Filmed in Sept 1965, "Night of the Beast" was the debut feature for novice producer William White, better known to horror fans as actor Bill Hampton, from 1959's "The Hideous Sun Demon" and 1965's "The Human Duplicators," while director Harold Daniels scored a success with the 1958 "Terror in the Haunted House" aka "My World Dies Screaming." The exceedingly small budget must have run out as completion neared, and the filmmakers lost control of the footage, soon picked up by schlockmeister Jerry Warren, whose additional 11 minutes of added scenes extended the running time to 74 minutes, but otherwise served little purpose due to his inept editing. A black and white movie that could only get playdates on the bottom half of double bills under the title "Blood of the Man Devil" (or even all night drive-in creature features), what is now better known as "House of the Black Death" languishes in obscurity to this day, little seen even on television despite the presence of genre heavyweights Lon Chaney and John Carradine (alas, not once sharing any scenes together). Sibling warlocks in service to their master Satan, Carradine's Andre Desard represents the wealthy upper class, while Chaney's Belial Desard heads up the plebeian tier, leading the tiny town of Widderburn to revolt against Andre and usurp his all powerful status with their lord and master (the book from which the excessively wordy script was adapted was titled "The Widderburn Horror"). Displaying the goat's horns that make him an even greater emissary of the Devil, the top billed Chaney gets more footage than his co-star, threatening the souls of Andre's son Paul (Tom Drake), cursed by lycanthropy, and daughter Valerie (Dolores Faith), whom Belial seems to covet for himself. Virtually everyone is defeated by the ill conceived screenplay, but even under these impoverished circumstances both Chaney and (especially) Carradine are remarkably professional. Jerry Warren never shied away from taking credit for the film's belated release, but as editor he blunders badly on several occasions: we see doctors Mallory (Andrea King) and Campion (Jerome Thor) accompanied by villager Stokes (Sherwood Keith) BEFORE Belial assigns him as their guide, while Carradine's Andre claims he must rest, but is being chastised by Valerie in the very next scene for revealing the family secrets to Campion. The most egregious error was in showing us Chaney's goat horns well before his supposed 'big reveal' in front of a shocked doctor Mallory! Gorgeous blonde bombshell Sabrina, known as 'Britain's Jayne Mansfield,' provides plentiful eye candy dancing for Chaney's delighted amusement, but otherwise serves no purpose and has no dialogue. Warren's new scenes feature a brunette dancer of lesser merit, and regular stock company performers Katherine Victor and George Andre attempting to plug a few gaps in continuity, their repeated chants only adding to the numbing sense of boredom. Still, it just might qualify as the best film that Jerry Warren was ever involved in! (Carradine and Victor would rejoin him for his 1981 comeback feature "Frankenstein Island").

This film starts off wonderfully--with Satan himself introducing the characters. While this was inspired and clever, nothing else in the film was. In fact, it's pretty much a stupid mess about two warlocks who fight over the family fortune in some godforsaken (literally) town. While John Carradine and Lon Chaney Jr. star in the film, both were at the points in their careers where they would have appeared in ANYTHING--even ads for Playtex girdles if they'd asked! In addition to being an extremely dull and talky film, 'sexy' dancing girls are rather randomly inserted throughout the film to try to keep you awake. However, their alluring antics are about as alluring as a bowel obstruction."House of Black Death" (also known as "Blood of the Man Devil") is an absolutely horrible film that has not surprisingly slipped into the public domain. While IMDb often links such films to archive.org, this time they didn't--though if you go to this site you can download it for free. But, in many cases, why should you?! My advice is to only watch it if you love schlocky films--such as those of Larry Buchanan, Ed Wood or William Grefe. In this sense, it is watchable because it's THAT bad! Don't say I didn't warn you.

This is one movie that probably would have been improved if Ed Wood had directed it instead! The whole thing plays out like a fever dream after you've eating a bad chicken salad. It's impossible to say if Jerry Warren "improved" on it or not; check out the ax job he did on "La Marca del Muerto", repackaging it as "Creature of the Walking Dead". The story of two brothers with Satanic powers dueling it out over the family fortune(and bragging rights over a kitschy-looking standing stone called the "Devil's Saddle") is barely coherent, the direction is barely coherent, the acting is barely coherent, and I was barely coherent after watching it. It was so bad it wasn't even funny--Warren seems to have that magic touch, doesn't he? The only good thing I can think about this turkey is that Bruno VeSota(a reliable Warren alumnus) didn't have to appear in it. Hmmm. Maybe if Warren had taken a cue from "Attack of the Giant Leeches"...but that's just me. BTW: I caught this on the old late-night schlock show, "Fright Night" hosted by "Sinister Seymour". When Seymour did a bumper between commercials, saying "...and we'll be right back with 'House of the Black Death'! Whaddya think of that, fringies?", they cut to John Carradine sitting up in bed and screaming in abject terror! I know how you felt, John, believe me, I do...

If not for the coupling of horror icons John Carradine and Lon Chaney Jr.--who don't share a single scene together--House of the Black Death would be completely worthless. As it is, it's ALMOST completely worthless, being badly shot, appallingly lit, and poorly written. In a plot reminiscent of Roger Corman's version of The Raven, our two stars play brothers and dueling masters of the dark arts, with Chaney sporting a fetching pair of horns that mark him as the bad guy. (He's also called Belial, which doesn't help matters.) The endless exotic dancing sequences echo A.C. Stephens inept Orgy of the Dead, a film that, thanks to its colour photography, is a masterpiece in comparison to House of the Black Death.