Movie Review: Blood Beach (1980)
Synopsis: A Los Angeles beach becomes a spot of terror as beachgoers are randomly attacked by something lurking under the sand. With local authorities powerless to help, it is up to a harbor patrol officer and his ex-girlfriend/daughter of one of the victims to figure out the truth.
Who's in it? The movie stars David Huffman, Marianna Hill, Burt Young, John Saxon and Eleanor Zee.
Review: My wife came across a Reel featuring a scene from the movie Blood Beach. She thought it looked interesting, so we found the film on one of our movie apps and gave it a try last night. I think I can safely say the movie wasn't anywhere near as good as she was led to believe.
I'll start out by saying the premise of the film was interesting. I think the best way I can describe it is it was a bit like a combination of Jaws and Tremors. Unfortunately, the movie fails to capitalize on what could have been a great story.
One thing that separates good horror films from bad ones (at least in my opinion) is a sense of urgency. It's not enough to say the characters are in danger, you need to see it in their actions and emotions. There was ZERO urgency when it came to this movie. Multiple people (and one dog) were attacked on the beach, but everyone acted like it was just a minor inconvenience. The police didn't close the beach and even Catherine (Hill), whose mother was missing and who came across her mother's beheaded dog on the beach, seemed like the whole thing was secondary to rekindling a romance with Henry (Huffman).
Adding to this was the film itself, which just seemed to drag on. It's an 85-minute-long movie and I think maybe 30 minutes of that had something to do with the monster under the sand. The rest of it was the beforementioned rekindled romance, a sex scene (which in itself was kind of dull), a lot of talking and even a police budget meeting (which could have been included in what I said above about the lack of urgency).
One thing that might have helped this film is if it revealed the monster a lot sooner and had the final fight be a lot longer than it was. I'm not even sure why the film waited until the very end for the big reveal because there wasn't anything special about the creature that required any sort of mystery. It was just a generic monster that, thanks to the film providing zero backstory or context, was about as boring as the rest of the film.
Final Opinion: The reality of the horror genre is there are a lot more bad movies than good ones, but even bad movies can be entertaining under the right circumstances. This film, however, didn't even reach that low bar and wasn't worth taking the time to watch.
My Grade: F
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