Kulay dugo ang gabi (1964)

... aka: Blood Drinkers, The

... aka: Blood Is the Color of Night

... aka: Color of Night

... aka: Night Was Bloody, The

... aka: Vampire People

Directed by:

Gerardo de Leon

An amazing crew that consists of two sunglass-sporting vampires, an old woman, a dwarf, a hunchback and a bat familiar named Basra take a carriage out to an old country home. There, they pull out a coffin, remove the fairly-well-preserved corpse of Katrina (Amalia Fuentes in a blonde wig) and hook it up to some weird electronic centrifuge / transfusion machine. The young dead girl briefly wakes up, but just as quickly dies again. The bald, whip-wielding male vampire, Dr. Marco (Ronald Remy), then tells his followers they immediately need to locate Katrina's sister because she'll be needed for a heart transplant! This memorable little opening sequence is made all the more unique due to the fact it's not full color and it's not black-and-white. It's mostly tinted blue, but then suddenly switches to red the moment Katrina revives, before switching back to blue whenever she dies again. If you assume this is a weird, pseudo-arty, intentional stylistic choice from the director, you'd be both right AND wrong. And there's a good explanation behind all that...

Back in the day, the Filipino film industry wasn't exactly swimming in cash and color film stock was expensive, so this "first color horror picture produced in the Philippines" (as the poster puts it) had to cut some corners to get where it needed to go. While a lot of it was indeed shot with actual color film stock, the rest was filmed in black-and-white and then tinted various colors. While this may have been an issue of budget necessity, de Leon deserves at least a little credit for coming up with ways to make the abrupt switch in the film's look actually make some sense. However, this doesn't always carry on after this initial sequence.

We next meet Katrina's twin sister, Charito (also Fuentes, with her natural brunette hair), who's apparently the biggest catch in all the village as she's being serenaded by four different guys when we first meet her. Marco and the others watch from afar and plot to kidnap her but are talked out of it by the old woman - Marissa (Mary Walter) - who turns out to be both Katrina and Charito's mother. However, Marissa had no hand in raising Charito. Instead, she gave her to an otherwise childless couple; Elias (Paquito Salcedo) and Losela (Felisa Salcedo), when she was just an infant and then relocated to another country to raise Katrina.

The hunchback and Marco attack a young lady walking through the woods as it switches from green to full color to violet to orange all within the same sequence! They drain her blood and give it to Katrina who, again, is only temporarily revived. The victim's body is discover nude and discarded in a field, which puts the villagers on high alert. Marissa then lures Charito's adoptive parents to their death and reveals herself to be the girl's real mother; insisting she come and stay with her. Charito passes on her offer at first and returns home, using the spare room to put up village visitor Victor de la Cruz (Eddie Fernandez), his sister Rhona (Eva Montes) and their mother Mawra instead. Everyone becomes involved when Charito's parents return from the grave as vampires and have to be staked by a priest's scar-faced, crippled assistant.

Charito finally relents on staying with her "auntie" / mother in her mansion home. There, she's introduced to the rest of the gang, including Dr. Marco and his "assistant" / blood donor / lover Tanya (Celia Rodriguez). They beat the snot out of Victor when he visits and then kick him out, so he goes to the police (who are of no help) and then the priest (Andres Benitez). Having a crisis of conscience, Marissa finally comes clean to her daughter about what Marco's plans for her entail. She's able to escape the home but is put under the spell of Basra the bat before leaving, who becomes her "master" and can bring her back there at any time.

You can almost entirely dismiss the "plot" here. Well, what little there is of it and what still makes any sense after what the English distributors did to it. It's mostly just your usual bloodsucker stuff with heavy doses of Catholic mumbo jumbo ("Satan will be with us always on this Earth. His power can be stopped only if we take to heart and believe in the power of Jesus!") and absolutely awful English dubbing. Prolific Filipino character actor Vic Diaz was even drafted to narrate the English-version and try to make sense of it. The vampire's minions add a little flavor to the proceedings but it's not quite enough to overcome the endless narrative issues, wonky editing and general incoherence on display. To my knowledge, the original Filipino / Tagalog language version is not available to view and may no longer even still exist so I have no clue what differences there may be between the two versions.

Where this excels, even if by accident at times, is that it's visually fascinating from start to finish. The great moody lighting, combined with fog, shadow and tinting, creates images unlike anything else you're likely to see and many of the shots are truly outstanding in their beauty. On those terms alone, this is a must see for those who place high importance on aesthetics. Though I'm the type who prefers visuals accompanied by a decent script and I didn't get that here, the look of this movie was strong enough to keep me entranced even as the plot was flailing about like drunken fish.

This has another unexpected ace up its sleeve. With his bald head and ruddy skin, Remy may not be everybody's ideal of a dashing vampire count, but he puts a good deal of emotion and heart into the role and is quite effective as the romantic vampire desperately trying to resurrect his love. This does cause another narrative issue, though: We're much more invested in a positive outcome for him than we are for the safety of our (bland) "heroes"! Remy receives some good support from a few of the other actors, especially Walter and Rodriguez. Cirio H. Santiago was the producer.

This was nominated for five FAMAS Awards (the Filipino Oscar equivalent), including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress, with only Rodriguez winning in the latter category. Could you even imagine the uptight U. S. Oscars nominating a film featuring a dwarf and a hunchback kung fu fighting and a mesmeric bat-on-a-string in ANY category, let alone as Best Picture of the year?

Like most other early Filipino genre films that actually are still around, this managed to survive to present day because it was a U. S. co-production. It was first released theatrically in America by Hemisphere Pictures in 1966; sometimes paired with the Poe adaptation The Black Cat. It was then re-titled Vampire People and re-released in 1971 by Independent-International Pictures, who threw it on the bottom half of a double bill with Al Adamson's Brain of Blood. There have been a number of physical releases, including an early VHS from Something Weird, a DVD release from Image and a Blu-ray release from Severin.

★★1/2

Terror Is a Man (1959)

... aka: Blood Creature
... aka: Creature from Blood Island
... aka: Island of Terror

Directed by:
Gerry (Gerardo) de Leon

With Terror Is a Man came a template that would become popular in The Philippines over the next few decades; most notably in the popular sex 'n' gore "Blood Island" trilogy that began with 1968's BRIDES OF BLOOD. Terror came almost a decade before any of those and was made during a time where nudity was a no-no and graphic violence had to be limited, but it still laid down a tried-and-true foundation for the later films. The plots of many of these were almost exactly the same; a handful of characters are on an secluded tropical island that's difficult - if not impossible - to escape from and have to contend with some kind of monster or mutant that's usually the result of a scientific experiment. There was also a familiarity with the casting and characters. The producers would draft a couple of Caucasian actors to play lead roles so the film would sell internationally (American actor John Ashley would corner the market on these parts starting in the late 60s) but fill the supporting roster with unknown locals. The character archetypes here would remain the same, as well: at least one oblivious person who travels or becomes shipwrecked on the island, a sometimes well-meaning, other times evil doctor / scientist living there, his frustrated and often neglected wife (who usually is drawn into the arms of the outsider), a young native beauty, etc., etc. Terror Is a Man is certainly not very original (it's pretty much an uncredited version of The Island of Dr. Moreau), but it's still influential as far as Filipino genre cinema is concerned.

Richard Derr, who'd starred in the big budget end-of-the-world classic WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE (1951) just eight years earlier, stars as our unlucky hero William Fitzgerald. Not only did the freighter ship he was on explode, killing everyone else on board, but his little dingy has floated to an uncharted island a thousand miles from civilization. Unconscious, he's fished out of the ocean and brought back to a house, where he briefly meets the Dr. Charles Gerard (Francis Lederer), one of the only white inhabitants of the island. Others include Gerard's voluptuous blonde bombshell wife Frances (Miss Denmark 1952, Greta Thysson) and his assistant Walter Herrera (Oscar Keesee). There are around 75 native islanders there as well, but they don't stick around very long once the obligatory monster escapes one too many times and kills a few villagers each time it does. The only two stragglers are pretty island girl Selina (Lilia Duran) and her kid brother Tiago (Peyton Keesee), who both work as servants for the doctor.

Several years earlier, Dr. Gerard and his wife (who's a nurse) had traveled there so they'd have privacy and isolation to conduct their experiments on a black panther. Fifty-some experiments later, the panther has taken on almost human form. Its body is now shaped liked a humans, it walks on two legs and is getting close to actually being able to talk. Gerard has been toying around with some kind of glandular hormone that he injects directly into the animal's brain which has sped up the evolutionary process. It hasn't, however, completely tamed the being's animal instincts. Walter, who's something of a sadist, not only beats on poor Selina and forces her to have sex with him, but has also been secretly beating on the animal when the doctor isn't looking; keeping it volatile and on edge. Frances has taken a liking to the creature, pities it and has gotten to the point where she refuses to assist her husband. Because she's also being neglected by Charles, she also finds herself starting to fall for William and vice versa.

Much time is spent dealing with the heated love triangle that unfolds (which is done in a surprisingly mature way) and it's rather lightweight for a creature feature, with minimal action and violence, but I still quite enjoyed this one. The monster doesn't really get to do much of what we expect it to and spends most of its time strapped to an operating table. It's also barely ever shown and, when it is, the lighting is so dark we can't really make out much detail on its face. However, the writing insures it's an interesting enough creation and this actually does a good job making us feel sorry for the poor thing. The three lead actors are also good enough to keep us interested in the non-creature-oriented drama.

Opening the film is a warning from "the management" about "... a scene so shocking that it is necessary to forewarn you." The sound of a bell (which actually sounds like a telephone ringing) is inserted before the scene to warn squeamish viewers to shut their eyes and is then sounded again once the "shocking" scene is over so viewers can open them again. Hilariously, the big ballyhoo is over a bloodless shot of a scalpel slicing open skin! Of course, this early gory moment is nothing compared to what we're used to seeing these days.

De Leon also directed THE BLOOD DRINKERS (1964; aka The Vampire People), CREATURES OF EVIL (1966) and co-directed both the first (the aforementioned Brides of Blood) and second (1969's MAD DOCTOR OF BLOOD ISLAND) entries in the "Blood Island" trilogy with Eddie Romero (another key Filipino director of the 60s and 70s).

★★1/2