Not of This Earth *** (1957, Paul Birch, Beverly Garland, Morgan Jones) – Classic Movie Review 3916

A US small-town is disturbed by the arrival of a new neighbour, Paul Johnson, (Paul Birch) whose eyes can suddenly go Day-Glo, and local resident Nadine Storey (Beverly Garland) investigates.

If producer-director Roger Corman’s vampire-plus-alien 1957 hybrid movie is not quite the Fifties sci-fi classic promised by its brilliant title, it is at least as good as its budget would allow.

Corman’s efficiently made and often-imaginative movie features a classic prototype ghoul from outer space with a need to take home Earthlings’ blood to his planet Davanna, whose humanoids face extinction through blood disease.

Dick Miller provides the laughs as a vacuum salesman trying to sell a cleaner to Birch.

Corman recalls: ‘It was one of the first movies I mixed horror with traces of humour. The mix proved so successful I continued it in later films.’

Also in the cast are Morgan Jones, William Roerick, Jonathan Haze, Anna Lee Carroll, Pat Flynn, Roy Engel, Barbara Bohrer, Tamar Cooper, Harold Fong, Gail Ganley, Lyle Latell and Ralph Reed.

There are two remakes so far – in 1988 and 1995.

© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 3916

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