InjunNose Review of Blood of Ghastly Horror

Blood of Ghastly Horror (1967)

Films can be compelling for different reasons

[6/10 · 13 May 2015]

When you've reviewed a hundred or so movies, you find there really isn't much to say about the ones you love and that picking apart the ones you loathe is just tiresome. What remains interesting is how a film that isn't "good" in any objective sense can light a spark in your imagination. For me, "Blood of Ghastly Horror" (which I first saw as "Man with the Synthetic Brain" on cable TV in the 1980s) is one of those films. It's been noted elsewhere that "BGH" is a patchwork effort and that its seams are painfully visible, so I won't belabor that point. (It's true, of course, but has nothing to do with what fascinates me about this movie.) I will say that what I consider surprisingly profound about such a cheap drive-in horror flick crops up in both the "Psycho A-Go-Go" scenes shot in 1965 and the darker, grimier footage from 1972--which might or might not say something about the themes that preoccupied director Al Adamson over the years. Was he interested in Schopenhauer or Beckett? I have no idea, but there are two scenes in this film that touch on something other than the customary monster-menaces-pretty-girl fare of the genre. The first is the confrontation between Roy Morton and John Carradine. Morton's character was badly wounded in Vietnam, and Carradine's character--a doctor--performed a series of radical electrical experiments to rescue Morton from a vegetative state. He can walk and talk and feed himself again, but the experiments have also turned him into a homicidal maniac. "Who were you to play God with my life?!" Morton roars at Carradine (before killing him) in one of the most jarringly realistic exchanges of dialogue in any horror film. It's played totally straight, not for melodrama as it might be in a Frankenstein flick, and it works. The second scene doesn't arrive until the end of the movie, and it's more difficult to describe what makes it work, but I'll try. The 1972 footage looks dirty and low-rent even by Al Adamson standards, but in my opinion this worked to his advantage. As "BGH" winds down, Akro (Richard Smedley)--a reanimated corpse who performs strongarm duties for a mad scientist--learns that his days are numbered. All that remains of the formula which prevents him from decomposing are a few drops, and his master has just thrown the vial containing those drops against the wall in a fit of pique. Akro kills the scientist and then collapses, dragging himself across the floor in an attempt to lap up some of the formula. He knows it's futile, and yet...wouldn't any of us do the same thing in his place? Slowly, painfully, Akro reaches the wall against which the vial has shattered, extending his hand to catch what's left of the precious liquid. He brings his fingers to his lips, sucks at them, and dies. The scene plays out to the sound of Regina Carrol's despairing screams and a starkly urgent Harry Lubin cue (kettle drums and strings), and it's difficult for me to believe that Adamson didn't know precisely what he was doing when he staged it. These two bizarrely thoughtful moments won't be enough to make most viewers wade through what is undeniably a poor film. (Many would even argue that there is no deliberate philosophical reflection in these scenes, to which I would respond that such ruminations were turning up in unexpected quarters at the time "BGH" was made...even in hardcore porn films like "The Devil in Miss Jones".) Fair enough. But they've made me a compulsive watcher of "Blood of Ghastly Horror" for almost thirty years.