La pantera assassina

Writer/race car driver/pilot/big game hunter Axel MacGregor(Donald Pleasence) has been restoring temples in Thailand when a spate of local villages are plagued by a violent panther killing and attacking the residents.

Being given every multi hyphenate job title short of superhero, Axel sets off to hunt and kill the animal. Unfortunately, his legendary brass fails him and he ends up physically mauled and severely ego bruised.

Cut to the present, where he has survived the attack with a bad leg and a worse attitude. Axel hires a local team to capture the cat, and bring it back alive to his private island residence. Rather than any of 1,000,000 logical actions...he released the animal onto the island, and plans to stalk and kill it with a rifle loaded with 9 bullets (one for each of the supposed lives a cat has in popular idiom).Public safety is apparently totally less important than repairing the damage to his mythical reputation.

As it so happens, Axel's family decides to make a once in a half decade visit just then. Idle, spoiled daughter Georgia (Jennifer Rhodes), her independent half sister Leslie (a still sexy Nancy Kwan), Georgia's small child Peggy, and Georgia's boy toy of the moment Ross(producer Ross Hagen).

Billed as a horror movie, it's actually an extremely slow moving melodrama. The extremely well trained cat is always shot in slow motion, and there's only one actual attack in between long runs of meandering dialog.

Shrill Georgia ends up the cat's first island victim(due to an ill considered search for Peggy's pet dog), and poor Peggy ends up sitting out in the rain for what seems like 3 days while a weak Ross/Leslie love story is quickly sketched in, Axel's Ahab like obsession and post death of his daughter breakdown chew the scenery (and ample location shots) to pieces, and Ross attempts to save the day while looking to be more and more like Ross Hagen writing a Mary Sue stand in for himself that's far more accomplished than he ever actually was.

Nancy Kwan is giving nothing interesting to work with,Ross Hagen is a smarmy twit, Peggy as a character is nearly forgotten about, all of the native actors are little more than the help.

Donald Pleasence's fits of overacting are the only non narcolepsy inducing moments in an otherwise indifferent film with a an allegory as awful as the final visual transition serving as a dud of an ending.

Most all of the cast had long careers as working actors, and this film is pretty much the nadir for all of them, skip it and watch a National Geographic special instead. All of the gorgeous panther tracking and location shots, far less of the boredom.

The adult children of a reclusive and eccentric former game hunter, travel to his island fortress for a surprise visit. What they didn't count on was the 200 lbs jaguar he imported to hunt, now on the loose and turning the tables on the hunter. Set against the backdrop of a tropical southeast Asian island paradise, adorned by ancient temples and ruins, it's a picturesque vista that provides some interesting visual diversions both during the attacks, and in the more frivolous activities undertaken by the characters. But a scenic stage can't compensate for poor cinematic qualities and a laboured momentum that revolves around Pleasance's guilt-ridden redemption and vein attempt to re-connect with his distant daughter and the grandchild for whom he now feels responsible.

Pleasance is so-so as the mysterious tortured soul, withdrawn from mainstream society to a tranquil oasis, unable to properly adjust to life without perilous pursuit and risk. To satisfy this deficit, he imports a formidable quarry, but the script goes awry when his daughters make their unexpected visit and bad timing turns to tragedy. Kwan as the down to earth daughter is realistic if clichéd, harbouring deep resentment toward her father's absence as a child. To her credit, Kwan shows herself to be a consummate professional, and playing well below her weight in this drawn-out pot boiler.

As far as a catch-and-kill storyline goes, "Night Creature" is a basic rendition, with limited add-ons and a rather one-dimensional treatment – accordingly, the picture isn't too demanding, and nor is there much sub-text to reveal. The only skill required is to try and determine who's pursuing who, such is the propensity to film almost every action sequence against a backdrop of darkness or dense shadows, which doesn't assist the viewer when the title creature's posture is it's expression, and it's as black as the ace of spades.

The information I gathered together beforehand, from reading reviews and listening to people's opinions, unmistakably taught me to keep my expectations towards "Night Creature" very minimal. Everybody agrees that this is a non-worthwhile late 70's killer animal movie with incredibly poor production values and a whole lot of preposterously unnecessary padding footage. Still I was stubborn enough to continue tracking down a copy of this movie. The concept of a macho hunter obsessed with the combat-to-the-death against an invincible animal predator, taking place on a remote and inescapable island, is undeniably intriguing and potentially very suspenseful. Particularly because the legendary Donald Pleasance ("Halloween", "The Flesh and the Fiends") plays the obsessive hunter, and because the guy in the director's seat is Lee Madden ("The Night God Screamed", "Unchained Angels"), I literally ignored all the negative warning signs and nevertheless hoped to have stumbled upon a genuine hidden. Well, I was wrong … again! "Night Creature" truly is a failure of a film, and neither Donald Pleasance nor the bloodthirsty looking black leopard could do anything to avoid that. The film is irredeemably boring and repetitive sub plots are endlessly prolonged in order to reach the 80 minutes of playtime. Perhaps the formula could have worked as a short film, or an episode in some type of TV-show, but it's too confined for a long feature film and all of Madden's attempts to broaden the concept (like adding a dumb love story or insinuating a psychological ordeal) look just plain ridiculous. Millionaire Axel MacGregor is a self-made man who already achieved many things in widely versatile areas of expertise. Now he decided for himself that he would be the one slaughtering the ferocious Black Panther that already killed several people in a remote Thai area. When the animal nearly kills him instead of vice versa, MacGregor feels like a loser and offended in his manhood. He orders to capture the animal alive and ship it to his own private island, where he intends to continue the showdown. Unfortunately, however, MaGregor's estranged family just planned a surprise visit to the island at the exact same time. I still firmly believe the above could form a fantastic starting point for an exhilarating and suspenseful Man Vs. Animal thriller, but far too many things went wrong here. For some incomprehensible reason, Lee Madden loves to shoot all the action sequences in slow-motion. This annoying little gimmick does not only interrupt the pacing and tension; it's also very pointless because the wildlife footage is unclear & fuzzy anyway. The fake love story between Pleasance's geeky daughter and a chauvinist tour guide is uninteresting and the film is full of illogical twists. The often repeated simulations where Pleasance stoic face transforms in the muzzle of the leopard are completely retarded. Judging by his uninspired performance, Donald Pleasance wasn't the least bit interested in putting energy into this film, so why should we.

Horror icon Donald Pleasence is big game hunter Axel MacGregor in this non-frightening sleep-inducer.

MacGregor is so obsessed with a man-eating black leopard that he has it captured and brought to his private island, so he can hunt it. All goes well until MacGregor's family -including the lovely Nancy Kwan- shows up unexpectedly, unaware of the danger they're in.

Alas, what could have been a tense, terrifying story is instead a bland test of endurance for the viewer.

Absolutely nothing works! Not even Mr. Pleasence or Ms. Kwan can salvage this one...

Like many I was suckered into watching this film thinking it was a horror opus with some sort of demonic black panther (leopard?) stalking scantily clad buxom B movie bombshells through the jungles near strategically photographed Angkor-esquire ruins of Thailand. It is but it isn't, and while NIGHT CREATURE isn't a "bad" movie -- there is some camp value to be had here amongst all of the conversations, and one really good extended cat attack scene -- it doesn't have much to recommend it, aside from Donald Pleasence. Like Peter Cushing or Basil Rathbone he elevates the film beyond the dreck level just by appearing in it.

Dr. Loomis plays a novelist and great white hunter drawn to equatorial Southeast Asia who takes up the challenge to track down a rogue panther that is mauling local villagers on some sort of island/peninsula/water bound isolated location. Predictably, he freezes up at the last moment of truth when confronting the beast and is maimed for life. "Crippled" is the non-politically correct expression. Other round-eyed Caucasian relatives drop by to visit, there is intrigue and romance under the jungle canopy and next to the photogenic ruins, and at some point the panther emerges from the teeming forests to claim the only white woman in the cast. The creature must be stopped lest it ruin the local tourism business, and Dr. Loomis gets really intense, sits around glowering like a madman while knocking back the native booze & gabbering about the past, and finally lures the panther to go mano-a-mano with his wits, slamming the doors at the last second ... and then skarkers. The film concludes with the surviving Americans getting onto a boat and leaving the natives to their doom, which would have been my suggestion from day one.

Filmed in 1978, this is actually one of the "When Animals Attack" vein of thrillers made after the success of crowd-pleasers like JAWS, FOOD OF THE GODS and GRIZZLY. Here the menace is in the form of a sexy trained panther, which means only one thing: Animal rights activists will be offended by how the animal was coerced into performing for the camera. If the movie had been made today the cat would be a computer animation and Ralph Feinnes would have played the Donald Pleasence role, so we can be thankful that the movie was made when it was & by who bothered to show up: It is a forgettable little bit of 70s Saturday afternoon idiocy. It's also funny how the pivotal scenes in the film all seem to involve action being staged with the Angkor-esquire ruins looming in the background. They serve only as a set decoration, whatever relationship the panther has with the ancient traditions that erected the monuments is never delved into, and essentially this is a PG rated (made for cable?) Jungal Trash exploitation film about white people going to the jungles and having all sorts of fascinating adventures while the natives carry the luggage.

What the film needed was some sort of lurid angle that would have produced bared breasts or better yet a blasphemous native sexual rite combined with a supernatural kicker. As mentioned above there's one great scene where the cat stalks a woman amidst the ruins, the final images of Dr. Loomis sitting in the boat with the face of the panther superimposed on him were perhaps the most evocative moments in the production ... aside from an excellent monsoon sequence filmed during an actual monsoon. If it sounds like I am just not getting into the spirit of things here you are correct, the film is plodding, unimaginatively staged, derivative, cheap, and has little to recommend it aside from another unhinged Donald Pleasence performance. Perhaps the most compelling reason to acquire a copy and subject yourself to watching it is that it's completely obscure, out of print, and with no anti-animal exploitation disclaimer at the end, likely to stay that way.

4/10; Worth a look for Animal Attack fans, otherwise you might want to try NIGHT OF THE SORCERERS, at least that one has some breasts.