There’s cheese and there’s Philippine cheese. Cheese is mildly fragrant. Philippine cheese is chase-you-from-the-room stinky. Twilight People, for which you see a promo poster above, was made in the Philippines and it reeks to high heaven. But all is not lost—it’s also fantastically funny in parts. The story here is a scientist kidnaps John Ashley to an isolated tropical island with the aim of transplanting his personality into the members of a menagerie of feral semi-humans created as the next step in human evolution.
This scientist is not just mad—he’s a total downer. Nuclear war, pollution, overpopulation, the ecological consequences of civilization—he’s worried about it all. His ugly quasi-humans are the answer. In our opinion, anything that makes Pam Grier look less like Pam Grier is not an advancement of any kind, but whatever—she’s hairy, others are hairy, and they’re the next leap up the evolutionary ladder, so sayeth the script.
Ashley can only think of one way to escape this crazy island, which is by using his lips. He works his charms on the sad doc’s assistant Pat Woodell, who’s the only non-hirsute woman around, and pretty soon her hormones get to simmering and there’s trouble in paradise. We really can’t blame Ashley for going this route. Woodell is spectacular. Too bad the movie isn’t. Think of it as a low budget Island of Doctor Moreau, then watch that film instead. Twilight People premiered in the U.S. today in 1972.
