Product Details

• Actors: John Carradine, Kent Taylor, Tommy Kirk, Regina Carrol, Roy Morton
• Directors: Al Adamson
• Format: Color, Original recording reissued, NTSC
• Language: English
• Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: TROMA ENTERTAINMENT INC.
• VHS Release Date: February 27, 2001
• Run Time: 90 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B000056HRF
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #94,500 in Video (See Bestsellers in Video)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Director Al Adamson and producer Sam Sherman picked a suitably vague title for their incoherent horror film about jewel thieves, a psychotic Vietnam vet with an electronic brain, and a vengeful killer with a bright blue zombie henchman. Laden with flashbacks and sidetracks, this was another of Adamson's do-overs, an unfinished picture reborn with new scenes and an entirely new story. "It's a little choppy," says Sam Sherman with deadpan understatement in his introduction. "If you fall asleep I swear you'll think you've woken up in two different movies." Only two?

Former Disney star Tommy Kirk stars as the tough detective who gets a severed head in the mail, Regina Carrol (Adamson's wife) is an innocent targeted by the mad killer with revenge on his mind, and John Carradine receives top billing for what must be a single day's work as Dr. Van Ard, whose misguided science project starts the whole mess. It's not hard to see where the two films--the heist picture and the horror film--were stitched together because the seams are glaring, but that's hardly the worst Blood of Ghastly Horror has to offer. Wooden performances, clumsy drama, bizarre dialogue ("Dr. Van Ard died a much more horrible death than he really deserved," eulogizes Kirk), awkward editing, and the worst camera work ever attributed to future Oscar winner Vilmos Zsigmond (Close Encounters of the Third Kind, The Deer Hunter) all contribute to this mind-boggling mess.

The DVD features a commentary by producer Sam Sherman, along with a newly recorded introduction, a profile taken from the cable TV series Split Screen, and trailers to this and four other Al Adamson-Sam Sherman collaborations. --Sean Axmaker

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Charming Trash, April 20, 2002

By	tashcrash (South Shore, MA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Blood of Ghastly Horror (DVD)

This is one beauty of a head-scratcher. It is, literally, 3 movies in one. Al Adamson made the tight-yet-pointless heist film ECHO OF TERROR (a/k/a TWO TICKETS TO TERROR) in 1964, only to see it chopped up and intermixed with new footage several years later (starring John Carradine as an ethical but mad scientist) and retitled MAN WITH THE SYNTHETIC BRAIN, and sold as a horror cheapie to television. Not to be outdone, he and producer Sam Sherman further complicated matters by adding a third plot strand to the mix (something to do with killer zombies and yet another mad scientist, not to mention a rather sickly looking Tommy Kirk), and another new title, BLOOD OF GHASTLY HORROR. In order for the final incarnation to make sense, there are flashbacks-within-flashbacks all over the place. There was yet another version, PSYCHO-A-G-GO, which had musical numbers spliced amongst the madness!
Amazingly, it's quite an enjoyable viewing experience following the severely warped logic of the narrative, which only gets more confusing with each viewing.
Topping it off is some of the best commentary I've yet heard on any dvd, provided by Sam Sherman, who promises to some day restore the integrity of Adamson's ECHO OF TERROR to its original glory (well, one can hope).
As with Ed Wood, it's hard not to admire director Al Adamson's earnestness, and Vilmos Szigmond's cinematography (on the ECHO OF TERROR portions), despite the faded print used for the dvd, shows a precocious eye for composition. A most unusual recommendation!

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Al's done better., October 3, 2004

By	Christopher W. Curry (Norfolk, Virginia United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Blood of Ghastly Horror (DVD)

As I sit typing this I've concluded that Al Adamson's 1971 Blood of Ghastly Horror reigns as the most convoluted mess of a movie that I've ever seen in my life. The acting, lighting, directing and editing is of immeasurable low quality, and the narrative? Whoa! No movie could possibly deliver all that this one claims to, well not competently anyhow.

Al's '71 celluloid offspring is no less than 4 films patched clumsily together in a feeble attempt at creating an enjoyable motion picture. It was shot in `chill-o-rama' but truthfully it should have been `confuse-o-rama' because the only chill you'll feel is the whisking of air through the empty spot in your wallet where you once had some cash but now you have this DVD.

Blood of Ghastly Horror seems to have been doomed to an endless amount of uncertainty from the get-go. Initially it was a jewel heist movie called Two Tickets of Terror (1964) then changed later that same year to Echo of Terror. Poor Al couldn't sell it; hell he couldn't give it away. Plan B was put into effect and in 1965 he added some dancing chicks and re-christened it Psycho A Go Go, but still no go (go). Fine, he pulls out all the stops and hires waning but always-proficient actor John Carradine to star alongside the cavernous cleavage of Regina Carrol. Seven years after it was originally shot Adamson threw in a `Nam vet gone mad subplot along with a few zombies and some nonsensical voodoo (...), re-titled it Blood of Ghastly Horror and off to the drive-in we go.

As if all of this wasn't puzzling enough `ole Al gave it an alternate moniker for the southern regions that couldn't or wouldn't run a movie with `blood' in it's title. So The Man with the Synthetic Brain became the obvious answer and this also served as the T.V. label as well. Sound good? Well it's not. There are no smooth transitions here, just cut, chop, slice, paste and insert. The hair-do's change chaotically as do the vehicles and décor. You either give into its inanities or you simply turn it off. Producer Sam Sherman said that it was a big hit in Pakistan.

By Christopher Curry

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Blood of Ghastly Horror, December 11, 2001

By A Customer

EXCELLENT!!! IF OLD B-MOVIES IS YOUR BAG, WITH A TOTALLY UNPREDICTABLE STORY, THIS IS YOUR MOVIE. THE MOVIE HAS MANY DIFFERENT TURNS, WITH MULTIPLE STORIES, WHICH WILL NOT MAKE THE ENDING EASY TO GUESS. IT ALSO HAS THAT GREAT 60'S B-MOVIE CHARM. THIS IS BAD DRIVE-IN CINEMA AT ITS BEST.