NIGHT CREATURE (1977)

MATT’S REVIEW:

Oh my God! I can’t believe this movie exists! It’s so terrible on so many levels and yet somehow managed to grab four ShockJune award nominations! The most inexplicable of these is Donald Pleasence’s Best Actor nomination. Though I am a die-hard Pleasence devotee, in my opinion his performance in Alone in the Dark was much, much better than his work here.

One man who truly deserved his nomination, though, was Texas Tom. Wow! What a performance. Even if his only scene were his inexplicable jumping-up-and-down-to-work-up-an-appetite routine, he still would have earned the nomination. The scene is truly unbelievable—it was as if Texas Tom and his costar had finished reading their lines, and Tom, seeing that the director hadn’t yet called cut, panicked and did the first thing that came into his head. It is totally unexpected and completely wonderful. Thank God for Texas Tom.

Anyway, the movie features Pleasence as a Hemingway-esque writer who loves to hunt. He hires some men to capture an elusive panther so that he can release it on his own private island and hunt it. When his family makes a surprise visit to the island, things go downhill for the old writer. He comes apart at the seams and spends most of the rest of the film in some kind of brooding trance.
I think the reason we like Texas Tom so much more than the Pleasence character is due to the fact that he shouts all his lines, a habit that makes him the only understandable character in this ofttimes-indecipherable movie. Not only is the film stock quite shoddy, the picture also contains one of the lowest quality soundtracks I’ve ever encountered. I only understood about half of the dialogue in the entire film. Oh, it was hard to take!

And the filmmakers never provide us with a satisfactory understanding of the island. Pleasence’s granddaughter, Peggy, spends most of the movie stuck in some kind of scaffolding that seems to be within walking distance from the house. Nothing appears to be hindering the adults from going out to get her. But she stays there for a few nights, frightened, while the adults go about their business, saddened by her predicament, but certainly not going out of their way to save her. My God, people, a child is out there, exposed to the harsh weather of a tropical island and no one is even trying to save her.

Oh, I forgot about the evil panther. It looks a lot more like a cuddly kitten filmed in a series of slow-motion close-up shots. Also, if Pleasence is such a great hunter, why does he need to hire a bunch of guys to catch the cat and bring it to him? You’d think he’d be able to catch it himself!
Not more than ten minutes into the movie, Charlie was so despondent that he double-checked the official ShockMarathon rules to see if we could stop the movie right there and start a new one. I emphatically reminded him that only technical difficulties could cause a cancellation, as was the case with The Howling during ShockDecember. Pouring a bucket of water on the VCR was considered as a way for us to stop watching Night Creature. But seeing as how the machine was essential to viewing the subsequent ShockJune movies, we refrained from such impulsive behavior.

In my notes, I wrote: There is so much wrong with this film. That about sums it up.