Sunday, May 2, 2010

Blood Beach

     I'll say it upfront... this is a really dumb movie. The overall concept isn't that bad, but the execution is ridiculous. The tagline is funny though "Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the water... you can't get to it." An obvious ripoff from "Jaws". 

      Anyway, the story is pretty simple. A lady is leisurely walking on the beach when she feels a tug at her feet, a scream ensues and before you know it, she gets sucked under the sand by... something. For the most part, she's just considered a missing person. Eventually, enough people get sucked under the sand to warrant police intervention. Unfortunately, they haven't got a clue as to what's going on and presume the disappearances are the work of a serial killer. 

      Meanwhile, more and more people (and even a dog) get sucked under the sand. A man attempts to rape a woman, she struggles, he fumbles and falls in the sand only to get his prick munched off. A teenager lets her friends bury her in the sand, and as she starts screaming, they unbury her only to find she has shredded legs. This is the funny irony of this movie... no matter how many people get eaten by the beach, there's always plenty of fun in the sun going on. No one really seems to take the killings and disappearances seriously, because why would you be afraid of the beach, even if there was something under it that likes to eat people (and dogs and penises). 

      Eventually, the dumbass cops investigating these ridiculous events realize that it's not a person and most likely some kind of monster under the sand. They track it down in order to blow it up and we finally get to see the monster, which sorta looks like a Venus flytrap on steroids. They detonate their explosives and blow the monster into itty-bitty pieces. Unfortunately, the monster has regenerative qualities, kinda like a starfish. You cut it up into pieces and each piece becomes a separate entity, henceforth blowing the monster into separate pieces creates tons of little monsters. The end. 

      It's a not-really-that-good yet slightly enjoyable piece of crap from the early 1980s that had a good premise but terrible execution.  Like most cheap horror films from the 80s that had a really good movie poster and that if you saw it on the VHS cover at the local video rental store near you, you would think it would be pretty scary but instead had an almost unintentional comic aspect to it.  Usually, these fall under the category of "so bad it's good" but Blood Beach rides such a fine line that you're never really sure if you've just watched a horror movie or not.  Which sucks if that's what you were really in the mood for.