Monday, December 4, 2017

HALLOWEEN HANGOVER: SUPERBEAST (1972) *


I started to watch Superbeast a long time ago on Joe Bob Briggs’ Monstervision, but fell asleep about halfway through on it.  Ever since then, I’ve been waiting for an opportunity to finish it.  I got my chance when Comet TV played it recently.  I shouldn’t have bothered.  Twenty years or more later, I still had trouble staying awake all the way through.

A drug smuggler goes ape and kills a bunch of people before being gunned down by the cops.  A pathologist performs an autopsy on the body and learns he’s been experimented on.  She then goes off into the jungle to find out what happened to him.  Naturally, she finds a mad scientist who experiments on criminals in his hidden laboratory.  He’s not really mad though; he’s only trying to rehabilitate them.  Sometimes the criminals regress and turn into primitive killers and go traipsing through the jungle.  This happens more often than you’d think, which is why the scientist keeps a big game hunter on hand to hunt them down just in case.  Eventually, the pathologist has seen enough and decides to give the doctor a taste of his own medicine, which of course turns him into a monster.

So, basically what we’ve got here is Island of Dr. Moreau meets The Most Dangerous Game.  If you’ve seen the other Made-in-the-Philippines Dr. Moreau remakes, Terror is a Man and The Twilight People, then there really isn’t any reason to see this one.  In fact, it’s even worse than those dogs if you can believe it.

The only joy comes from seeing the Pilipino Marlon Brando, Vic Diaz turning up as a cop.  Sadly, he is given very little to do.  Even his sporadic appearances may not be enough to keep you from nodding off.

No comments:

Post a Comment