Instant Favorite.

Funny, strange, confrontational and subversive, this is one of the most interesting experiences you'll have at the cinema this year.

The acting in this movie is really good.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

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 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.

Perhaps I should explain that I am one of those people who are willing to sit through the most egregious crap, just to be able to hear Nancy Kwan's charming Hong Kong accent and see her fabulous zygomatic bones. But even for me, 1978's "Night Creature" was tough to get through. In this one, Nancy and a few others pick the wrong time to pop in on her dad, big-game hunter Donald Pleasence, at his private Thai island in the River Kwai. Donald has just released a preternaturally cunning and spitefully ferocious black leopard to hunt and engage in a battle of wits; a creature that wastes little time going after Nancy's half sister... Anyway, this movie is basically junk. Ineptly lensed and directed, with a weak story and little in the way of suspense, it surely doesn't offer much to the casual viewer. And the DVD in question here doesn't help. The picture is fuzzy and scuzzy, revealing a crummy and scummy 16mm print source, and the sound quality is very poor. Still, somehow, a viewing of "Night Creature" does have its compensations. Pleasence's acting is fun to watch, ranging as it does from hypermaniacal to catatonic. The film is atmospheric in parts, the Thai scenery looks nice, and Nancy Kwan looks even nicer. She is 39 in this film--18 years past her yummy Suzie Wong debut--and still looks very beautiful. Heck, she's still a looker TODAY, at 68! But even those zygomatic bones aren't enough to redeem "Night Creature." This is surely a film for Nancy Kwan completists only. Like me

The major problem with Night Creature is that the 'creature' is actually a very cuddly looking black panther who clearly was quite well-behaved throughout production. Though he's supposed to be a powerful and deadly force of nature, he actually comes across as a rather dopey circus creature who wouldn't hurt a fly. Axel MacGregor (twitchy Donald Pleasance) is a big game hunter who brings the animal to his private island, where it proceeds to terrorize Socrates, the family Scotty Dog, distaff daughters Georgia and Leslie (Jennifer Rhodes and Nancy Kwan), granddaughter Peggy (Lesly Fine),and macho tour guide Ross (Ross Hagen). The film lacks suspense or chills, and an over reliance on slow motion, point of view shots, and narrative voice-over results in a technically inept final product. To date, this is the penultimate feature from director Lee Madden, whose next film, Ghost Fever, was even worse.