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Beast Of The Yellow Night
[Retromedia]
1971; color
Directed by Eddie Romero
Starring: John Ashley, Mary Charlotte Wilcox, Leopoldo Salcedo, Eddie Garcia, Ken Metcalfe, Vic Diaz & Andres Centenera
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Beast Of The Yellow Night starts off in "A Small Town In Southeast Asia, 1946," where we see a squadron of well-armed police (or possibly army guys) chasing a bearded, rather hippie-esque looking John Ashley and a miscellaneous Asian chick. She's gunned down in about a second, then we see Ashley wandering around, dazed and coughing while armed guys looking fruitlessly for him in the jungle. As he collapses to the ground a weird yellow mist begins to swirl around him, and all of a sudden we're treated to the one and only Vic Diaz. Diaz plays none other than the Devil and offers Ashley, who's character is named Joseph Langdon, the opportunity to extend his life in return for, y'know, his soul in servitude for eternity. Langdon readily agrees, and then we jump to "The Same Town, Last Month," (The movie was made and released in 1971, so let's just say it's supposed to be approximately 25 years later.) Vic Diaz is graveside just after a funeral of an old Filipino gentleman who's clearly not Langdon. No one can see Diaz by the way because he's having a conversation with the disembodied voice of Langdon as cemetery workers clear the funeral setup. What happens next is even weirder. A woman is told her husband, one Phillip Rogers, has suddenly died but when she and another man (who turns out to be the brother of the recently deceased) walk into his room, he's sitting right there; very much alive although bandaged on and about the face. Apparently Rogers had been "mangled beyond recognition in an industrial accident." The brother demands the bandages be removed immediately, and when they come off, it's Langdon, looking almost exactly as he did in the jungle in 1946. (And also looking almost identical to Rogers in a photo of him and his wife that sits by her bedside.) Everyone easily and readily accepts the man's completely "new" face is the result of multiple surgeries, and all is back to normal. However, it soon becomes evident (to the viewer) that, while it's Rogers on the outside it's Langdon, lock stock and barrel on the inside. He's a cold hearted dude who has clandestine meetings with the Devil in cemeteries but when he tries to assert himself and say he's a man, the Devil puts him in agonizing pain. Later, when Langdon starts to walk toward a church, he not only doubles over in pain, he turns into some sort of horribly disfigured blue-green skinned guy who pretty much slaughters everyone who crosses his path. (Only later, after falling asleep, does he revert back to regular human form.) This happens a few times and eventually Langdon becomes a suspect in some of the murders his monster-self is responsible for. What's worse, he realizes he can't be killed. Desperate for his undead living nightmare to end he befriends an old, blind, formerly infamous bandit. As the police dragnet draws tighter around Langdon, he tries to evade capture with the help of his new friend leading to a final transformation and, to his own relief, a final, fatal bullet after he shows one skimping sign of humanity. (Apparently any display of human nature is enough to overcome the Devil's doings.) Beast Of The Yellow Night starts off confusing and manages to maintain that level of cinematic murkiness for almost the entire flick. And while most movies might be hampered by that, director Eddie Romero makes it work in a weird way and turns it into an unsung classic of Philippine-sploitation.
—the Kommandant
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