Newt Arnold’s Philippines set chiller was shot in 1966 but wouldn’t see the light of a projector bulb until 1971 when it skulked around on the lower end of double bills being soundly ignored by just about everyone (it sometimes turned up under the title Blood Seekers).
Dancers at The Barrio Club in Manila are turning up dead, their bodies drained of blood through wounds in their arms. Local cop Inspector Ramos (Vic Diaz) is baffled so calls on the services of American sex-crimes expert Adam Rourke (Robert Winston) to help. Rourke wanders the streets of the city in search of clues, initially suspecting the club’s manager, Calderon (Vic Silayan). But further investigations suggests that the killer is mutated monster working for blonde dancer Serena (Yvonne Nielson), a member of a blood cult, chosen as their “golden goddess” (flippantly dismissed by Rourke at one point as “a homicidal maniac with delusions of ancient history”) and blessed with eternal beauty – but only if she regularly ingests women’s blood.
The monster has a certain low-budget appeal, like a cast off from one of the more cash-strapped Doctor Who (1963-1989) stories. Attempts were made in some prints (though not all) to make things a bit spookier by tinting the original black and white print, though whether it worked (it remains sight unseen here) isn’t clear. It would seem unlikely as the film is devoid of interest to begin with and very long on chat and dreary police procedural.
The monster attacks are few and far between leaving us in the company of Rourke plodding his way around Manila looking for clues, talking to himself, wooing the ladies and filling in gaps in the plot in wodges of expository dialogue. Winston looks like he’s auditioning for the role of James Bond, a suave and smooth-talking presence who manages to look the part without ever displaying any charisma or charm. Which is a shame as N.I.P. Dennis’ script is endlessly talky, fine if you’ve got the right actors for the part, a real drag if you haven’t. Fans of Filipino schlock will be comforted by the always reliable presence of Vic Diaz, though the two female leads, American television actress Katherine Henryk in of her two feature films and Yvonne Nielson (who IMDB claims was in an episode of venerable British television institution Dixon of Dock Green (1955-1976) which seems… unlikely) are less interesting in thinly written parts. Henryk is treated particularly shabbily, her character Sylvia being roughed up by an over-amorous Rourke whose chat-up techniques need a lot of work.
Hermos Santos’s lovely black and white photography gives the film a glossy sheen that makes it look a lot better than it really is, lending the film an almost film noir aesthetic in places. What little atmosphere the film has is due solely to Santos’ efforts – he works a lot harder than the film really warrants. The jazz soundtrack, meanwhile, seemingly made up of uncredited library cues, would have dated it instantly to those who stayed awake during its initial Stateside release propping up British import Incense for the Damned (1971).
There’s no reason for the film to have been set in the Philippines at all – it was presumably a financial decision on the art of the film-makers; in the 1960s and 70s it was often cheaper to shoot a low-budget film there with local cast and crew than put one together back in the States – and the story would have unfolded exactly the same had it been set anywhere else. Arnold makes no special use of the setting – it’s just “there” in the background, a few locations to visit when not confined to the studio.
Newt (or Newton) Arnold was primarily a second unit director, in which capacity he worked on films like In the Heat of the Night (1967), The Getaway (1972), Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (1973), The Godfather: Part II (1974), Blade Runner (1982) and many others. His career as a director was less successful – he’d previously made another low budget horror, Hands of a Stranger (1962), a variation on The Hands of Orlac but only had one more film in him, 1988’s martial arts film Bloodsport with Jean-Claude Van Damme.
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