Exoticalot People are voting emotionally.

Matialth Good concept, poorly executed.

Aneesa Wardle The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Brennan Camacho Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.

capkronos Historically-speaking, this is quite an important production as far as horror and sci-fi flicks are concerned. For starters, it is one of the very earliest films involving normal animals suddenly turning on humans and attacking them. In fact, there are a enough surprising similarities between this and Alfred Hitchcock's THE BIRDS (1963) to suggest this was a major inspiration to that classic film. Second, this is not only an early producing credit for the prolific Roger Corman, but also the very first genre film he stepped behind the camera to direct. Though it's credited to David Kramarsky, Corman had replaced him early on into the production, sans credit. Third, this was a key establishing film for the fledgling company American Releasing Corporation, run by a few fellas named Samuel Z. Arkoff and James H. Nicholson. ARC would become American International Pictures. Of course if you know anything about vintage horror, drive-in and exploitation films, you'll know just how important these names are.BEAST (originally titled "The Unseen") was also a production beset with problems. Originally part of a multi-picture package arranged between Corman and Arkoff / Nicholson, the film's budget was initially slated to be way higher but had to be slashed down to just 29,000 dollars. Problems with the filmmaker's union led to the production being shut down after just a day a filming. It also resulted in the original director and cinematographer both having to be sacked and Corman having to complete the film along with new D.O.P. Floyd Crosby. Supposedly the two managed to knock out all of the interior shots (48 pages of the script!) in just two days on studio sets! The exteriors were filmed in Indio, California and, all things considered, the photography actually looks quite good.Paul Birch - later to appear in Corman's DAY THE WORLD ENDED (1955) and NOT OF THIS EARTH (1957) - stars as Allan Kelley, a farmer who lives on a date ranch deep in the California desert along with his wife Carol (Lorna Thayer) and teenage daughter Sandy (Dona Cole). The family have seen better times, especially Carol, who's neurotic, miserable because of the constant isolation and bitter to the point where she starts resenting and hating her own daughter out of sheer jealousy. An alien spacecraft that makes a strange humming noises lands in a cave in the desert, all of the glassware in the home shatters and, soon after, all manner of animals start going crazy and attacking. Birds of all kinds begin swooping out of the sky, a cow tramples over a farmer, chickens flog Carol and the family dog turns vicious and must be chopped up with an axe!Also living on the farm is a character that would later become a staple of these kinds of films: the pervy, creepy, half wit handyman. The one in this one is a lonely mute referred to as only "Him." He's not only a voyeur who constantly stares at the females through the window, but he also spies on the daughter character stripping down to her swimsuit and going for a swim and then tries to touch her. "Him" sleeps in a shack next to the house where the walls are plastered with pictures of bikini or lingerie clad girls and he lies in bed looking at girlie magazines while his eyes bug out. I've seen this character countless other times in other exploitation movies, portrayed almost exactly the same as it is here, but NEVER before 1955. This adds a rather sleazy touch to the proceedings, which is especially odd considering this is essentially a family drama whose core message is about how it's important for families to stick together and support one another.Though interesting and boasting an intriguing and original premise, this really isn't a very good movie. It's slow, the dialogue is hokey, the acting is gratingly melodramatic and the animal attacks scenes are very poorly staged and edited and are mostly accomplished by filming the animals approaching the camera followed by a terrified reaction shot from the actor. People also rightfully snicker at the special effects, which include a tiny little spaceship that looks like something you'd serve coffee out of and an alien so bad they had to make the image all hazy and then superimpose a giant eyeball over top of it. Then again, the movie was originally filmed minus all that. Since Arkoff had pre- booked the film on the promise of a "beast" based on the title, he insisted a "beast" be in the film. Special effects man Paul Blaisdell was then given just 200 dollars to create both the ship and the alien creature on short notice. The fact he was able to come up with anything at all is actually quite impressive in itself.A young Dick Sargent (going by "Richard" here and years before finding fame as Darren in "Bewitched") plays a small supporting role as a deputy and Sandy's love interest. Production manager "Jack Haze" would become Jonathan Haze and later became immortalized for playing Seymour in Corman's LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS (1960).

sol ***SPOILERS*** The movie "Beast with one million eyes" has to do with this alien spaceship that looks like a futurist, for 1955, vacuum cleaner that takes over people as well as animals brains and cause them to do things that's destructive to themselves. Like going nuts as well as in all directions in and around the nearby California Desert. Why it does that is hard to figure out since it needs their very bodies,that's human bodies, for it or it's occupant,the beast with one not one million eyes,to survive.It's date farmer Allen Kelly, Paul Birch, who figures out what this thing is really all about but only after it ended up killing off half he cast of the movie. That's by destroying their brain cells and leaving them brain dead and in other cases like old man Cheaster Conklin-played by Ben Webber-who back in 1898 road with Teddy Roosevelt and his Rough Riders up San Juan hill-have his cow do the dirty work for it. Allen was a lot luckier since he together with his wife Carol and daughter Sandy, Lorna Thayer & Donna Cole, were able to consolidate their brain power to keep it from destroying them. Not so their pet dog Duke and handyman Karl, Bruce Whitmore. Karl who can't talk due to a brain injury he suffered in WWII was easy prey for it since he was using half not his entire brain to fight it.***SPOILERS*** It's just when things began to look at their worst that Allen discovered the only weapon that can possibly defeat the thing, beast with one million eyes, and together with Carol & Sandy used that very powerful human emotion to put it to flight: The power of love! You can really see how desperate those who made the movie were in that even the special effects were as phony and cheap as any film made by the great bad movie director Ed Wood. Yet you somehow can't help liking the movie in that everyone in it,including the animals, seemed genuinely inspired by it! As if the films massage of "Love Conquers All" as well as the evil alien from outer space meant far more then the movies flimsy storyline or it's even flimsier special effects!

Scott_Mercer 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.

Michael_Elliott Beast with a Million Eyes, The (1955) * 1/2 (out of 4) Sci-fi flick has a great title but that's about it. An alien flies over a farmhouse and lands in the desert. The alien machine then takes control of all the animal's minds and makes them attack humans. This is such a low budget film that there only appears to be four or five people living in this city so there aren't really many attacks. What attacks we do get are quite stupid and leads to some unintentional laughs. There's a scene where chickens attack a woman and it's clear to see that someone is just throwing the chickens at here. There's another scene where an old man gets attacked by his beloved cow. Oh yeah. Then there's the highlight where a woman gets attacked by the family dog, although it's clear that this dog isn't trained because he has to stop during scenes and get new directions only to mess them up. None of the human characters are of any interest and when the alien finally reveals himself, we just hear him talking. Silly and stupid all around.