(Streamed via American Horrors)
Donald Pleasence stars as a famous big game hunter on the prowl for a deadly panther. When the badass cat wounds him during the hunt, he puts a bounty on the beast’s hide. Some local hunters trap it and deliver it to Pleasence’s private island so he can finally hunt it mano y mano. Problems arise when his daughters Nancy Kwan and Jennifer Rhodes come to the island to visit him with sleazy tour guide Ross Hagen (who also produced) in tow.
Basically, it’s The Most Dangerous Game, but with a panther.
Director Lee (The Night God Screamed) Madden kind of goes overboard when it comes to the slow-motion shots of the panther tracking Pleasence. Of course, if he didn’t put every other hunting scene in slow-motion, the eighty-three-minute film would’ve only been an hour or so long. (The attack scenes that occur later in the picture also suffer from too much slow-mo.) Some of the POV shots of the cat’s perspective are good for a laugh, especially when the wild-eyed Pleasence is wallowing in fright.
There are a few off-kilter moments that keep Out of the Darkness from fizzling out completely. My favorite bits were the scenes of Pleasence staring down the caged cat and trying to intimidate it while delivering a crazed internal monologue. The scenes of Pleasence playing mind games with the cat are amusing, but the whole thing hits a brick wall whenever the action switches over to his daughters having sisterly bonding time. I’m a big Ross Hagen fan, so for me, his unique energy made the love triangle stuff between him and the two sisters bearable. Even then, his moments pale in comparison to the oddball shit with Pleasence. If the filmmakers had dropped the extraneous characters in favor of more scenes with Donald and the panther, it might’ve worked.
As it is, Out of the Darkness doesn’t have enough of a body count to work as a When Animal Attack movie. It’s also too weird to succeed as a straight-up hunting expedition drama. I guess it’s just odd enough to function as a metaphor for man vs. animal, but even then, that’s kind of a reach. Still, it’s almost worth a look just for Pleasence’s hammy turn.
AKA: Night Creature. AKA: Devil’s Beast.
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