Phonearl Good start, but then it gets ruined

Contentar Best movie of this year hands down!

Tayyab Torres Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

Stephanie There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

JoeB131 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.

bensonmum2 Peter Cushing was really amazing. Regardless of the movie, he's an absolute joy to watch work. In The Blood Beast Terror (which I understand Cushing considered one of his worst movies if not the absolute worst), Cushing does a tremendous job given the film's ridiculous premise. I hate to use the word silly when describing a plot but that's just what the storyline in The Blood Beast Terror is – silly. Cushing plays Detective Quennell, an inspector hot on the trail of vicious killer. But this is no ordinary killer Quennell's hunting. His target is a flying creature that sucks the blood from its prey. Can Quennell catch the creature before his daughter becomes the next victim? So, what's Quennell chasing? Get ready for this – he's chasing a giant moth. That's right, a giant were-moth! That's really what we have here – a were-moth. I told you it was silly. I can't imagine the thought process that went into creating the idea of a human transforming into a moth. And how do you pitch that one to the studio? No wonder The Blood Beast Terror was made by little Tigon and not Hammer or Amicus. In addition, the special effects add nothing to already ridiculous goings on. It's obvious the filmmakers' ideas far outstripped their budget given the thankfully brief appearance of the ludicrous looking were-moth. The thing looks so . . . silly (there's that word again). Add to that a complete lack of mystery, some dodgy acting from a couple of the cast members (Vanessa Howard in particular), and misplaced music queues throughout, and you've got yourself one pretty bad movie.But as bad as it is (and trust me, it's bad), Peter Cushing is always worth watching. The man could do more in a scene by himself than a roomful of other less talented actors. He was a truly great actor and one of the best the horror genre has ever seen. Also on the plus side are the very authentic looking locations, costumes, sets, and props. The movie might not be very good, but much of it is very interesting to look at. Finally, I got a real kick out of seeing a very young David Griffin's efforts in The Blood Beast Terror. I really enjoy his later work as Emmet in the very British sitcom, Keeping Up Appearances.

Michael_Elliott Blood Beast Terror, The (1967) ** (out of 4) Six bodies are found with their blood drained so Inspector Quennell (Peter Cushing) is called in. Once the investigation gets going it becomes clear that the attacks are being made by a huge moth like creature. This is one of those films that I had heard a lot about but ended up disappointed with after viewing it. I think whe you really boil it down this is nothing more than a remake of Monogram's The Devil Bat, which had Bela Lugosi. The two films share a lot of familiar things but the big difference is that this one runs nearly thirty-minutes longer. The extra running time just adds a lot of dialogue sequences, which are all rather bland and boring. I'm really not sure what's up with certain British films but this is one that just keeps on talking and talking. Cushing is a great actor but even he seems to be bored with this thing.

James Hitchcock Horror films were a major feature of the British cinema in the sixties and seventies, largely because such matter could not be seen on television, the broadcasting companies regarding it as being unfit for family viewing. Even a novelty song as innocuous as Bobby Pickett's "Monster Mash" was blacklisted by the BBC for more than a decade because of its allegedly "morbid" subject-matter. (When the ban was finally lifted in 1973 the song went to No. 3 in the charts, providing Pickett with an unexpected British hit).The best-known British horror film studio was, of course, Hammer Film Productions. Tigon British Film Productions were less-known than their rivals but did make two of the most notable British horror films of the sixties, "The Sorcerers" and "Witchfinder General", both directed by Michael Reeves. "The Blood Beast Terror", however, is not a film in the same class.The film starts out as a Sherlock Holmes-type murder mystery. It stars Peter Cushing, who had played Holmes himself in the 1959 version of "The Hound of the Baskervilles" and in a BBC television series. The setting is somewhere in England, some time in the late Victorian period. Inspector Quennell, a Scotland Yard detective, is sent to investigate a series of grisly murders in the English countryside. All the victims are young men, and all have had their throats torn open and their blood drained.Quennell begins to suspect that the killer may be some sort of creature rather than a human being, and his investigations centre upon a country mansion named Clare House, the home of a renowned entomologist named Dr Carl Mallinger. Eventually the bizarre truth emerges. Mallinger, it transpires, has been conducting a series of experiments to breed a gigantic carnivorous moth, which has been killing the victims to feed on their blood. The moth also has the strange property (and I am not making this up) of being able to transform itself into an attractive young woman, whom Mallinger passes off as his daughter, Clare.During the 1950s the science-fiction and horror genres gained an unenviable reputation for bad acting, nonsensical plots and cheap and unconvincing special effects. At this period it was America that was responsible for most of the worst offenders, Ed Wood's "Plan 9 from Outer Space" being the most widely cited example, although there were many others. The British film industry was a slow starter in this regard, but by the sixties it was catching up and we Brits could soon proudly boast that we could make horror films every bit as bad as those produced by our transatlantic cousins."The Blood Beast Terror" must surely be Britain's strongest gold medal contender in the Official Rubbish Horror Film Olympics. Cushing counted it as the worst of the many films he appeared in (and, let's face it, he appeared in some shockers). This one ticks all the requirements of the genre. Stupid plot- tick. No rational explanation is ever given as to why Mallinger should want to breed gigantic bloodsucking moths; the only explanation needed is that he is a scientist and scientists in this type of movie are, by definition, mad. Wooden acting- tick. Wanda Ventham as Clare is particularly deficient in this respect. Inane dialogue- tick. And (most important of all) bad special effects- tick, tick, tick. We only get to see brief glimpses of Clare in her moth form, but what we do see is enough to convince us that Mallinger has not only created a monster, he has created one of the most ludicrously unconvincing monsters of all time. The special effects budget must have run to about half-a-crown at the most. All these achievements suggest that "The Blood Beast Terror" has a strong claim to be regarded as the worst-ever British horror film- indeed, as the worst-ever British film, full stop. It is only the second film in more than 500 I have reviewed that I have awarded the minimum mark. 1/10.