HORROR OF THE BLOOD MONSTERS (1970) * ½

 

Here’s another archival review of an Al Adamson movie from my old site, originally posted on April 15, 2010.  (Tax Day.  Bummer.)

HORROR OF THE BLOOD MONSTERS  (1970)  * ½

A bunch of vampires attack a mess of people then the plot begins.  A team of astronauts travel to a prehistoric planet complete with different colored atmosphere and stock footage from other movies.  On their journey, the team finds feuding clans of cavemen; some of which happen to be vampires.  One hot cavegirl eventually makes friends with the astronauts and leads them to a pit of petroleum so they can gas up their rocket and go home.

So basically, it’s Dracula Meets Women of the Prehistoric Planet.

If Horror of the Blood Monsters doesn’t make one lick of sense, it’s because it was directed by Al (The Possession of Nurse Sherri) Adamson.  Actually, it was only partially directed by him since he just added new footage to a cheap-o Filipino caveman flick and tried to pass it off as the world’s first Sci-Fi Vampire Caveman Movie. 

If you haven’t already guessed, most of Horror of the Blood Monsters is just plain awful.  It does however have a couple moments that are so bad that they make you chuckle.  For example, one of the cavemen’s names is “Dookie”.  How funny is that?  You can also have fun spotting just how many movies get ripped off during the course of the film.  The color changing planet is kinda like the one from The Angry Red Planet; except there are more colors.  There’s also a couple who fuck with the help of a glowing machine that’s similar to the one in Barbarella.  What they have to do with the plot is anyone’s guess. 

The flick also has a couple of marginally well-done monsters too.  There are some big bug men that aren’t too shabby and the way they made the Bat People appear to fly was sorta clever.  The gore is pretty much non-existent but there are a couple of fairly decent arrow shots, including one to the head.  (All of this comes from the Filipino movie-within-a-movie by the way.)

Yeah, Horror of the Blood Monsters has some neat stuff sprinkled throughout.  The problem is that you have to sit through a LOT of boring shit to get to it.  On top of that, everyone in the cast is terrible.  The lone exception is an especially cranky looking John Carradine.  I wonder why he looks so pissed off in this movie.  Oh yeah, that’s right, he read the script.  Say what you will about Horror of the Blood Monsters though, it’s the best Sci-Fi Vampire Caveman Movie I’ve ever seen; so, it’s got that going for it.

AKA:  Blood Creatures from the Prehistoric Planet.  AKA:  Creatures of the Prehistoric Planet.  AKA:  Creatures of the Red Planet.  AKA:  Space Mission to the Lost Planet.  AKA:  Vampire Men of the Lost Planet.

How could I possibly follow up that fine bit of decade-old film criticism?  Okay, well, I guess I have to write SOMETHING.  So, here goes:

This was the tenth film on the Al Adamson box set.  It is the FIFTH one that has the word “Blood” or “Bloody” in the title, after Blood of Ghastly Horror, Blood of Dracula’s Castle, Hell’s Bloody Devils, and Five Bloody Graves.  The man obviously had a limited word bank when it came to titles, but that’s just one of the reasons why old Al is such an icon around these parts:  The man knew what the audience wanted to see, and they wanted BLOOD.  In fact, this won’t be the last Adamson movie with the word “Blood” in the title on this box set.  That distinction belongs to Brain of Blood, which I should be watching very soon.

I like the random opening with vampires sporting phony fangs (including Adamson himself) stalking unsuspecting victims.  The narration tries to tie it together with the space exploration plot and does it so poorly that it almost feels like you’re watching an anthology.  The spaceship scenes are slightly worse, but still sort of watchable in a “I can’t believe they’re making a ‘50s Sci-Fi movie in the ‘70s” way.  The longest part is the middle section where the astronauts walk along the planet’s surface and watch a bunch of tinted footage from a Filipino caveman flick.  

I’m not much of the fan of the space-set scenes, although I kind of love seeing an extremely crotchety John Carradine barking orders, acting annoyed, and generally being a big whiny ass grouch.  You take what you can get when you’ve sat through ten bad Al Adamson movies in two weeks. 

Speaking of which, I wonder if anyone’s noticed the way I compliment Adamson’s cut-and-paste directorial style of taking old material and incorporating new material to make a new product by cutting and pasting together new reviews from the scraps of my old ones?  Probably not.  Then again, what better way to honor a director who made a career off repackaged movies than with a bunch of repackaged reviews?