Blood Beach (1981) The Jerry Gross Organization/Horror RT: 92 minutes Rated R (violence including attempted rape, brief nudity, language) Director: Jeffrey Bloom Screenplay: Jeffrey Bloom Music: Gil Melle Cinematography: Steve Poster Release Date: January 28, 1981 (US) Cast: David Huffman, Marianna Hill, John Saxon, Burt Young, Otis Young, Stefan Gierasch, Darrell Fetty, Lynne Marta, Eleanor Zee, Lena Pousette, Pamela McMyler, Harriet Medin, Mickey Fox, Laura Burkett, Bobby Bass, Mary Jo Catlett, Ian Abercrombie. Box Office: $2M (US)
Rating: **
Despite its great title, Blood Beach is a really bad movie. My two-star rating is based solely on the poster’s cool tagline:
“Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water… you can’t get to it!”
The poster shows an attractive young woman screaming as she’s pulled under the sand by… well, I’m not exactly sure what. It’s some kind of monster that lives beneath the beach. That much is clear, but the filmmakers don’t tell us much of anything about it. What is it? Where did it come from? Has it always been there? We don’t even get a good look at the creature and when it comes to monster movies, that’s not good.
The poor and grainy film quality doesn’t help matters any. It’s the kind of B-horror movie that has little more than a great title and poster to recommend watching it. In fact, the girl who appears on the poster NEVER shows up in the movie. It’s exploitation movie-making at its finest and I’m not going to fault the producers for it. Movies like this depend on an eye-catching ad campaign and Blood Beach definitely has that.
I find myself wondering if it would have been any better had I seen it in a theater full of horror movie junkies. It came out about a month after I turned 13 and I wanted to see it badly, but I just couldn’t talk the parental units into granting permission for this obvious cinematic classic. Oddly enough, they allowed me to see The Final Conflict about two months later.
The movie opens with a middle-aged woman getting sucked under the sand. Since the only witness is her little dog, nobody knows what to make of the disappearance and assumes that she must have drowned. It baffles the hell out of Harry Caulder (Huffman, Firefox) of the Santa Monica Beach Patrol and it gets worse when others start disappearing from the beach.
The daughter of the missing woman, Catherine (Hill, High Plains Drifter), returns from San Francisco and resumes her old romantic relationship with Harry. When a teenage girl gets attacked while she’s buried in the sand, it becomes obvious that they’re not dealing with some random maniac. There’s something under the sand and the town council doesn’t want to hear it.
In a scene right out of Jaws 2, Captain Pearson (Saxon, A Nightmare on Elm Street) of the Los Angeles Police Department flips out on the town leaders when they refuse to provide funds to help him with this bizarre investigation. At one point, the monster “disarms” a rapist leading to more crude remarks from the uncouth Sgt. Royko (Young, Rocky I-IV), a transfer from Chicago. He’s a constant embarrassment to the department with his crude and often insensitive comments as he works the case. He becomes a target in the movie’s only funny scene when some local kids throw a hot dog at him after informing him that they found the rapist’s weiner.
It all culminates in a huge explosion as the local authorities make a last-ditch effort to eliminate the monster once and for all. But is it really over? You’ve seen movies like this before. What do you think? Here’s a hint: exploitation studios love the possibility of sequels if their movie is a hit.
Blood Beach might take place on Venice Beach, but it’s nothing like the Venice Beach you’ve seen in other movies. It’s a filthy and seedy place that makes Wildwood look like a beautiful paradise. Homeless people wander around, criminals lurk about and the businesses all look rather shabby. I can’t imagine anybody wanting to vacation in such a place, but since the local economy apparently depends on the tourist trade, somebody must like it there.
I guess it’s the ideal location for a shabby horror flick like this. Blood Beach looks like it was made for $14, most of which was spent on the rubber monster under the sand. But since the viewer doesn’t get a good look at the creature, it’s really impossible to say whether or not the $14 was well spent. It lives in a cavern and it’s so murky that I’m surprised the actors weren’t tripping over everything.
For a movie with the word blood in the title, there’s really not that much blood. A drizzle here and a few drops there, nothing for gorehounds to get excited about. The movie has the usual terrible acting and stupid dialogue, not to mention idiotic characters that do everything that one shouldn’t do in a situation like this. One person goes wandering around in the cavern alone and unless they sprayed themselves with monster repellent, it’s a phenomenally bad idea!
Blood Beach is as dumb as any other B-movie in the horror genre and that, in and of itself, isn’t really a bad thing. The fact that it’s a badly made movie is another matter entirely. It just isn’t worth the bother. Let me put it another way: look at the poster and leave it at that. It’s the best part of the experience anyway.
