Dir - Eddie Romero
Overall: MEH
Low-budget filmmaker Eddie Romero and co-producer star John Ashley churn out another crap Filipino monster cheapie with Beast of the Yellow Night, not missing a beat after the conclusion of their abysmal "Blood Island" series which concluded the previous year. As opposed to his usual shtick of just being an emotionally vacant stick in the mud leading man, Ashley also gets to be the doomed creature this time, wearing some ghastly and cheap green wolfman makeup while running around clawing people to bright-red-bloody death. He still has the captivating screen presence of a dried turnip and does everything in his lack of acting ability to tarnish an already dopey B-movie, but future SCTV member/minor scream queen Mary Charlotte Wilcox is just as lifeless, making them an uncharismatic couple to reckon with. At least villainous character actor Vic Diaz seems to be having fun as Satan Himself, but he even lays back on some scenery chewing that would have helped to give the film some much needed pizzazz. This is the movie's major faux pas, (as was common for every Eddie Romero directorial effort), which is to say that it is a listless endeavor with no sense of pacing, no thrilling set pieces, a lazily boring story, sleepwalking performances, and non-existent production values.
Overall: MEH
Low-budget filmmaker Eddie Romero and co-producer star John Ashley churn out another crap Filipino monster cheapie with Beast of the Yellow Night, not missing a beat after the conclusion of their abysmal "Blood Island" series which concluded the previous year. As opposed to his usual shtick of just being an emotionally vacant stick in the mud leading man, Ashley also gets to be the doomed creature this time, wearing some ghastly and cheap green wolfman makeup while running around clawing people to bright-red-bloody death. He still has the captivating screen presence of a dried turnip and does everything in his lack of acting ability to tarnish an already dopey B-movie, but future SCTV member/minor scream queen Mary Charlotte Wilcox is just as lifeless, making them an uncharismatic couple to reckon with. At least villainous character actor Vic Diaz seems to be having fun as Satan Himself, but he even lays back on some scenery chewing that would have helped to give the film some much needed pizzazz. This is the movie's major faux pas, (as was common for every Eddie Romero directorial effort), which is to say that it is a listless endeavor with no sense of pacing, no thrilling set pieces, a lazily boring story, sleepwalking performances, and non-existent production values.
(1972)
Dir - Jean Beaudin
Overall: WOOF
A French-Canadian supernatural mystery and the second full-length from director Jean Beaudin, The Possession of Virginia, (Le diable est parmi nous, Satan's Sabbath), is nonsensical trash that almost gets by on its barrage of head-scratching components. Shot in Montreal, Québec, it has Daniel Pilon in the lead who turns in one of the most braindead performances that you are likely to see. Reacting to nearly everything that happens to him with the excitement of a drugged tortoise, his lack of charisma is staggering, even as he beds more than one lovely lady and becomes the focal point of a secret society of Devil worshipers. We do not get any unholy depictions until the closing few minutes, allowing for the plot to unfold like a bloodless and boobless All the Colors of the Dark, a superior giallo which was released the same year and has a similar enough diabolical agenda to it. A smiling old lady who inexplicably gets goofy music accompanying all of her appearances, sporadic editing, a woman who suffers a random seizure, a cat getting poisoned, and a full-blown Satanic orgy, the movie bounces all over the place but it does so in a lackadaisical haze. Even the most ridiculous aspects come off as uninspired, giving off the aura that there is a better and more appropriately atmospheric movie hiding in here somewhere. Recast Pilon with anybody else, jettison the terrible soundtrack, and emphasis more disturbing set pieces and this may have had a chance.
(1979)
Dir - Piotr Szulkin
Overall: GOOD
After a decade of making shorts, Polish filmmaker Piotr Szulkin crafted his first of several dystopian sci-fi arthouse full-lengths with Golem; a Kakfa-inspired nightmare that is funny and nebulous in equal measures. Set in an undisclosed time period and country, we meet a mild-mannered artificial human who has been let back into society by way of bureaucratic mishap, only to come in conflict with a barren and confused world that eventually seems to bring him into its conformist clutches. Marek Walczewski is the type of every man actor that is well-suited to the material; bald and wimpish, he is solid fodder for being pushed around and frustrated until enough time and disappoint has gone by that he is just another broken-down cog in the machine. The fact that the "machine" in question is dilapidated and noticeably lacking in other individuals provides the film with a sly commentary on where the lack of individuality and expression can lead. At one instance, Walczewski and Krystyna Janda, (looking not unlike Daryl Hannah's punk rock replicant in Blade Runner), excitingly go the movies, only to find small television sets with a fabricated rock concert playing on them, one whose audience of screaming fans is some kind of post-production allusion. The pacing is deliberate, but for fans of political allegory, there is plenty to unpack in Szulkin's crumbling version of an anti-human society.
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