Blood of the Beast (2003) User Reviews

The Romero Witch Project

[dmsesquire · 2/10 · 17 October 2004]

What can be said of this independent effort beyond the fact that it was shot with television cameras, and whether that was by conceit or budget constraints doesn't make the watching of this variation on a theme by Romero any easier. I was constantly reminded that I was watching somebody's school project, at best derivative, at worst cheap.

Writer/director Georg Koszulinski (who also appears in the film) does some interesting things with stock footage, but that says more about his editing style than his directing style, which consists of in-your-face close-ups with TV cameras which made me think I was watching public-access television instead of an actual, honest-to-goodness film.

The story copies and pastes bits and pieces from various sources, including the aforementioned Romero's DEAD trilogy, THE ROAD WARRIOR (dig that stock footage of a "future" that looks like the past) and THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT.

What results is an hour-and-nothing's worth of zombies tracking down and eating humans. (Okay, the "humans" in this case are clones, but that doesn't change anything. It's the same menu.)

The year is 2031, and the first strand of people who were cloned nineteen years before have started to malfunction, particularly in the dietary area. Of course, when clones go bad, the first thing they have a taste for is human flesh (or, in this case, cloned human flesh). It's not safe to be indoors, it's not safe to be outdoors. It's just a matter of time before the flesh-eating ghouls devour our heroes. Have you seen this before?

I don't mind people ripping off Romero, if it's done well, but no new territory is covered in this film. It's NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD meets THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT, shot with television cameras. What is particularly disappointing is that the DVD cover makes it look like it was shot, at the very least, with 8mm film. This wouldn't have been a problem with me if the story had not been equally cheap. The film offers a bleak vision of the future in which technology has evolved to the point where human cloning is possible. Must we continue to clone our favourite movies?

looks like a weird pilot for a failed TV series!

[Sherazade · 4/10 · 22 June 2006]

A young man falls in love with a princess but then has to go to battle to save her father's kingdom. While away, he accidentally kills an enchanted animal which brings a curse upon him. He becomes a beast and begins to kill even his own comrades. When nobody returns to the kingdom from the battle, the king renders the land of battle cursed and forbids anyone from going there. One day, a rebel who wishes to marry the princess decides that it's time they ventured into the cursed land to claim it for the king and the king agrees, when they reach the land the king is captured by the beast and the rebel returns home to lie to the kingdom that the king has been captured and killed. He assumes the throne and prepares to marry the princess but the night before her wedding, the princess escapes to the land to go and battle the beast herself. It is only when she gets to the cursed land that she begins to realise that her father is still alive and that the beast may not even be that evil after all. Sadly, her discoveries lead her to pay the ultimate price in their revelation.

Odd combination of art school visuals and amateur hour plotting and acting.

[lemon_magic · 3/10 · 1 February 2016]

George, if you're reading this (which I doubt), don't take it personally that I didn't care for "Blood Of The Beast". I'm sure it was a huge investment of time, effort, and all the money you could raise (and maybe some you couldn't really afford) to make it. I had some hopes in the beginning - there were flashes of interesting visuals here and there. And the atonal soundtrack added a lot to the feel and interest in the film.

But I hate it when film makers try to substitute jump cuts, jerky video, stock footage and arty edits for a clear sense of what's going on, especially during crucial plot points (like when the clone/zombies appear by the farm house where the reverend and the campers are confronting each other. WTF actually happened???). And you went to that well a few times too many in this film. It may have been a budgetary decision as much as an artistic one, but in the end, I was sick of the whole thing.

Also, there was some pretty aggressive non-acting going on with some of the supporting cast, many of the ideas and themes brought up during the early moments of the movie weren't developed, and the completely nihilistic ending made the whole thing a bitter pill to swallow - I watched for an hour plus for THAT???

I hope you went on to bigger and better things - this movie showed that you had a lot of ambitions and things to say...you just need a better writer and editor.

Preparation for the End

[tedg · 29 May 2005]

An IMDb reader of my comments sent me this for viewing. I'm glad, because nearly all low budget movies seem bad. You need a prompt or hint to invest viewing energy to discover or invent the elements that make few of them interesting.

I've never let bad, even terrible production values get in the way of a good movie. One key threshold is whether the filmmaker expects us to take him (and more importantly his images) seriously. A clever fellow, like the guy behind "Robot Monster" will use the inadequacies of the thing to their advantage. ("Robot Monster" is a ten year old's dream, and is how one might imagine a ten year old dreams.)

There are more than a few barriers to this movie besides the production values. There are lots of past, present future overlaps, something we get early on and which advised me to invest in this: the first scene is of a painter — surrogate for the filmmaker — creates a painting of the future that becomes a film of the past.

There's another blend, conflating the structure of wars, computer programs, DNA in clones, and (we find later) the dogma of Christianity. Both of these aren't easy to get; this filmmaker has a lot to learn about conveying these things if he wants to bring us into such complex territory.

These simple rules allow for some lengthy setup in the first fifty minutes or so involving some combination of extremes: clumsy exposition and rather hard to read cinematic inference, including images of cows a la Medem.

At any rate, we end up in a "Night of the Living Dead" situation, except where Romero's design was to say essentially nothing about why the situation exists, here we have the deep background which completely reinterprets what follows though it superficially looks familiar.

Does it matter in the final 12 minutes which is 100% without dialog, using cards instead? Does all that dreary setup pay off? Well, yes, if you like "Begotten" and appreciate the selfawareness of the film itself disintegrating. Yes if you relish the standoff being two "normal" people against the "zombies" and know that one of these is the writer/director/star who you see destroyed in front of the "Alice in Wonderland" character (whose fate you cannot see because our narrator is gone).

Yes, if you caught the significance of the important scene where a zombie copulates with the rotting corpse of his half eaten victim.

After all, movies like this are all about what you remember, not what you see.

Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.

Um

[Walter-H-White · 1/10 · 23 October 2021]

I bought this DVD at Walgreens for $3 during an insomniac spell. My brother and I watched it at 3am because there was nothing else to do. First of all, what? Idk how else to describe it other than a project for an undergraduate film class. Not much of a plot. No character development. It turns into a silent film out of nowhere toward the end. I'm trying to convince my wife to watch it all these years later and she won't lol.

A really strange and interesting experimental sci-fi/horror indie oddity

[Woodyanders · 8/10 · 11 March 2008]

2012: Following World War III over three billion people have been killed and 98 percent of the male population has been rendered sterile. Human reproduction is achieved through cloning. In 2031 problems arise when the first strand of clones suddenly degenerate into ferocious cannibalistic ghouls. A motley bunch of folks stranded in the woods find themselves in considerable jeopardy. Writer/director Georg Koszulinski, who also edited the picture, co-composed the odd, atonal, spacey score, and portrays the whiny Jesse, brings an artsy, outré and striking baroque style to the familiar premise; he offers a wealth of stunning, surreal, and even disturbing visuals that more than compensate for the rather hackneyed plot. Moreover, Koszulinski raises some pertinent and provocative questions about faith, science, religion, and technology. The capable non-star cast for the most part give decent and acceptable performances, with especially stand-out turns by Sharon Chudnow as the tough Alice and Charles Norton as a staunch fire and brimstone reverend. Brian White's raw, yet often dazzling cinematography makes highly effective use of dingy, washed-out colors that greatly add to the overall grim tone. The desolate forest locations likewise substantially enhance the bleak and despairing mood. Better still, this movie becomes more increasingly weird and startling as it unfolds, culminating in a remarkable last third which plays like a nightmarish modern-day version of an old black and white silent feature. A genuinely bizarre and hence quite compelling curio.

Boring!

[Otacon10 · 17 July 2004]

SPOILERS AHEAD! I bought this movie cheap and that should have clued me in right there about its quality. I thought that it would be a good little zombie/cannibal movie. How wrong I was. First of all, if you're going to make a zombie movie there must be gore and scenes of ACTION in it. Every time there was an attack there was either a fast forward series of images, a slow motion/extremely shaky camera move or the scene was cut altogether with less characters in the next scene. The only graphic attack came at the end and would have been more effective at regular speed. Second of all, if there was a war try to get footage that looks more modern. Apparently this next big war that will render almost all men impotent will look a lot like World War II. It would have been better to just use expository dialogue from a teacher or something, not old grainy WWII footage with expository title cards explaining the situation. If I wanted to read about what happened, I would read the back of the DVD again. Finally, let's keep the ART to a minimum in a zombie movie. The only cool scene was at the beginning when a freshly painted picture becomes WWII footage. A nice effect, too bad it was the only cool one. Also in a strange artistic move there is no spoken dialogue in the end of the film. The last several minutes play out like a silent film, complete with title cards for what was just mouthed by the characters. Also the night-vision "Blair Witch" seemed kind of hacky. Trust me, only rent this one if you dare. But if you want a better low budget zombie movie seek out Brian Clement's MEAT MARKET and MEAT MARKET 2 instead.