Atomic_Brain Review of Blood of Ghastly Horror

Blood of Ghastly Horror (1967)

A Rose By Any Other Name Would Smell as Sweet...

[10/10 · 30 September 2020]

Blood of Ghastly Horror is a maniacal, schizophrenic mess of a movie which weaves in and out between tawdry strips of the West, the dismal and brutal world of cops and gangsters, plus an absurd mad doctor plot with the incredible John Carradine as said doctor. The Independent International Drive-In classics are always good for an incredible credits sequence, and Blood is no exception, offering animated psychedelic montage by Bob LeBar playing over Outer Limits music. And of course, what Adamson monstrosity would be complete without the obligatory red-herring, shot-silent prologue, here with a weird beast which attacks seedy types at midnight in the alley. Al Adamson's flicks are oddly disorienting and yet engaging at the same time, in other words, pure cinema: claustrophobic settings, stifling close-ups, bright color palettes within the cheesiest of settings, hastily scripted dialogue that only hits at coherency - and of course completely inchoate, even chaotic montage. As such, Blood of Ghastly Horror is more of a tone poem on the impotence of violence in modern society then a coherent and plausible melodrama. The cinematography is reckless and breathtaking, juggling unnerving close-ups, bad zooms and murky establishing shots in a style which might be dubbed "visceral hallucination". Also, there is the Adamson obsession with showcasing middle-age swingers in tawdry night-life scenarios. The entire first hour of the film is a flashback suffered by side-burned detective Tommy Kirk, one of Cinema's most skewed and odd actors. Another flashback features a long chase in the snow. Indeed, along the way, there are many boring, tangential flashbacks, but that's the late great, Al Adamson for you. Time is ever mercurial in the weird cinematic universe of Al Adamson, and narrative and aesthetic detours are inevitable and ubiquitous. The eventual monster looks like David McCallum with silly putty on his eye. In grand exploitation fashion, the film's title refers to absolutely nothing, purely a bit of ballyhoo poetry designed to lure in the paying suckers. And we paying suckers couldn't have been happier. Several other titles tacked onto this film gave it new life in several reincarnations over the years, but as they say, "a Rose by any other name would smell as sweet." According to producer Sam Sherman, there's a story behind why Blood of Ghastly Horror seems to be three or more different films coming from entirely different narrative universes, but the backstory meant nothing to those of us who were lucky enough to witness this strange and utterly bizarre film on the drive-in screen, and it should mean nothing to anyone who can enjoy what is surely, in retrospect, a shining example of commercial modern art at its most creative and rebellious, from a moment of creative freedom in cinema long, long gone.