The Twilight People
Scholar, soldier of fortune, hunter and diver, Matt Farrell is also a captive, intercepted underwater and kidnapped by “Dutch” Steinman and Neva Gordon, taken to a remote island where Neva’s father, Doctor Gordon, makes him an offer he cannot refuse, simply because he has no choice, Farrell chosen for his “mental and physical capabilities” to be a participant in “the single most important scientific event in the history of life” as he attempts to move evolution forward to face the challenge of a changing world.
Farrell given the run of the house but no further, armed guards posted at the perimeter, he is able to ascertain that Gordon is in fact the disgraced Doctor Noel Grimsted, winner of the 1950 Nobel Prize for medicine, who vanished alongside his wife Mary, his experiments continued in isolation, a cavern beneath the mansion filled with cages containing half human/half animal hybrids, untamed, non-verbal, but resentful of their captivity and longing to be free and exact revenge.
Released in 1972 and directed by Eddie Romero from a script co-written with Jerome Small and co-produced by John Ashley who stars as Farrell alongside Pat Woodell as Neva, Jan Merlin as Steinman and Charles Macauley as Doctor Gordon with Pam Grier in an early role as Ayesa the panther woman, imprisoned alongside Kuzma the antelope man, Darmo the bat man, Primo the ape man and Lupa the wolf woman, it is little secret that The Twilight People staggers on the shoulders of giants.
An obvious retelling of H G Wells’ The Island of Doctor Moreau as undeniable as the equally uncredited contributions of Trevor Duncan and Neil Richardson, their library cues The Sadist and Approaching Menace better known as the themes to A for Andromeda and Mastermind, playing alongside the work of acknowledge composers Ariston and Tito Arevalo, with a lot of jungle walking and very little dialogue amongst the squabbling escaped animals the soundtrack is forced to do a lot of work.
Doctor Gordon recognised as a proper scientist because he has diagrams of lungs on his office wall, a book on frog anatomy and an apparatus for incubating steak in his laboratory, his position is that Farrell has been offered a huge opportunity to benefit mankind, sidestepping the overly complicated kidnapping which removed any choice in the matter, with little attempt made to give the characters, human or hybrid, voice to their arguments which might have taken The Twilight People out of the shadows.
“To think of murder in moral terms is pointless self-indulgence,” Gordon proclaims, and like the director’s Beyond Atlantis, also produced in the Philippines, while the locations and underwater photography of fish and coral are enjoyable they alone do not a film make, and playing like a cheap television movie The Twilight People becomes something of a pointless self-indulgence itself, the most surprising aspect when the presumed lustful triangle with Neva and Steinman both sniffing around Farrell like animals themselves is confirmed in dialogue.
The Twilight People will be streaming on the Arrow platform from Friday 19th September
