I judge Corman movies by a different set of standards than I would a bigger budget effort such as "This Island Earth" or "The Day The Earth Stood Still" or even "Earth Vs The Flying Saucers". That's because this obviously sketchy 10-day wonder still has lots of rough edges and some of the seams are still leaking sawdust...but manages to entertain and amuse almost as well as those class "A" efforts.
As usual, the screenplay has a derivative but somewhat intriguing premise: a space vampire with a basilisk stare scouts for a fresh blood supply for his home planet and kills, oh, a bunch of people to keep himself going and to send samples back to his home planet. Not the stuff of Oscar winners, but enough to drive a perfectly watchable science fiction movie.
The cast is pretty good (in a "B" movie way), and they work really hard to make the ludicrous and stiff dialog work. Beverly Garland is always fun to watch (even in her early movies, she still has a lot of verve and moxie) and Paul Birch is perfectly cast for the part of the alien. He was born to wear wrap around sunglasses and act stiff and grumpy and vaguely menacing. (I've read that he hated working with Corman in this movie and actually quit before it was finished, making it necessary to use a stand-in double for some of the chase scenes.)
On the other hand...the "police department" is two people (except for a spear carrier who shows up on screen and is killed inside of 2 minutes), the "hospital" is obviously a sound stage with 2 doors, the "monster" is a tentacled umbrella/catcher's mitt thing, the plot makes no real sense (one scene with Dick Miller is obviously there strictly for laughs) and the action scenes looks as if they were shot in 10 minutes with a hand-held 8 millimeter.
Joe Queenan once made a movie (to prove it could be done by anyone), and he said at one point when it was near completion, it was a "movie" in the same sense that a hand typed manuscript with a crayon drawing of an Axe-murderer on the front was a "suspense novel". Well, that's what always comes to mind when I'm watching a Corman movie - the elements are there, but the polish and finish of a "real" movie are never put over the nuts and bolts to make it look like something you'd admire.
Still, they kept things moving and there was even a bit of thought and sympathy at the end.
As usual, the screenplay has a derivative but somewhat intriguing premise: a space vampire with a basilisk stare scouts for a fresh blood supply for his home planet and kills, oh, a bunch of people to keep himself going and to send samples back to his home planet. Not the stuff of Oscar winners, but enough to drive a perfectly watchable science fiction movie.
The cast is pretty good (in a "B" movie way), and they work really hard to make the ludicrous and stiff dialog work. Beverly Garland is always fun to watch (even in her early movies, she still has a lot of verve and moxie) and Paul Birch is perfectly cast for the part of the alien. He was born to wear wrap around sunglasses and act stiff and grumpy and vaguely menacing. (I've read that he hated working with Corman in this movie and actually quit before it was finished, making it necessary to use a stand-in double for some of the chase scenes.)
On the other hand...the "police department" is two people (except for a spear carrier who shows up on screen and is killed inside of 2 minutes), the "hospital" is obviously a sound stage with 2 doors, the "monster" is a tentacled umbrella/catcher's mitt thing, the plot makes no real sense (one scene with Dick Miller is obviously there strictly for laughs) and the action scenes looks as if they were shot in 10 minutes with a hand-held 8 millimeter.
Joe Queenan once made a movie (to prove it could be done by anyone), and he said at one point when it was near completion, it was a "movie" in the same sense that a hand typed manuscript with a crayon drawing of an Axe-murderer on the front was a "suspense novel". Well, that's what always comes to mind when I'm watching a Corman movie - the elements are there, but the polish and finish of a "real" movie are never put over the nuts and bolts to make it look like something you'd admire.
Still, they kept things moving and there was even a bit of thought and sympathy at the end.