‘Animal desires… Human lust. Test Tube terrors… Half beast… all monster.’
Twilight People is a 1972 Filipino/American sci-fi action horror film about a mad scientist and his half-animal, half-human creations. Promoted as The Twilight People
Directed by Eddie Romero (Beast of the Yellow Night; Beast of Blood; Brides of Blood) from a screenplay co-written with Jerome Small, based loosely (uncredited)on H.G. Wells’ novel The Island of Doctor Moreau.
The movie stars John Ashley and in an early film appearance, Pam Grier (Bones; The Vindicator; Scream Blacula Scream).
The film was originally made for New World Pictures, then run by Roger Corman and Lawrence Woolner. Corman, Wollner and actor/producer Ashley came up with the idea of making a modern-day version of The Island of Doctor Moreau combined with The Most Dangerous Game. When Corman and Woolner decided to dissolve their partnership, Woolner took Twilight People to his new company, Dimension Pictures. The film’s budget was reportedly $150,000.
Plot:
While diving, Matt Farrell (John Ashley) is kidnapped by Neva Gordon (Pat Woodell) and Steinman (Jan Merlin) and taken to an island where Neva’s father Doctor Gordon (Charles Macaulay) is experimenting, trying to make a “Super Race” by combining humans and animals.
The mad doctor’s creations are Ayesa the panther-woman (Pam Grier), Kuzma the antelope-man (Ken Metcalfe), Darmo the bat-man (Tony Gonsalvez), Primo the ape-man (Kim Ramos), Lupa the wolf-woman (Mona Morena) and Doro the boar-man (who is shot down by Steinman while trying to flee early in the film).
Doctor Gordon wants Farrell to be one of his upcoming experiments but Neva begins to doubt her father’s work after a botched experiment on another test subject, Juan Pereira (Eddie Garcia). She decides to help Farrell and the animal people escape…
Reviews:
“Darmo the bat is crappy enough to be worth the price of admission all by himself, and he probably gets more screen time than any of the other Twilight People, even though he’s only rarely the focus of a scene. You have to admire the nerve of a filmmaker who isn’t ashamed to glue cut-up plastic garbage bags to a guy’s arms, and call him a bat-man.” 1000 Misspent Hours
“Fans of ‘C’ movies and drive-in drivel will get plenty to chew on here. The first half is relatively slow, but about 40 minutes in the hilarity and poverty row production values kick in showcasing some goofy charm for those who can appreciate this sort of thing. Schlock lovers need only apply.” Cool @ss Cinema
“It’s dull, it’s got some bad gore, there’s bad make-up effects and, while Ashley and Grier are decent actors, the others cannot act at all.” Down Among the “Z” Movies
“On a more basic level, the man/animals here are just not as scary as the ones in Island of Lost Souls, and all the bloodshed in the world (and there’s plenty in this movie) can’t fix this problem. The scenes of the Bat Man flying around are actually a little better than I thought they would be, though.” Fantastic Movie Musings and Ramblings
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“The makeup for the goat-man (he kicks) and the bat-man (he can fly) etc. is uninspired and unconvincing. My favourite was the briefly glimpsed man with a boar’s head! Pam Grier hits a new career low as the panther-woman.” Clive Davies, Spinegrinder: The Movies Most Critics Won’t Write About
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“Any potential this flick had goes out the window pretty fast thanks largely to the film’s languid pacing. Sure, those Blood Island movies weren’t the finest examples of low-budget made-in-the-Philippines horror, but at least they had their moments. This one is the pits.” The Video Vacuum
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