Night Creature

Perhaps I should explain that I am one of those people who are willing to sit through the most egregious crap, just to be able to hear Nancy Kwan's charming Hong Kong accent and see her fabulous zygomatic bones. But even for me, 1978's "Night Creature" was tough to get through. In this one, Nancy and a few others pick the wrong time to pop in on her dad, big-game hunter Donald Pleasence, at his private Thai island in the River Kwai. Donald has just released a preternaturally cunning and spitefully ferocious black leopard to hunt and engage in a battle of wits; a creature that wastes little time going after Nancy's half sister... Anyway, this movie is basically junk. Ineptly lensed and directed, with a weak story and little in the way of suspense, it surely doesn't offer much to the casual viewer. And the DVD in question here doesn't help. The picture is fuzzy and scuzzy, revealing a crummy and scummy 16mm print source, and the sound quality is very poor. Still, somehow, a viewing of "Night Creature" does have its compensations. Pleasence's acting is fun to watch, ranging as it does from hypermaniacal to catatonic. The film is atmospheric in parts, the Thai scenery looks nice, and Nancy Kwan looks even nicer. She is 39 in this film--18 years past her yummy Suzie Wong debut--and still looks very beautiful. Heck, she's still a looker TODAY, at 68! But even those zygomatic bones aren't enough to redeem "Night Creature." This is surely a film for Nancy Kwan completists only. Like me

Horror icon Donald Pleasence is big game hunter Axel MacGregor in this non-frightening sleep-inducer.

MacGregor is so obsessed with a man-eating black leopard that he has it captured and brought to his private island, so he can hunt it. All goes well until MacGregor's family -including the lovely Nancy Kwan- shows up unexpectedly, unaware of the danger they're in.

Alas, what could have been a tense, terrifying story is instead a bland test of endurance for the viewer.

Absolutely nothing works! Not even Mr. Pleasence or Ms. Kwan can salvage this one...

A voiceover accompanies and describes celebrated writer and hunter Alex MacGregor (Donald Pleasence) while he and his attendants plod through a Thai jungle during this film's opening scene, as they search for a deadly rogue black leopard that has killed numerous local villagers. Alex is attacked and savaged by the animal, and made permanently lame as a consequence, and his offer of a ten thousand dollar reward for the beast if captured unharmed is soon claimed by successful Siamese beaters, following which the hunter keeps the caged mankiller at his remote palatial home while preparing for a rematch. The purpose of this revived hunt will be for MacGregor to expunge a newly found emotion within him: fear (although his high-powered scoped rifle should be of no little assistance in that regard), and after giving his servants two weeks off with pay, loads his weapon with nine rounds (for the fabled number of lives), frees the creature and limps off alone in pursuit of it. This is an interesting notion for what promises to be a stirring tale of adventure, but then the plot shifts to Bangkok, where are found the two daughters of Alex, Leslie (Nancy Kwan) and Georgia (Jennifer Rhodes with the work's best performance), along with the latter's child, all about to embark upon a journey to pay their father a surprise call. The three females are escorted by a transplanted Texan, a tour guide in the Thai capital and a former lover of Georgia, and he becomes romantically embroiled with her sister immediately after the group's arrival at the vacated MacGregor estate, while the title character is only seen as he threatens the visitors, the big game hunter seemingly having been swallowed by the encroaching flora as he seeks his hardly elusive prey. The matter of Axel's struggle with fear becomes subordinate to his offspring's emotional entanglements, although there are many slow motion closeups of the brute to enliven the action in a film that is bedevilled with serious flaws of continuity.

First of all, if you're writing a review and clearly don't know who Nancy Kwan is and her place in film history, you can forget pretending you know what you're talking about. That said, I agree this is not an award winning film, but it's good entertainment, which as I recall, is kind of the idea behind show business. It's a good made for TV movie, even though it was made for the SE Asia film market. At the time, and as far as can see to this day, every film had a love interest angle. This film didn't show the actual love scene, but implied it with a kiss. In the conservative SE Asian media market at the time, this is not surprising. There definitely could have been more hunting scenes, and the movie did seem hurriedly edited with a lot of choppiness from one scene to the next, but this was a budget film and not a Hollywood blockbuster. The version we see may be the one that was distributed after the Thai censors had a go at it. I don't know. All I can say is that for the $3 I paid for it, I thought it was a good movie with Donald Pleasance and Nancy Kwan, two of my favorite actors, in it. The 2 adult character actors are respected and performed well. The kid was annoying, but aren't they all? For those of you who obviously didn't exist in the 1970s, you really need a better understanding of the different culture and history of America's previous decades if you want to make commentary, and hope to make a career of it, on the films and other entertainment mediums of the time. I do recommend this film.

The adult children of a reclusive and eccentric former game hunter, travel to his island fortress for a surprise visit. What they didn't count on was the 200 lbs jaguar he imported to hunt, now on the loose and turning the tables on the hunter. Set against the backdrop of a tropical southeast Asian island paradise, adorned by ancient temples and ruins, it's a picturesque vista that provides some interesting visual diversions both during the attacks, and in the more frivolous activities undertaken by the characters. But a scenic stage can't compensate for poor cinematic qualities and a laboured momentum that revolves around Pleasance's guilt-ridden redemption and vein attempt to re-connect with his distant daughter and the grandchild for whom he now feels responsible.

Pleasance is so-so as the mysterious tortured soul, withdrawn from mainstream society to a tranquil oasis, unable to properly adjust to life without perilous pursuit and risk. To satisfy this deficit, he imports a formidable quarry, but the script goes awry when his daughters make their unexpected visit and bad timing turns to tragedy. Kwan as the down to earth daughter is realistic if clichéd, harbouring deep resentment toward her father's absence as a child. To her credit, Kwan shows herself to be a consummate professional, and playing well below her weight in this drawn-out pot boiler.

As far as a catch-and-kill storyline goes, "Night Creature" is a basic rendition, with limited add-ons and a rather one-dimensional treatment – accordingly, the picture isn't too demanding, and nor is there much sub-text to reveal. The only skill required is to try and determine who's pursuing who, such is the propensity to film almost every action sequence against a backdrop of darkness or dense shadows, which doesn't assist the viewer when the title creature's posture is it's expression, and it's as black as the ace of spades.