- Director: Dustin Ferguson
- Writer: Dustin Ferguson
- Stars: Brinke Stevens, Mel Novak, Shawn C. Phillips
- Run Time: 60 Minutes
- Link: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt12395290/
- Link: http://kunaki.com/msales.asp?PublisherId=155419&pp=1
Synopsis
There’s a small earthquake in the California desert. Credits roll.
The next morning, the damage isn’t so bad. We gets some interesting shots of life in the desert as a girl goes for a walk outside. She pulls out her phone for a selfie, and just then, something grabs her from behind.
A pair of hikers soon finds her phone. The monster kills the guy, but the girl runs to the sheriff’s station. Meanwhile, some guy watches “Angry Asian Murder Hornets,” an actual movie put out by the same director as this film. The guy gets up from his movie to look for his dog, Norman, and ends up walking down that same path; he’s the next victim of the creature.
Aaron and Cheryl, the couple who live near the earthquake, go for a walk, and the police have the quake area marked off. The sheriff calls the mayor to get permission to close the park where the blood was found; they still haven’t found a body, so the mayor says no, leave it open.
A guy who works at a tanning salon gets off work and goes out to the park to sell some weed. The monster kills him as well. Two more guys get eaten that night. The mayor fires the sheriff, and Aaron, the guy who lives near the earthquake decides to go out and get a blood sample from the monster. He does manage to find some blood in the first.
Meanwhile, a couple of tough guys go out looking for whatever got their daughter out on the trail. Cheryl and Jennifer watch an old Boris Karloff film on TV and argue about their Halloween costumes until Jennifer goes out to do a live feed from the monster kill site.
Will the town be safe? Will the monster kill everyone? Will the scientist be able to analyze the blood sample? Will the mayor get re-elected?
Commentary
I immediately spotted some of the same locations and sets used in “Moon of the Blood Beast” (2019). Dustin Ferguson also directed that film, along with “Angry Asian Hornets,” a clip of which is included within this film. He makes good use of limited locations and somewhat more limited actors.
You’ll notice I kept using the phrase “some guy” and “that girl” in the synopsis above with the various victims. None of the victim characters have names, at least not mentioned in the story. I mean they are monster fodder, but a little bit of characterization might make their deaths a little more interesting. “A guy walks down a path and gets eaten” starts to get a little monotonous after a bit, but fortunately, the characters are all visually distinctive, and it’s obviously not all exactly the same.
I complained about the abrupt ending of “Moon of the Blood Beast,” and this has a similar problem. The ending takes place more-or-less off-screen and has no real build up. It’s like they said, “We’ve got our hour done, let’s wrap it up.” For obvious reasons, they couldn’t film a big battle scene, but at least a little build-up towards the final resolution of the creature would have been nice.
Still, it’s better than Blood Beast, and I have to admit, it’s not boring.