Director Roger Corman and actor Paul Birch teamed up yet again, this time for Allied Artists, to make NOT OF THIS EARTH. This is a really solid little B picture that's rather sadly on the obscure side today. Birch is an enigmatic gentleman with a peculiar blood condition. He hires pretty nurse Beverly Garland to tend to his nightly transfusions. In truth, Birch is a scout from a planet of vampires looking into the possibilities of conquering Earth and turning us inhabitants into a blood bank! Like a good many 50's B pictures of this sort, it ran too short to fit comfortably in television time slots. Footage was repeated and a long text prolog about the nature of dreams added. The film eventually vanished from TV in the 60's, when color programming became the norm. This television version is the one most of us videonauts have seen, although I believe I heard of a nice DVD release in recent years. Despite the film's relative obscurity after it's theatrical run and subsequent television visit, the film left an impact with viewers. It's been officially remade at least twice, the first time in the 90's and generating a bit of notoriety in filling the Beverly Garland role with infamous former jail-bait porn queen Traci Lords.
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