Movie Info
Movie Name: Blood Beach
Studio: Compass International Pictures
Genre(s): Horror/B-Movie
Release Date(s): September 1980 (Deauville Film Festival)/January 28, 1981
MPAA Rating: R
Hey…over here…just dying…and my dog isn’t helping much
People are disappearing from the beaches of Southern California. What starts out as general missing people including the mother of Catherine Hutton (Marianna Hill) and the friend of Harry Caulder (David Huffman), turns into a dangerous situation when more and more victims begin being sucked into the sand. Sergeant Royko (Burt Young) and Captain Pearson (John Saxon) try to stop the people from panicking as they seek to uncover what is under the beach…hungry and unstoppable.
Directed by Jeffrey Bloom, Blood Beach is a horror B-Movie. The film initially premiered at the Deauville Film Festival in 1980 but was released in the United States in 1981. Due to repeated playing in the ’80s it did garner a fan base and is seen as a mild cult classic.
Well, that’s justice…who would have thought a plant sees irony
I feel like Blood Beach was on at least once a month when I grew up. Not having cable, you watched what you could and late night horror was often pretty limited. Blood Beach was kind of fun and watchable in a Humanoids from the Deep type of way.
Despite being the type of movie that should have been all about gratuitous nudity and gore, there is little nudity and gore in Blood Beach. The deaths aren’t very gruesome (but I will say that the rapist getting his due is pretty gross…but he does not die). The movie kind of plods in its predictable copying of Jaws. I wish that the movie had taken more of a grindhouse approach with some really gory effects and interesting camera work…instead all you pretty much get is little sand whirlpools and people screaming as they lay on the ground.
Oh no…a killer flower thing!
The creature also is extremely lacking. The movie’s very low budget is obvious by the dark and barely visible monster that resembles a plant…thing kind of like a large artichoke. Apparently it just sucks people down, but at the end there is never a big fight or much danger…just a big explosion and ominous credits which show that the creature multiplied…bringing about Blood Beach 2 (which never happened unfortunately).
Blood Beach is bad, but watchable. It doesn’t quite fall into the “so-bad-it-is-good” category, but it almost makes it. I can’t entirely hate a movie with such a great poster and a fun tag line of “Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water…you can’t get to it!”…dang, that is a good poster.
