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The locals of a small town off the coast of south California spend most of their day lazing around
soaking up the sun, playing frisbee or going for a cool dip in the ocean but as night falls a
mysterious predator, naked to the eye is seeking out wandering beach goers alone on the beach,
sucking them down into the ground leaving only their frantic claw marks deep in the sand. As the
authorities are completely puzzled by who or what is causing these strange attacks, they soon
close down the beach (now nicknamed Blood Beach by the locals) and begin to tearing the area
apart with bulldozers, hoping to find evidence or clues to where the missing bodies might be
found.
A couple of well known faces appear in Blood Beach and 80’s fans will recognise the mighty John
Saxon (Enter the Dragon, Cannibal Apocalypse) who plays Captain Pearson, who strangely doesn’t
last too long in the movie before he is eaten by the creature. You also have actor Burt Young
(Rocky series, Amityville II: The Possession) playing the role of a heartless Sergeant named Royko
who enjoys smoking cigars and ultimately kills the creature towards the end of the film in an
explosion set off by dynamite, leaving the door open for a sequel that unfortunately never
happened.
When it comes to the gore factor, well Blood Beach is one of those b-grade films that has a
creepy, awesome cool cover but contains hardly any blood or guts at all. As each person is pulled
into the sand, it does get your blood and heart pumping just a tad, but after a couple of times it
slowly becomes stale and boring. There was one scene that will stick with you though - when the
creature chews a rapist’s dick off as he is trying to rape a woman under the pier. Apart from that
and the last few minutes of the film, where you get to see the creature (an overly large mutant
worm-like creature with razorblade teeth and tentacles) being secretly video taped in its lair by
the police, Blood Beach is a film that was only created to shock and not gross out the viewer, so
I’m sorry gorehounds but this one is a miss.
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Blood Beach is an 80’s classic that has yet to find its way onto DVD. To this day I can still
remember walking past the horror section at my local video store and every time I glanced at this
film, no matter how many times I had seen it, I always stopped, with a grin on my face, to stare at
the cover. On the front was a woman on a beach all alone, with a look of horror on her face,
screaming for her life, while being sucked down into the beach sand.
The 80’s were the days of horror and creature feature films. After the release of Steven Spielberg's
heart pounding killer shark film Jaws (1975), Joe Dante’s flesh chewing Piranha (1978) and Lewis
Teague’s sewer surviving man-eating Alligator (1980) filmmakers decided to jump on the
bandwagon and begin cashing in with other creature feature films. Blood Beach was one of those
cash-ins. I often think that if it wasn’t for this film then the likes of the Tremors series wouldn’t
have even been created. Blood Beach might be secluded to only a beach, where as Tremors is in a
desert (which is like a big ass beach, when you think about it) but that desert is then overrun by
giant worm-like creators who also suck people into the ground and eat them. Blood Beach was
directed by Jeffrey Bloom whom later on made one of the most chilling suspense dramas ever
called Flowers in the Attic (1987) from a novel written by Virginia C. Andrews. Apart from these
two titles, Bloom isn’t really well known for directing or writing anything else that rings a bell. But
this is a pretty sweet legacy to leave.
Either though this film isn’t a full on blood soaking, bone crunching type of a film, like many other
80s films this film will always be a memorable VHS classic. It might not be as scary or intense as
Jaws or Tremors, but its certainly will bring back dozens of childhood memories of the time/s you
rented it out, while pigging out on potato chips, chocolate and drinking litres of TAB. I just hope
one day that this golden oldie does find itself going directly to DVD, with an audio commentary
with director/writer Jeffrey Bloom and some of the cast or the occasional extra if possible. But I
highly doubt we will see this film anytime soon as I can’t see that any distributor would want to
take the chance of releasing it on DVD.
So if you are yet to see Blood Beach and you find yourself standing in front of a VHS copy, I
recommend you buy it right away. It’s just a matter of time before this film will be lost forever and
VHS collectors will end up paying top dollar for it.
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