This ’50s cult monster double bill was produced by the Corman brothers Roger and Gene. The first re-plays ideas from several Sci-fi classics on a shoestring budget, and squeaks by with a novel wrinkle of its own. Using some of the same crew and actors, the second item is even cheaper. It hasn’t a single original idea, yet occupies a proud roost in cult circles owing to the opportune casting of hottie Yvette Vickers. That there Liz Walker would still be steamin’ up the swamp, if them consarned scum-Leeches hadn’t-a sucked up all her fine bayou blood. Durn pests. The extras include full commentary coverage by Tom Weaver.

Night of the Blood Beast + Attack of the Giant Leeches
Blu-ray
Film Masters
1958-59 / B&W / Street Date November 12, 2024 / Available from Film Masters / 29.95
Starring: Michael Emmet, Angela Greene, Ed Nelson; Ken Clark, Yvette Vickers, Bruno Ve Sota, Jan Shepard, Tyler McVey.
Cinematography: John M. Nickolaus Jr.
Art Director: Daniel Haller
Original Music: Alexander Laszlo
Screenplay by Leo Gordon; Martin Varno
Produced by Gene Corman
Directed by Bernard L. Kowalski

By the end of the 1950s, fantastic monster movies had been thoroughly publicized as one more crazy aspect of the Teenage Wave that had taken over America, along with Rock ‘n’ Roll, hot rods and juvenile delinquency. Kids had money to spend and movies were their most accessible weekend entertainment. The popular ‘drive-in’ movie craze of those years, was a clear case of ambitious independent filmmakers filling a need that the established studios were slow to recognize. But they did catch up.

By 1959 the winning marketing formula initiated by Roger Corman and American-International was coming to an end. Screens were flooded with cheap exploitation double bills, and their popularity was starting to become more of a rural phenom — mainstream Hollywood was making similar films, often with name stars. One of them, Fox’s  The Fly, was a major hit.

One reason Roger Corman made so many ’50s pictures so quickly, is that he could sense that the gold rush wouldn’t last forever. He personally directed as many as 7 pictures a year, while producing several others, with or without his name on them. He made his pictures for more than one studio, partnered with other independents, and started his own distribution company, The Filmgroup. He also teamed with his brother Gene Corman for several pictures, playing executive producer but taking a hands-on role where he could.

Corman increased production efficiency by shooting films in pairs, keeping on crew and cast members as needed. Shot back to back in the Los Angeles area, Night of the Blood Beast and Attack of the Giant Leeches were sold to A.I.P.. The initial runs were brief, but they bounced back on the lower half of double bills for years, while establishing themselves as permanent residents on late-nite TV syndication. Each barely an hour in duration, the films were stretched to fill 90-minute time slots. They were often carved up into 6-minute pieces sandwiched between car dealership ads.

You’d tune into one of these things at midnight, but if you were sleepy the commercials made it impossible to follow the story. At some point you’d start to snooze and then be jolted awake by a commercial, always broadcast at a higher volume: “GO SEE CAL GO SEE CAL GO SEE CAL!” We never found out how some of these pictures ended. Were they any good?

Collectors love to see these pictures restored on disc, sourced from theatrical film elements instead of the murky 16mm prints that found their way onto graymarket tapes and discs. Film Masters has been giving us snappy double-bill remasters and reconstructions of this gray-area genre of movie exploitation, sometimes from found original printing masters, and sometimes from what they call ‘the best available elements.’  The evaluation section below tries to sort out what we’re seeing in this Gene & Roger Corman monster duo.

Night of the Blood Beast
1958 / 1:85 widescreen + 1:37 Academy / 61 min.
Starring: Michael Emmet, Angela Greene, John Baer, Ed Nelson, Tyler McVey, Georgianna Carter, Ross Sturlin.
Cinematography: John M. Nickolaus Jr.
Art Director: Daniel Haller
Film Editor: Jodie Copelan
Original Music: Alexander Laszlo
Screenplay by Martin Varno
Executive Producer: Roger Corman
Produced by Gene Corman
Directed by Bernard L. Kowalski

This ambitious attraction was sold as a horror film, with the image of a giant hairy claw-hand hefting a decaptitated human head. The movie’s synopsis promises a Sci-fi monster mash, featuring an experimental manned space launch, the recovery of a crashed spaceship, a high-tech space science lab, a revived astronaut and a space monster that incubates its offspring inside the astronaut’s body, as do some insects.

Night of the Blood Beast instead delivers a micro-budgeted thriller with enthused performances but little production value. Unexplained phenomena isolate the space science lab, supposedly in Florida but in a hilly, dry area — Griffith Park and a TV station building immediately above the Hollywood Sign. Corman’s faithful designer Daniel Haller fabricated a section of wrecked space capsule small enough to carry in a pickup truck. The shapeless alien monster was recycled from  another Corman film then still playing in theaters.

The story does have one very squeamish Sci-fi idea that had not yet been exploited on film. The presentation collapses in ‘microscope’ views visualized with pitiful fake animation.  ←  Astronaut John Corcoran (Michael Emmett) comes back from space with what look like cartoon seahorses crammed into his insides, via yet more fall-down funny cel animation. But he  isn’t singing this. (Sorry, it’s the influence of commentator Tom Weaver.)

A crash-landed astronaut infected by an alien lifeform?  It doesn’t take long for fans to realize that Blood Beast is constructed from off-the-shelf borrowings from earlier movies — not a capital crime in the realm of exploitation but not exactly ‘original screenplay’ material either. Naming the movies isn’t necessary — half of Blood Beast is a dinner theater replay of the Sci-fi classic in which a man is found slaughtered and hung up by his feet, soldiers use fire to fight a monster close-quarters, and a pleading scientist pushes a pacifist line of thought: “It’s a stranger in a strange world, the first of its kind to come here — we must let it communicate with us.’  Blood Beast opts to condemn the alien as Bad News, but not before several dialogues on the issue, including a one-on-one with the alien itself.

Alien monsters that ‘dialogue’ instead of act menacing can become something of a bore, even when the words are  written by Ray Bradbury. The lost teleplay of the original  The Quatermass Experiment reportedly ended with the infected, transformed astronaut talking to Quatermass and then voluntarily committing suicide. Blood Beast’s writer Martin Varno may have come up with his near-identical climax completely by accident.

Michael Emmet is just okay as Col. Corcoran. He, the capable  Ed Nelson, John Baer and Tyler McVey know how to vamp their way through rushed takes with minimal direction, and still give the impression of dramatic engagement. Angela Greene  (The Cosmic Man) needed more direction, as her character alternates between stoicism and fretting at inappropriate times. The ‘extra’ female presence Georgianna Carter is okay when given something to do, but spends too many scenes standing around like extra set dressing, wearing a neutral facial expression.

TV director Bernard L. Kowalski and cameraman John M. Nickolaus Jr. find some decent camera angles, and the shadowy lighting is a big asset as well. The exteriors make decent use of Griffith Park, while the climax plays out at the ubiquitous  Bronson Caverns. Movie fans in Iowa, Alabama, London and Rome surely felt familiar with the over-used location. The ledge from which the gun-toting scientists watch Corcoran and the alien is the same place where Touch Connors knifed Adele Jergens in  Day the World Ended; the steep incline they try to descend without falling down is the same path taken by Natalie Wood’s stunt double at the climax of  The Searchers.

The Corman brothers must have been impressed with Nickolaus’s speed — there is a LOT of coverage of the final scene, with lens changes and some good angles apparently filmed from atop a truck. The show barely makes the grade as matinee fodder, something suitable for monster addicts only. The trade papers found it an exploitable novelty, one that gave reviewers the opportunity to joke about ‘a pregnant man.’

Attack of the Giant Leeches
1959 / 1:85 widescreen / The Giant Leeches / 62 min.
Starring: Ken Clark, Yvette Vickers, Jan Shepard, Michael Emmet, Tyler McVey, Bruno VeSota, Gene Roth, Daniel White, George Cisar, Ross Sturlin.
Cinematography: John M. Nickolaus Jr.
Art Director: Daniel Haller
Production Secretary: Kinta Zertuche
Film Editor: Carlo Lodato
Original Music: Alexander Laszlo
Screenplay by Leo Gordon
Executive Producer: Roger Corman
Produced by Gene Corman
Directed by Bernard L. Kowalski

Filmed second and reportedly held up several months before A.I.P. found a slot for it on the release schedule,  Attack of the Giant Leeches is an efficient but threadbare production that must pad its footage to fill out a 62-minute time slot. Bernard Kowalski and cinematographer John M. Nickolaus Jr. are back, along with Tyler McVey and Michael Emmet. What qualifies Leeches as a bona fide cult item is the presence of starlet Yvette Vickers, who had just heated up movie screens as Honey Parker in the fan favorite  Attack of the 50 Foot Woman.

Yvette Vickers is here half the show, working up a hotsy act worthy of Erskine Caldwell’s  God’s Little Acre. Vickers’ Liz has three scenes tormenting her unhappy Okeefenokee hubby Dave Walker (Bruno VeSota), an emasculated loser who runs a little swamp trading post. Dave’s friends all know that Liz is making time with local loafer Cal Moulton (Michael Emmet, again). Meanwhile, a second story thread concerns Steve Benton (Ken Clark), the Dudley Do-Right of wildlife wardens. When unsubstantiated reports of swamp denizens attacked by monsters come in, the ecology-conscious Steve refuses to use dynamite in the waterways. His girlfriend Nan Greyson (Jan Shepard) and her scientist father Doc (Tyler McVey, again) complain, but Steve sticks to his conservationist ideals. Good goin’, Steve-O.

The lustful Liz and the pitiful Dave make their exit a little after the halfway mark, leaving the balance of the film to chart a dull monster hunt in the swamp. The monster leeches look better than the Glad Bag trash bags derided in countless reviews, but not that much better. We shake our heads when we think of the elaborate, expressive Slime Man monster suits fabricated for a later Z-Picture, a genuine  backyard production.

A great deal of the show is filmed quite effectively in the Los Angeles County Arboretum & Botanic Garden, in Arcadia. The location was almost as busy as Bronson Caverns around this time. The actors’ willingness to jump into the cold water proves how badly Hollywood aspirants wanted to be in the movies. The glamor factor decreases when one is asked to perform in dank pools of slime, and the direction is to ‘look alluring, Yvette.’

Giant Leeches’ enduring reputation rests on the fun-sleazy aura of Yvette Vickers — when she and Cal make out in the swamp, the embrace is horizontal. Even in juvie delinquent epics, lovers usually smooched sitting upright in their hot rods. In reality, the teens at drive-ins showing fare like Blood Beast would likely repair to the back seat, where no annoying gear shift would get in the way.  ^*

Vickers’ sensual spell gets a workout in Giant Leeches’ mildly transgressive Leech Grotto scene. Five or six unlucky Leech victims are strewn about in the underwater cave, covered with sucker welts and blood smears — they’re limp and torpid, barely alive. They weakly groan and writhe in slo-motion, as the big galumphing leeches keep coming back for snacks.

The grotto is surprisingly effective, with camerawork that shows some style. Slurping, bubbling sound effects and insistent music combine to cap off the film’s one nightmarish thrill: the grotto resembles a bad-trip Opium Den, the aftermath of a backwoods orgy, or a small-scale Dante’s Inferno. By mainstream standards, the whole setup is also in rotten taste. But as yet there is no Leech Defense League to stand up for defamed freshwater parasites.

Despite decent performances most of the dialogue scenes are a bore after VeSota and Vickers make their exit. Handsome Ken Clark would soon go to Italy and spend a decade in various genre pix, including one of Mario Bava’s dreadful westerns. His nature warden is decent enough, but Gene Roth’s sheriff gets the task of dispensing dull exposition. Attack of the Giant Leeches hangs together, and never lapses into outright incompetence. But it lacks Roger’s dramatic sense or Charles B. Griffith’s sense of ironic humor.

Bernard Kowalski’s camera direction uses the same gag with almost every scene: shots begin on some object or detail, and tilt up or pan over to frame the scene. Either that, or the scene will finish by finding some object for the camera to settle on before the cut. If the shooting was so rushed that cameraman Nickolaus was left on his own to improvise, it’s possible he added these ‘scene buttons’ to his coverage on the fly. The trick makes the film seem even more predictable, even as it keeps the camera active.

Fans seeking more opportunities to glom the spirited Yvette Vickers shouldn’t forget her one appearance in a major, high-class studio film: she has an excellent supporting part in the Paul Newman semi-classic  Hud, as the motel tramp ‘Lily Peters.’ Nobody could have played it better.

The new Blu-ray of Night of the Blood Beast + Attack of the Giant Leeches is another in Film Masters’ desirable double bill packages, with one featured title and a second listed as an extra. The ‘extra’ movie has often been just as desirable.

Both of these Corman Bros. shows are cult ’50s items that collectors will snap up. For the first time some caveats are necessary. Both titles appear to be in the Public Domain, which in this case means they are not held in the library of a studio or other entity that might have maintained them properly. Both transfers appear to come from positive projection prints. Today’s scanning technology and digital tools can do wonders with a mostly-undamaged 35mm projection print.

Night of the Blood Beast comes from a quality 35mm print that had problems. Instances of film shrinkage are digitally stabilized, and only a few shots still seem affected. Likewise, once or twice we see a bit of surface mottling that could only be cleaned up part-way. Some very good digital work has eliminated emulsion gouges that hover about in a scene or two, chattering right in the middle of the frame. The digital hocus pocus to accomplish this does have one odd effect — in a few shots, an actor’s chin will look slightly out of focus for a few moments.

The thing that really hurts Blood Beast are frequent and persistent missing frames. The digital clean-up removes splice marks and film jumps, but the action skips every time. If the remaster effort had access to two imperfect release prints, when a frame or three was missing, it could just be accessed from the alternate print. Stuck with the one rare print, their only choice would be to source missing frames from a 16mm copy, which would likely be just as distracting. Luckily, the missing frames appear to interrupt dialogue only once.

Film Masters’ presentation looks very good most of the time, and many viewers won’t be bothered by the slight action jumps here and there. The disc will still appeal to collectors that want an upgrade on a ‘best available’ version. It is a huge improvement on the old Retromedia DVD, which was borderline unwatchable. We’re also aware that the double bill disc is still a bargain. Other companies put out cult titles as single-feature offerings, at the same price point.

The new remaster of Attack of the Giant Leeches is a slightly different story. This reviewer has never seen the whole show all the way through because no reasonable copies ever surfaced. They were misframed, soft and often very dark. The print source here seems to be intact — I only noticed one or two frame jumps (maybe) in the whole picture. But the basic print source for Leeches isn’t quite as good. Film Masters doesn’t proclaim it as a ’35mm Archival Element,’ which to me says that the source was a high-quality 16mm print. The image isn’t quite as sharp and the density varies throughout. The night prologue is too dark, while some of the trading post scenes feel too light. Never fear, the Leech Grotto scenes that so please Tom Weaver look great, peachy-keen.  ^**

Bottom Line: I’ve been blunt with the drawbacks, but both shows played more vividly than I’ve seen them before. In good HD and widescreen, we’re able to fairly evaluate the cinematography, the special props and monster costumes (better with Blood Beast) and come away with a feeling for how each show would have played at the drive-in.

Giant Leeches is only offered in its original 1:85 widescreen, but Blood Beast is given both 1:85 and a second flat transfer, a generous gift to fans who want the ’60s TV experience.

Film Masters’ extras strategy was to throw Tom Weaver at the problem. Although Tom can show impatience with monster pix he feels are dull, this pair amuses him. He shares his key interview material from producer Gene Corman, director Bernard (Bernie) Kowalski, and star Yvette Vickers, with whom he exchanged notes and phone calls for years. Tom’s two audio commentaries are a good listen. He goes easy on the corny jokes (a couple of which do land) and brings up relevant material on every aspect of the two ‘Balboa’ productions. Tom has opinions on the show’s cinematography, and points out that Alexander Laszlo’s identical title music is used on these two films plus a third released the same year. Quotes taken from Tom’s library of text interviews are given dramatic readings by his cohorts, the Mighty Weaver Art Players.

Weaver doesn’t sanitize his interviews, resulting in screenwriter Martin Varno coming off as a malcontent, railing against perceived unfair treatment by the Cormans. Varno won a judgment against them through the Guilds, just as changing Guild rules made movies like these financially less viable. CineSavant reviews often remark on Roger Corman’s legendary cheapness, but we’ve yet to hear anyone claim that he reneged on a deal. He was upfront about money and reportedly followed through with every dime promised.

Weaver also gets a little rough with Yvette Vickers, who became seriously unstable and something of a chore to deal with. Having participated on my share of interviews with unreasonable actors, I can understand that Ms. Vickers could be a problem. Weaver ended up corresponding with the neighbor who discovered Yvette’s body months after her death. The facts are brutal, and Weaver doesn’t sugarcoat them. He likely could turn his experiences with Vickers and Susan Cabot into a scary book about Unlucky Hollywood Starlets.

C. Courtney Joyner provides a long talk about director Kowalski, covering a career that found a lot of success in television. A restoration comparison shows the damaged bits of Night of the Blood Beast described above, patched up with digital tools. The trailers have been reconstituted using the better film transfer, and MST3K episodes for both movies are included. The episode for Blood Beast also screens what must have been an expensive industrial short subject, a part-musical fluff piece directed by Gower Champion. The source was a 16mm print but the original was 35mm. With a ‘scope stripe taken out of the middle, it was originally screened in Superscope 35; i.e., Super 35.

The illustrated insert pamphlet prints excerpts from Tom Weaver interview books, material also covered in the commentaries.

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Night of the Blood Beast + Attack of the Giant Leeches
Blu-ray rates:
Movies: Blood Beast Good -minus, Leeches Fair ++
Video: Good –
Sound: Good
Supplements:
Audio commentaries for both features by Tom Weaver
Reconstructed Trailers
MST3K parody episodes
8mm digest version on Blood Beast
Blood Beast restoration comparison
27-min documentary Born from T.V. on director Bernard Kowalski on Leeches
Yvette Vickers photo slideshow
24-page illustrated pamphlet with liner notes by Tom Weaver.
Deaf and Hearing-impaired Friendly? YES; Subtitles: English (feature only)
Packaging: One Blu-ray in Keep case
Reviewed: November 3, 2024
(7221bloo)

^*  Several times we are told that the local swamp is overrun with ravenous alligators. Our network news likes to show shocking video of Florida ‘gators loitering near golf courses and marina homesites, ambushing doggies (and some of their owners) and dragging them into the water, yum yum. That makes it seem rather risky for Cal and Liz to be making out in the middle of GatorVille, four feet from the water’s edge.
On the other hand, Giant Leeches also inspires us to fantasize about dreadful wildlife encounters on the Mar-El-Lago golf course.
^**  Peachy Keen: sophisticated reviewer jargon.

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