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Really Surprised!

It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

Maybe a little bait and switch going on with the title? I didn't see any beast to speak of, and the million eyes? Sorry, just one big one at the end of the picture framing what might have been a bat. But at least my perception of the alien space ship was seconded by many other reviewers for the picture - it looked to me like a tricked out coffee pot! You know what was really bizarre? After that lengthy conversation between Mom Carol (Lorna Thayer) and daughter Sandy (Dona Cole) on why they call the creepy looking caretaker guy 'Him', because they didn't know what his name was and the poor mute couldn't tell anyone, guess what? It must have been a secret Dad Allan (Paul Birch) didn't share with anyone because all of a sudden he began calling the guy Carl. What was that all about? Well I don't go out of my way to see a Roger Corman film, but if one shows up on TCM or any other cable channel I'm not about to let it pass by without a look. This one had the same kind of dystopian feel as Corman's later picture "The Last Woman on Earth", with the same minimalist trappings and scant cast of characters. But then again, where else would you find a German Shepherd, a cow, some chickens and a bunch of birds all going berserk at the same time. Well wait a minute, I wonder if Hitchcock ever saw this film.Catching this picture on Turner Classics the other night I was surprised to see host Ben Mankiewicz conducting a short interview with Roger Corman himself! I don't know when that segment was originally produced but Corman looked absolutely great (ninety years old this year!) and not at all like I pictured him. Among other things, Corman explained what it was like making pictures on a limited budget, his preference actually because the bigger the budget, the more accountability there was to the studio financing the picture. This one looked like there was no accountability at all.

Okay, first the good news. An interesting premise. How an alien invasion effects a few people in an isolated house. A premise that Roger Corman tackled to a much more competent result in THE DAY THE WORLD ENDED, and its crapptacular remake by Larry Buchanan IN THE YEAR 2889. This time we have a farmhouse. The alien presence that lands in the desert (represented by an annoying audio hum) takes control of their farm animals, who start to menace the humans. On its face, a ludicrous concept, BUT, a great filmmaker, Alfred Hitchcock, took the same silly premise (livestock attacks people) and made a great film, THE BIRDS, out of it. Clearly, Alfred Hitchcock is not at work on this project.This could have been a much better movie, but it is torpedoed by horrible writing and acting. The actress playing the wife, in particular, is just one of the worst actors I have ever seen. Every line reading stiff, every emotion unbelievable, every sentence awkwardly-phrased. The actress playing the daughter is not much better, and the lead playing the farmer is merely mediocre. The directing is not much better, but I would classify that as merely bad instead of gut-wrenchingly unbearable.The inappropriate canned music cues mentioned by others certainly don't help matters any, (okay, at least they are not as bad as MESA OF LOST WOMEN), and the way the animal attacks are staged is NOT scary in the least, but HILARIOUS.The works of Ed Wood, at least, are suffused with a rollicking love of film history and the horror or crime genres, and Ed's overstuffed dialog is more apt to bring a smile to your face than a gaping look of disbelief. Ed's baroque, odd turns of phrase are all part of the fun.The dialog in this film is not fun, just boring and unserviceable. Just like the rest of the movie. Yes, you can make a worthwhile film on a super low budget. But this movie ain't it.

THE BEAST WITH A MILLION EYES is a small brilliant no budget film. It's probably the first existential science fiction film ever made. That's all I need to say about it to explain why I like it.This film was made before the now familiar plot-line of animals attacking humans, like THE BIRDS. In fact, this film reminds me a lot of THE BIRDS, which I think is brilliant but kudos to whoever wrote this evocative no budget wonder. The similarities between the two is really striking. Hitchcock most likely saw this film and was "inspired" by it. Even the low key near minimalistic tone is identical. The existential tone is also unique for that time and was made before TV shows like TWILIGHT ZONE or sci-fi flicks in the late 1960s or 1970s (like Russian sci-fi flicks) made these bleak sci-fi/horror/fantasy themes popular with the general public. Today, these kind of stories are common in movies or TV programs. The B&W cinematography is at times stunning, more than this type of film usually has. Moody and very atmospheric. The sensational title makes sense because the alien uses all the animals to see and control the environment around humans, hence the million eyes. The original title was supposed to be The Unseen and it didn't have the alien part of the end and one can see what they tried to do. But the current ending doesn't destroy the film.Just because the film has no budget, no stars, that it's basically bare-bones, doesn't mean it should be dismissed for the things it tried to do. Yes, the film is far from perfect but I admire it for what it tried to do, certainly in an era that relied too easily on cheesy stuff. It's (intentional or unintentional) low key brilliance.

Now it is very easy to lambaste this film for so many things. The cheesy special effects(where reviewers have compared the alien spacecraft to a percolator or tea kettle)or how about the cloth birds thrown at Paul Birch's car. That is the extent of the special effect except of course for the "horrifying" finale where the mastermind is revealed. Somebody pinch me so I do not relive that horror another moment. Okay, let's get real. What about the animals - real, live animals - which are supposedly mad and dangerous. A dog wagging it tail in attack mode? The dog looked liked it was being trained in real time and was about as dangerous as the chances of any actors in this film winning an Oscar. A mad bull suppose to be a milking cow moving on in an attack like molasses. Paper and cloth birds and an innocuous crow sitting in a date palm. Scary stuff. The story basically has some alien mastermind introduced at the film's beginning saying he will take over earth for his dying alien race by first mastering the simple minds of the animals and plants and then moving on to the human beings. Whilst its execution is anything but pretty, The Beast with a Million Eyes is really one of the first nature goes awry films - films like The Day of the Animals, Prophecy, Grizzly, and so on owe the film a little bit - okay, a micro-little bit, but it is one of the first of its kind. What does it have going for it? Honestly not much. Paul Birch is mediocre but at least can act. I wish I could say that about the other thespians but would choke if I tried. Lorna Thayer plays his wife with reckless over-acting. She was an actress of some note and today is best known as the waitress from Five Easy Pieces with the notorious chicken salad sandwich scene. Dona Cole plays the daughter Sandy and she is just awful - no wonder her film career was quite limited. Dick Sargent(the second Darren from Bewitched) and Leonard Traver as the hulking, mute, ax-wielding "Him" are barely serviceable. One minor surprise was seeing great silent film comedian Chester Conklin in a brief but satisfying role. He even gets to do a little shtick for us before his udderly ridiculous departure. I have one big question. Why would an alien mastermind trying to take over the world start on a barely populated date farm in the middle of nowhere. Nothing much here in terms of animal/plant/or human life? You can tell the movie was made on a shoe-string budget and has obvious, for many, irrevocable flaws. But despite all of these imperfections, I found the movie to have some heart and think we should all get together and give it some love. Paul Birch's character would be so happy with that.