Night Creature

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.

Donald Pleasence plays a big-game hunter who strands himself on his private Thai island with a leopard that once almost killed him during hunting.Unfortunately his family including two adult daughters visits him so the situation becomes more complicated."Night Creature" directed by Lee Madden is a mediocre animal attack flick with low body count and the lack of tension.There are few effective horror bits for example the scene in which the cat attacks and kills one of the daughters,but not much happens during 80% of the movie.Still if you are animal attack movies collector you can give "Night Creature" a look.5 tropical rainfalls out of 10.

Like many I was suckered into watching this film thinking it was a horror opus with some sort of demonic black panther (leopard?) stalking scantily clad buxom B movie bombshells through the jungles near strategically photographed Angkor-esquire ruins of Thailand. It is but it isn't, and while NIGHT CREATURE isn't a "bad" movie -- there is some camp value to be had here amongst all of the conversations, and one really good extended cat attack scene -- it doesn't have much to recommend it, aside from Donald Pleasence. Like Peter Cushing or Basil Rathbone he elevates the film beyond the dreck level just by appearing in it.

Dr. Loomis plays a novelist and great white hunter drawn to equatorial Southeast Asia who takes up the challenge to track down a rogue panther that is mauling local villagers on some sort of island/peninsula/water bound isolated location. Predictably, he freezes up at the last moment of truth when confronting the beast and is maimed for life. "Crippled" is the non-politically correct expression. Other round-eyed Caucasian relatives drop by to visit, there is intrigue and romance under the jungle canopy and next to the photogenic ruins, and at some point the panther emerges from the teeming forests to claim the only white woman in the cast. The creature must be stopped lest it ruin the local tourism business, and Dr. Loomis gets really intense, sits around glowering like a madman while knocking back the native booze & gabbering about the past, and finally lures the panther to go mano-a-mano with his wits, slamming the doors at the last second ... and then skarkers. The film concludes with the surviving Americans getting onto a boat and leaving the natives to their doom, which would have been my suggestion from day one.

Filmed in 1978, this is actually one of the "When Animals Attack" vein of thrillers made after the success of crowd-pleasers like JAWS, FOOD OF THE GODS and GRIZZLY. Here the menace is in the form of a sexy trained panther, which means only one thing: Animal rights activists will be offended by how the animal was coerced into performing for the camera. If the movie had been made today the cat would be a computer animation and Ralph Feinnes would have played the Donald Pleasence role, so we can be thankful that the movie was made when it was & by who bothered to show up: It is a forgettable little bit of 70s Saturday afternoon idiocy. It's also funny how the pivotal scenes in the film all seem to involve action being staged with the Angkor-esquire ruins looming in the background. They serve only as a set decoration, whatever relationship the panther has with the ancient traditions that erected the monuments is never delved into, and essentially this is a PG rated (made for cable?) Jungal Trash exploitation film about white people going to the jungles and having all sorts of fascinating adventures while the natives carry the luggage.

What the film needed was some sort of lurid angle that would have produced bared breasts or better yet a blasphemous native sexual rite combined with a supernatural kicker. As mentioned above there's one great scene where the cat stalks a woman amidst the ruins, the final images of Dr. Loomis sitting in the boat with the face of the panther superimposed on him were perhaps the most evocative moments in the production ... aside from an excellent monsoon sequence filmed during an actual monsoon. If it sounds like I am just not getting into the spirit of things here you are correct, the film is plodding, unimaginatively staged, derivative, cheap, and has little to recommend it aside from another unhinged Donald Pleasence performance. Perhaps the most compelling reason to acquire a copy and subject yourself to watching it is that it's completely obscure, out of print, and with no anti-animal exploitation disclaimer at the end, likely to stay that way.

4/10; Worth a look for Animal Attack fans, otherwise you might want to try NIGHT OF THE SORCERERS, at least that one has some breasts.

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

The recent DVD release of this is pretty murky and mediocre at best, but the film is worth a look, especially for animal attack movie fans.

The opening scene is pretty laugh inducing with its POV cat footage, and most shots of the impressive title beast are used at least twice but the film does build some momentum. Ross Hagen, the producer and actor is pretty hard to take in his perky mugging fun lovin' tour guide character but once he gets scared by the cat things improve.

The direction is a big pain in the ass, lots of freeze frames and slow motion--the slow motion is actually effective once you get used to it but the stills and the voice over, especially right at the start have to be put up with rather than learned to liked.

The island setting with its ruined temple and rain is impressive as is the cat action stalking around the ruins or into the house. Good kitty. Cat training and wrangling gets top marks. There is a prolonged kill scene at night which is pretty intense, despite the hard to see DVD quality of it. This kill motivates Pleasance to do maybe his best crying freak-out in a long career. It belongs on any Pleasance fan's greatest hits tape! This is also one of the few in his fistful of film credits where he is the major character in the film rather than just showing up a couple of times quickly as happened more in the back half of his career--aside from the Halloween movies.

He totally unglues in this great scene, it is shocking actually the way it should be, this breakdown scene. From that moment on the film is much better and gains momentum steadily until the ending.

Has to be said that more people should have died for this to be more drama and less melodrama, but the central theme for the Pleasance character does work itself out and his interaction with the other characters is interesting. That can't be said for the interaction of those supporting characters on their own.

Probably unlikely a better DVD will come along anytime soon, and too bad the film didn't have a better director, but again the cat is impressive and if you can put up with serious problems in the first 30 minutes it's worth the ride.