What a waste of my time!!!

Am I Missing Something?

It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

Despite the presence of (Sir) Peter Cushing - a Hammer legend with an iconic screen persona - this film is truly lamentable. 'The Blood Beast Terror' may have alliterative power but it certainly doesn't possess terror. From the faux genetic science in the clichéd vein of 'tampering with Nature (God's grand design)' to the pace less plotting and hammy acting; to the flimsy sets and appalling special effects, what the audience is ultimately subjected to is a film devoid of atmosphere, tension or 'scares'. And before I am accused of not placing the film into any kind of historical context, there are plenty of British and Non-British thrillers/horror films made during this period which do accomplish thrills and spills, even if purely on a psychological level: Alfred Hitchcock's 'Psycho' (1960) and Robert Wise's 'The Haunting' (1963), for instance, or Polanski's 'Repulsion' (1966). Notably, Polanski returns again with 'Rosemary's Baby' in the same year as 'The Blood Beast Terror' and, again in the same year, the horror film is transformed by the sub-genre defining 'Night of the Living Dead' - with George A. Romero showing us seminally how horror truly acts as social commentary. My advice is stick to films which take the idea of genre filmmaking seriously - including those films which push the boundaries, like 'Repulsion'.

There- I said it. Moth chicks! Okay, the plot is that a crazy Victorian Scientist manages to create a giant moth who also happens to be a vampire and a shape-shifter, capable of luring men to their doom. Peter Cushing plays a detective assigned to the case, and to give the poor man credit, he does his best with some dreadful material.A couple of the actors were so exaggerated in their performances you'd think they had escaped from the Monty Python set. (Seriously, the morgue attendant looked like he could have been played by Eric Idle.) Overall, the film quality is poor, the plot is jumpy and not at all streamlined. (The whole purpose is to create a boy moth, but the think was apparently made of kindling and went up like a match). After all the fretting, the lady moth (a truly lame special effect) burns to death after being lured into a flame. Gee, sorry, monster movies where the monster is killed easily aren't very impressive.

This Hammer wannabe manages to capture the look of that studio's output, but fails miserably to match it in the storyline and effects departments, leaving us with a pale imitation that only occasionally manages to grab the viewer's attention.Robert Flemyng plays Dr Carl Mallinger, a borderline-mad scientist with two problems on his hands: people keep entering his lab without knocking which annoys him no end, and his daughter (Wanda Ventham) keeps turning into a giant moth and draining the blood of the neighbourhood's strapping young bucks. These killings attract the attention of Detective Inspector Helsing, er, Quennell (Peter Cushing) who quickly suspects the doctor of foul deeds.The film opens with a shot of a young explorer type in darkest Africa collecting samples of a giant moth. The scenes of darkest Africa look not unlike scenes of deepest Hertfordshire on a not-very-warm day, spliced with shots of exotic jungle creatures basking in sunlight. Immediately, a sense of disquiet fell over me – not because I feared for the safety of our intrepid explorer but because I had already begun to suspect that once again I had stumbled upon yet another stinker.How right I was. What we have here is a kind of tepid cocktail of the main ingredients of the horror genre: vampirism, the creation of a mutant life-form, shape-changing, etc. Unfortunately the ingredients are cold and nobody involved in the film knew how to warm them up. The film's brief running time is padded out with such riveting moments as Cushing brushing cobwebs from his jacket after discovering a cellar full of human skeletons, then taking the jacket off to give it a jolly good shake before putting it back on. Incredibly, director Vernon Sewell devotes more time to this moment than he does to the eventual destruction of the creature. This destruction is especially lame, although – in the absence of any giant Rentokil strips – is entirely logical and predictable.Cushing and Flemyng try their best but are defeated by the shabbiness of the screenplay, while Wanda Ventham makes a rather dull femme fatale and Vanessa Howard proves to be an intensely irritating damsel in distress. At one point we see her chatting to Ventham's character and in the very next scene she is unconscious in the nearly-mad doc's lab having her blood drained. How did she get there? Your guess is as good as mine – the film doesn't bother to tell us.

While the concept works and Peter Cushing does his usual good job in the acting department the one thing I was really disappointed with was the fact we don't get to see much of the monster in monster form. I mean what's the point of having a monster the famous deaths head moth if you don't see his or hers back to see the skull on it. The only time you see it in monster form is in some kind of cocoon resting. Most of the movie it's in the background or in shadow. As I said before, the monster you don't see might be scarier but it's not as cool. To me, I think that phrase Hitchcock said became a lame excuse for movie makers to be cheap and lazy. You heard me, the monster you can't see might be scarier, but it's also cheap and lazier as well. The acting is wondering, the storyline works and even the fact that the monster is an overgrown butterfly works as well. But that whole monster thing is a real downer for me and for that and pretty much that alone I give it 5 STARS.