Paul Birch
Born Jan. 13th, 1912 – Died May 24th, 1969
This square-jawed, barrel-chested actor appeared in quite a few of Roger Corman’s early pictures, such as Beast with a Million Eyes (1955), Day the World Ended (1955), and the classic Not of this Earth (1957), not to mention several other of Corman’s movies. But it was on the latter that he had a run in with Corman, even a physical one according to some reports, and walked off the set and never came back. But none the less, he is one character actor that you can always remember. He is always entertaining to watch in these early cheesy classic films.
He appeared in countless TV series during his career, with bit parts in even bigger pictures. He was one of the first humans to discover what the newly landed visitor’s from Mars wanted in War of the Worlds (1953). He was even the very first Marlboro Man in the TV commercials.
But no matter what he is in, he is always memorable and gives a fun performance. It also probably helped that the dialog on those early pictures were so cheesy, that it just made them even more fun to watch today then there were back then.
Sometimes I am just amazed at not only some of the titles that get released on blu-ray, but in the huge special editions that they come out with. Case in point, a title that Arrow Video just announced. At the end of May, they will be releasing a special edition of the 1966 film Blood Bath. But this isn’t just any ordinary film that was made under the Roger Corman umbrella. In fact, it started as a film being made in Yugoslavia by someone named Rados Novakovic and called Operation Titan. But it didn’t really fit Corman’s approval, so he hired Jack Hill to take the film and see if he could make something out of it, which he did, and would be later called Blood Bath. But for various reasons, such as the film stock from the original footage and what Hill shot didn’t match up that too well. So because Hill went on to make Spider Baby, the film was set aside. Then Corman came back to the picture and hired Stephanie Rothman to see what she could do with it. She changed the title to Track of the Vampire and made it more of a vampire film! According to Hill, about 80 % of the film is what he shot, but I have to say that it is kind of a mess of a picture, even though it has one of the best posters from that era!
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