Blood Beach - Horror am Strand

This one had been on my wish-list ever since I saw a few fragments of it when I was a little kid. But being a sober guy, I wasn't expecting much of it. And that was a good thing . Basically where "Jaws" made the water an unsafe place, "Blood Beach" tries to do this for the beach. But "Blood Beach" is very much inferior to Spielberg's classic. Mainly because "Blood Beach" is rather slow and boring. "Jaws", at times, also wasn't all that about action & horror, more about the characters really, but it had a fine plot structure, good dialogues and decent acting to keep things going. But I shall not just dismiss "Blood Beach" as a bad B-monster movie (though it certainly isn't a good one). The main attraction amongst the cast is John Saxon, who is the best actor of the lot, injects a nice amount of sarcasm in his role and simply has the best lines of the movie. Then there's Burt Young, who's just great as Sergeant Royko, bragging about Chicago all the time, eating various sort of junk-food in almost every scene and referring to someone's brain as "vegetable soup". The music was pretty memorable too, with a dark cello theme and some jazzy saxophones. And the beach-monster was just too weird. It looked like a giant, dusty, plastic flower. But unfortunately it's only shown in a few shots when it emerges from the sand near the end. The shots over the end credits leave room for a sequel ("Blood Beach 2: The Offspring", would have been a very appropriate title, I believe), but that never happened. "Blood Beach" could have been a cult classic, but unfortunately the movie feels just a bit too mainstream (and too uneventful also) for it to be one.

It may not be great but, it's got John Saxon in it, it's got a bit of blood and hell, it's not any worse than all the rest of the flicks that had Blood in the title from this period. And it must have been at least a pain in the ass to do those "sinking in the sand" effects!

Maybe if they release this thing on DVD (why are most of the Vestron flicks still not out?), may be then it'll get at least the same attention and cult like favor that My Bloody Valentine and other such crap gets.

All in all, a drive-in classic. After all that's what it was made for!

See it and judge for yourself!

Blood Beach rocks, it has everything a Saturday night movies needs from a giant phallic monster to a scene where every few moments the mic drops into shot. A popcorn monster flick giving a unique angle on the Jaws theme. Some good gore FX and a good few jumpy moments elevate this one above the usual rubber monster crowd and the sand FX are actually deeply scary.

I have been keeping an eye out for this one for a while but have as yet not found a copy. It could keep you away from the seaside forever, Jaws will keep you out of the water but Blood Beach will put you back in the car and send you home.

Something beneath the title area is grabbing people and pulling them underground to their grisly deaths! Harry (David Huffman), a local security guard, is desperately trying to work on his love life amidst the mysterious disappearances.

For a 1980's horror film, BLOOD BEACH has a lot going for it: #1- It's an original idea, straying from the typical slasher formula of the era. #2- Much of the mayhem occurs in broad daylight, in front of witnesses. #3- It has John Saxon and Burt Young as hard-boiled cops! #4- It contains many classic scenes, like the "rapist dis-MEMBER-ment" and "big hat retrieval" sequences! This movie is creepy, gruesome, and very entertaining. It deserves to be rediscovered...

Yeah, this is pretty bad. None of the characters here are interesting or engaging. Horror icon John Saxon gives off a great performance (as expected) but it's nowhere near enough to carry the rest of the film.

The problem with an idea like this is that, if none of your characters are engaging, then you're pretty much guaranteed to be making a dud because once you've seen the first kill, you've basically seen them all. You can almost feel the screenwriter wondering if they should keep writing this thing around the halfway point or scrap it and move onto something else with a more broad-canvas possibility. The fact that said screenwriter decided he'd go as far as to direct this thing is surprising and a little gutsy.

I do love movies that are set on a beach, so I'll give this a generous 5/10 and say it's, at the very least, watchable for fans of Z-grade horror. A little pulpy cheese thrown into the mix could've done wonders for this flick. That, or they could've cut back on some of the swearing and tried the TV movie route. Either way, this flick took itself way too seriously and, as a result, it turned out to be pretty damn boring.

This was a multi-task watch for me. If I'd sat down and given this film my full, unbridled attention, I'd imagine I would've rated it much lower, generosity be damned.

What a great poster, though. I'm considering buying a print of it. It's a shame the film couldn't match its intensity.