The Beast with a Million Eyes is the rare kind of film that is truly an atrociously made piece of cinema, but one that I had an absolute blast watching. The main reason is one that can be extended to most of the science fiction and horror films made during the 1950s, particularly those that existed on the lower end of the spectrum when it came to budgets – their influence on the following decades is unmatched, and many of the qualities that came to be seen as conventions in a number of other genres had their roots here. This is certainly very true for this film, since director David Kramarsky ignited the highly-popular sub-genre of horror films focused on animals attacking humans (which even found its way into the mind of arguably the greatest filmmaker of all time, Alfred Hitchcock, who put his own mark on the genre with The Birds, which oddly owes quite a bit to this film), and which continues to be a relatively amusing area in which some more provocative directors may tend to focus. It’s not the defining film from this era, nor is it one that is necessarily remembered all that much – if it wasn’t for the fact that this was an early instance of Roger Corman producing a film, it’s not likely that it would be notable at all – but it’s beyond entertaining in every way, as long as the viewer has an interest in seeing such stories. Nowadays, The Beast with a Million Eyes is a film more targeted towards devotees of the genre, but even for those agnostic to it, there’s certainly not a shortage of interesting ideas embedded in this film, which feels slightly more complex than we’d expect, based on a cursory glance.

For what its worth, The Beast with a Million Eyes is not a film that is bad by design – and like many of the other low-budget science fiction films that came about around this time, it has a lot of merits in its ability to do so much with a relatively paltry premise and an even more concerning set of resources. There’s a craftiness required when making a film like this, and had any of these directors been given bigger budgets, it’s doubtful these films would’ve made such an impression. These science fiction films indicated the peak of the “do-it-yourself filmmaking” era, where anyone could make a film, granted they were armed with an interesting story, a working camera and a few friends that would be willing to appear on either side of it. The combination of resourcefulness and enthusiasm rarely go unrewarded, and even if the final product may not be particularly strong, the effort of putting it together means that it will at least lend itself some degree of value, especially to those who are enchanted by this brand of storytelling. Mercifully, this film narrowly avoids all sense of becoming camp – there isn’t much that can be considered all that artificial, since the film is remarkably threadbare and straightforward, and the story doesn’t lend itself to much ridicule, as it feels genuinely quite well-composed, with any sense of this being a bad film coming less from the preventable qualities, and more from the fact that an independent film such as this is naturally going to run into a few challenges in the process of being made, which some may argue gives it the distinct off-kilter sensation that something is amiss.

I’ve frequently spoken about the various fundamental aspects of horror filmmaking, whereby an effective work that aims to terrify audiences should understand that it’s not what we see that is most unsettling, but rather that which we can’t see, but suspect is lurking just out of view. This is a good starting point for discussing how this film operates, with The Beast with a Million Eyes employing a similar principle in how it blends science fiction and horror (already quite a revolutionary concept that wasn’t pioneered by this film, but rather actively embraced in its own way), and the roots of its story being within a well-worn tradition of scaring us through the fear of the unknown. The low-budget nature of the film is used exceptionally well, as it forces the filmmakers to bring out the fear with only implication and a few moments of visual terror that would be effortlessly easy to recreate (since there are large portions of this film that were clearly plucked from stock footage, as was the convention at the time for films such as this), rather than depending on large-scale production value that affords the film the spectacle, but at the expense of the heart that is clear in every frame of the film. The amount of effort put into creating terror from virtually nothing is impressive – in what other film can a German Shepherd go from an adorable companion to the definition of terror without any real change, other than how scenes including him are framed? There are some interesting directorial flourishes, but for the most part, the film really depends on how Kramarsky developed the story and reconfigured what is essentially nothing more than a few people reacting to the encroaching attacks of animals that surround them.

It’s bizarre to consider, but these films tends to be the ones that were the most carefully crafted, being labours of love that the filmmakers were intent on selling as the next science fiction masterpiece, despite being well-aware of the financial constraints, and the fact that these kinds of films weren’t nearly as profitable at the time as they’d be in forthcoming decades – but the genuine belief on their part that what they were doing was going to be the next masterpiece of the genre keeps these stories vivid and entertaining from beginning to end. The logic may not always make much sense, but in a film like The Beast with a Million Eyes, it really doesn’t matter all that much. Partially a story of an alien invasion (even if we don’t really see much of the titular creature, which is almost certainly a result of the lack of resources), partially an early entry into the canon of memorable “man vs. nature” films that grew to be quite popular in coming decades, especially as technology grew more adept at representing such stories, this film is quite an experience. Once again, it’s not the definitive work, and those who aren’t accustomed to the varying techniques of the cinematic schlockmeisters that reigned supreme during this era may be bewildered – but there’s always method to the madness, and for all his faults, Kramarsky manages to pull together quite a fascinating film that blends speculative, otherworldly fiction with ecological horror, resulting in a delightfully strange but profoundly entertaining, piece of mid-century madness.