Like many other
exploitation-flick purveyors, actor/producer John Ashley and writer/director
Eddie Romero worked in bulk during the ’60s and ’70s, banging out a slew of
crappy pictures about monsters, women in prison, and other lurid topics. Some
are palatable, but many are like Beast of
the Yellow Night, an interminable horror saga about a fellow who turns into
a creature at night. This idiotic picture is sort of a Jekyll-and-Hyde story, sort
of a Satan-worship yarn, and sort of a werewolf tale, but mostly it’s just
confusing and dull and silly. Opening in 1946, the film establishes that
Ashley’s character (who goes by various names), once made a deal with the
devil, as personified by portly Filipino-cinema stalwart Vic Diaz wearing a
loincloth. Upon sealing the deal by consuming human flesh, Ashley gained the
ability/curse to transport his soul into new bodies over the course of several decades.
(In “present-day” scenes, the host body has the same face as the Ashley
character’s original body.) Then there’s the whole shape-shifter bit. Nightfall
causes Ashley’s character to transform into a were-beast of some kind, though
the makeup effects are so shoddy that Ashley looks as if he slathered his face
with green-tinted cottage cheese and a bit too much eyeliner. Given the dopey
storyline, Ashley and Romero would have been wise to bombard the audience with
thrills-and-chills scenes, but instead anemic stalking bits are interspersed
with laughably pretentious dialogue exchanges about the nature of existence.
There’s a reason people don’t gravitate to Ashley/Romero movies for deep
thoughts.
Beast of the Yellow Night: LAME
