Excellent but underrated film

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

Maybe a little bait and switch going on with the title? I didn't see any beast to speak of, and the million eyes? Sorry, just one big one at the end of the picture framing what might have been a bat. But at least my perception of the alien space ship was seconded by many other reviewers for the picture - it looked to me like a tricked out coffee pot! You know what was really bizarre? After that lengthy conversation between Mom Carol (Lorna Thayer) and daughter Sandy (Dona Cole) on why they call the creepy looking caretaker guy 'Him', because they didn't know what his name was and the poor mute couldn't tell anyone, guess what? It must have been a secret Dad Allan (Paul Birch) didn't share with anyone because all of a sudden he began calling the guy Carl. What was that all about? Well I don't go out of my way to see a Roger Corman film, but if one shows up on TCM or any other cable channel I'm not about to let it pass by without a look. This one had the same kind of dystopian feel as Corman's later picture "The Last Woman on Earth", with the same minimalist trappings and scant cast of characters. But then again, where else would you find a German Shepherd, a cow, some chickens and a bunch of birds all going berserk at the same time. Well wait a minute, I wonder if Hitchcock ever saw this film.Catching this picture on Turner Classics the other night I was surprised to see host Ben Mankiewicz conducting a short interview with Roger Corman himself! I don't know when that segment was originally produced but Corman looked absolutely great (ninety years old this year!) and not at all like I pictured him. Among other things, Corman explained what it was like making pictures on a limited budget, his preference actually because the bigger the budget, the more accountability there was to the studio financing the picture. This one looked like there was no accountability at all.

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).

It's all very well trying to forgive production values etc, by proclaiming that the writing has metaphors for the red scare, unity is powerful etc, but when the dialogue is delivered in such amateurish autocue fashion it struggles to impact. Add in to the mix that for the 75 minute run time the film is immeasurably dull, where someone off screen throwing a rubber blackbird at a car or live chickens at Lorna Thayer doesn't count as dramatic thrust, well you got exactly what The Beast with a Million Eyes is, namely an awful film.Plot finds the isolated Kelley family menaced by animals and their mute handyman when a spaceship lands near their home. Hence that is the million eyes of the title, as in a multitude of creatures of nature acting as surrogate baddies for the one beast in the ship. Which, as it turns out, proves to be a funky puppet we see at the end of the show.There is undoubtedly good ambition here, but the cold hard fact is that the budget wins the day, you can't make a silk purse out of a sows ear. With bland interiors of the farm house rampant, and stilted camera work operating outside, film rarely appeals visually either. The poster art rocks, mind, and an opening shot of a tree with many eyes grabs the attention, even if it proves to be a false dawn.Midnite Movies DVD series have paired it with the equally dreadful Phantom from 10,000 Leagues, don't be fooled by those who say either film is a classic of low budget sci-fi, both films are the epitome of awfulness and should be avoided by those who want to keep their sanity in tact. 3/10

While this is a very low budget film, a bit of editing would have helped, and there are several continuity mistakes it has a interesting plot line and some of the acting is good, I just watched it for the first time since I was a kid and I enjoyed seeing Paul Birch again. While not a great film it does bring out some of the feelings of the mid 50s about who we are and what makes us human. As noted in other reviews there are a lot of mistakes, for fun try to find them, the biggest problem was not making enough use of the different treats and showing way too much running back and forth. But with only 6 actors they had to fill with something.