With 1970’s Beast of Blood, a loose series of “Blood Island” movies comes to a close. Preceded by 1959’s Terror Is a Man, 1968’s Brides of Blood and 1969’s Mad Doctor of Blood Island, this offers another horror effort, one that acts as a direct sequel to Mad Doctor.

After they experience terror via a human/plant monster, survivors Dr. Bill Foster (John Ashley), Carlos Lopez, Sheila Willard and her father find themselves under attack again. The mutated "chlorophyll creature" trashes their boat and only Dr. Foster survives.

When Dr. Foster recovers, he returns to “Blood Island” with reporter Myra Russell (Celeste Yarnall). They deal with more terror from the monster as well as the sinister Dr. Lorca (Eddie Garcia).

Boy, that sure sounds like the plot to Mad Doctor, doesn’t it? The biggest change between the two films comes from the absence of exposition in Beast.

After all, viewers already met Dr. Foster and Dr. Lorca in the prior film, and that one also set up the nature of the chlorophyll critter. As such, the sequel doesn’t need to rehash those elements.

Though the synopsis implies Beast will essentially remake Mad Doctor, the two differ in many ways, mostly for the better. While I won’t call Beast an actual good movie, it definitely improves on Mad Doctor as well as Brides.

Of the four “Blood Island” flicks, Terror Is a Man clearly remains the class of the bunch. Though it comes with its own drawbacks, it boasts a level of seriousness and appealing visuals that allow it to work moderately well.

Brides and Mad Doctor completely abandoned the somber vibe of Terror to embrace cheap drive-in monster movie schlock. Those two opted for an extreme level of goofy camp.

Though Beast doesn’t quite return to the dark atmosphere of Terror, it moves in that direction – for a while, at least. The film’s first half presents a greater stab at suspense and spooky drama than the prior two flicks.

It also comes with vastly superior photography that becomes reminiscent of the moody vibe seen in Terror. I find myself surprised at the shift since both Beast and Mad Doctor used cinematographer Justo Paolino.

Nonetheless, Beast gives us a much better-shot film. If nothing else, I feel relieved it loses the manic uses of zooms from Mad Doctor.

Unfortunately, after a fairly effective first half, Beast goes off the rails somewhat during the subsequent 45 minutes. Out of nowhere, Dr. Foster suddenly becomes an action hero and Beast starts to feel like a cut-rate James Bond ripoff.

This means Dr. Foster gets romantic attention from multiple hotties and also takes the heroic lead in the finale. Despite the film’s nominal horror designation, Beast ends with a big battle scene.

In addition to that odd twist, Beast moves closer to horror schlock in its second half. This stems mainly from the weird ways it develops the primary monster, most of which don’t work.

Ultimately, Beast comes with too many flaws to qualify as a successful film. Still, it betters its two predecessors and delivers a mix of positives, so it doesn’t wind up as a dud.

Beast of Blood appears in an aspect ratio of approximately 1.33:1 on this Blu-ray Disc. Although the first three “Blood Island” movies sported surprisingly strong visuals, Beast faltered in that department.

The main issue stemmed from source flaws. Though these barely appeared for the prior films, they became a persistent distraction during Beast.

This meant scratches, specks, lines and marks that popped up with moderate regularity as well as some gate hairs. This didn’t become the dirtiest print I’ve witnessed but given how clean the other three flicks looked, the prevalence of damage disappointed me.

Otherwise, the image held up better. For the most part, sharpness seemed good, as only modest instances of softness materialized.

The film lacked signs of jagged edges or moiré effects. I saw no edge haloes and grain seemed decent.

Like Mad Doctor, the palette of Beast could lean a bit green, though it mostly remained pretty natural. The colors appeared largely well-rendered.

Blacks seemed fairly deep, and shadows usually worked fine except for the inevitably thick “day for night” elements. Much of the movie looked fine but the persistent print flaws made this a “C-“ image.

At least Beast offered the best DTS-HD MA monaural mix of the four “Blood Island” films. Consider that faint praise given how awful the first three sounded, though.

Still, Beast came with a more competent track. Though it also suffered from the kind of poor looping that marred prior films, dialogue nonetheless seemed more natural and didn’t show the roughness I heard previously.

Neither music nor effects showed great range, but both felt fairly clear and concise. At one point, though, the score became annoyingly warbly and wobbly for a brief period.

The track lacked notable source noise. Nothing here impressed but after three problematic mixes, this one at least seemed decent.

From here we go to extras and we launch with an audio commentary from Hemisphere Films Marketing Consultant Samuel M. Sherman. He brings a running, screen-specific view of Hemisphere in this era, this movie’s production and promotion and aspects of his career.

Of the three “Blood Island” commentaries from Sherman, this one becomes the weakest, as Sherman digresses more and doesn’t provide as many insights. Still, he brings some good notes and makes the track worth a listen, even if it works less well than its predecessors.

Note that Sherman’s commentary ends at the 55-minute, 15-second point in the film.

After this we move to two video programs shot in 2010. Celeste and the Beast runs 12 minutes, 26 seconds and features actor Celeste Yarnall.

Via “Celeste”, Yarnall discusses the movie’s story along with her performance and her memories of the shoot. This becomes a good perspective on her experiences.

Dr. Lorca’s Blood Devils lasts three minutes, eight seconds. It presents an interview with actor Eddie Garcia.

He relates thoughts about colleagues and some notes about the production. Though we find a few useful thoughts, “Devils” is too short to tell us much.

Next comes a Super Eight Digest Version of the film. Here titled Blood Devils, the short presentation runs 15 minutes, 36 seconds.

As expected, it brings a severely truncated edition of the movie that focuses entirely on events from the flick’s last act. It looks terrible but it offers a decent archival extra.

In addition to the movie’s trailer and one radio spot, the disc ends with a Poster and Still Gallery. It contains 59 screens of material.

These mix ads, publicity materials and background elements like a script. The gallery adds value to the set.

As the final entry in the ‘Blood Island’ series, Beast of Blood works better than the prior two flicks. However, it still lacks a lot to make it compelling. The Blu-ray comes with iffy picture, acceptable audio and a mix of supplements. Though an upgrade over its two immediate predecessors, Beast still remains a lackluster monster flick.

Note that this version of Beast of Blood appears solely as part of a four-movie set entitled “Fear in the Philippines: The Complete Blood Island Films”. This package also includes 1959’s Terror Is a Man, 1968’s Bride of Blood and 1969’s Mad Doctor of Blood Island.