been stated many times, the film incorporates segments from a few old movies, including a Filipino caveman adventure and dinosaur film. These are linked together (loosely, to say the least) by sci-fi and horror sections, which in themselves don't seem to be connected very well either. In other words, it's a shambles. By, my word, it's a fun shambles to watch.

The story is half-hearted at best. The film-makers certainly didn't treat it with very much importance, so neither will I. Instead, I shall give a stream-of-conscious list of things that this movie contains….

We have vampires with plastic teeth. We have narration by a madman called Brother Theodore. We have a mission-control that is run by a man and a woman and a bloke with a clipboard. We have a chain-smoking space crew lead by an ancient doctor played by a (drunk?) John Carradine. We have a space-ship made out of a bottle of detergent, the interior of which consists of a table and two extremely uncomfortable looking wooden deck-chairs. We have special-effects of the special-needs variety – the outer space scenes would look unrealistic in an episode of The Clangers. We have an elephant with door-mats stuck to it, crap dinosaurs and space gazelles. We have crab-men, bat-men, snake-men and midgets. We have a war between good cavemen and vampire cavemen. We have a cave-woman who changes race depending on who she is on screen with at a given time. We have morally dubious brain-surgery, performed in order to allow for inter-stellar communications. We have epic battles of extremely badly choreographed proportions. We have a space age psychedelic sex machine. We have an alien atmosphere that changes colours constantly in order for the movie to incorporate old black and white footage seamlessly with the colour bits, or because of radiation or something. Generally speaking, we have a lot of things going on in this movie.

It's a laugh-riot.

It goes beyond so bad it's good – it's so bad it's experimental. I would say, celebrate it. It should cheer you up.

Huh?

What?

Vampire cavemen? Sex replaced by flashing multi-colored light bulbs? Guys in dinosaur suits? A film half made of stock footage?

This isn't just bad, it's inexplicably bad. DO NOT WATCH THIS ALONE. Make sure to have a friend or two with whom you can swap wisecracks about this... this... HORROR OF THE BLOOD MONSTERS.

The end of this movie has nothing to do with the beginning. The middle has nothing to do with the end or the beginning. Not only does this planet change colors, but apparently at least one woman on it manages to change races, switching periodically back and forth between Filipino and Caucasian.

And remember, kids, the red radiation is the most dangerous to human life. Here, let me demonstrate with this spectrum gun.

WHAT THE HELL??????

HORROR OF THE BLOOD MONSTERS is Director Al Adamson's magnum opus. It concerns a global outbreak of vampirism, leading to a deep space mission to the planet of the plague's origin. We know this, thanks to the intense narration by "Brother" Theodore Gottlieb.

John Carradine explains the ensuing mission, which does little to prepare us for the lunacy that follows. Upon arrival, the astronauts watch "from afar" as clips from other movies are shown, supposedly having to do with whatever the hell is going on! Cavemen encounter snake-men, bat-men, and lobster-men, on their way to find sacred oil, while the astronauts "look on" from that other film.

This isn't so much a movie, as it is a test of will. Much like seeing how long one can endure being slowly baked in a kiln.

Otherworldly, discombobulating, and disconcerting, Adamson spared every expense, splicing and dicing this masterwork of garbled, drive-in fodder. Watch agog, as this miraculous mutation unfolds in all of its unbridled glory! This is cinema as God intended...

Plot

In the near future with a intergalactic vampire plague threatening earth, an expedition is sent to a distant galaxy in hopes of discovering the plague's source. Landing on a mysterious planet they discover that Spectrum radiation has turned the atmosphere into a one-color tint. Exploring further, the group discovers living dinosaurs, a race of vampire cavemen, and other strange creatures.

Cast

Outside of John Carradine unfamiliar with anyone involved, I do find it interesting that the writer did nothing else though. Probably best.

Verdict

Horror of the Blood Monsters I assumed would be a hokey 70's creature feature of some description, within 5 minutes I assumed based on what I was watching it would be instead a goofy vampire movie with some of the most questionable looking vampires in cinema history. I was wrong on both counts, so very very very wrong.

So what is it? Well after 5 minutes of exposition about vampires and suggesting that's what the movie is going to be it suddenly becomes a very dated looking science fiction movie set on a space ship that looks like had been created by Blue Peter and then descends into a non-sensical plot that involves cave men. Yes, vampires to space ships to cavemen and that's not even the worst part.

Yes the worst elements are why this is a 1/10, I don't give 1/10's very often as that suggests the film is devoid of a single redeeming feature but this right here I can confidently say doesn't have one.

You see after the horror tease and the segway into tacky science fiction we arrive at the vast majority of the movie which is ruined by awful acting, random stock footage, a non-sensical plot and filters.....random colored filters! Everything is green, then red, then pink, then orange, it's deeply annoying and illogical oh and headache inducing!

I can't stress how bad Horror of the Blood Monsters is, because it's indescribable, unique and a flurry of random imagery that doesn't constitute as a movie at all.

Rants

Why? Just why did they think those filters were a good idea? Then again why did someone sign off on this at all? It's like a fever dream, induced by too many illegal substances and written by a child bouncing off the walls on energy drinks. Awful, just awful.

The Good

The opening scene the dated isn't awful

The Bad

Abyssal acting Those filters!

Story is a mess Teases one genre then veers into another.

A ragged, befuddling palimpsest comprised of shavings from no fewer than three pre-existing films, all shuffled together within a framework of "new" scenes(added, I suppose, to bring some degree of cohesion to the amalgamated mess at hand). Success? ....ehh....hardly. In fact, watching this crudely stitched patchwork is like staring at one of those damn squiggly-dot pictures...eventually, you might catch a fleeting image of a snow-boarder or something, but was it really worth the headache in the end?

Well, there actually is a narrative of sorts knotted up within this argy-bargy. It seems that Earth is facing a vampire plague, so a spaceship of scientists is sent to the planet from which they originate. It's also inhabited by various other predatory monstrosities, as well as a tribe of peaceful cave-people. The bizarre atmospheric conditions of this planet result in garish uniform color saturation which shifts randomly from blue to red to green and so forth(a specious means of presenting B/W footage "in color"). During a scene inside the spaceship, one of the intrepid astronauts peers into a periscope-type of device. The view presents a grid with marked north, south, east, and west coordinates. I'm certainly no science wiz, but don't those points of direction become "lost" once you have left the Earth? Hmmm...whatever.

John Carradine is in this flick. A little bit. He looks sort of embarrassed. He knows damn well that this is a petrified turd of a film, but as the patron saint of undiscriminating "any old thing for a paycheck" movie stars, he sails through the muck like an old pro. He would have stripped to a thong at your bachelorette party for fifty bucks. I guarantee it.

2.5/10.