Ugh...so much yellow...
You've gotta feel bad for the Philippines. Every movie I've ever seen from this country has sucked, sucked, sucked. Okay, so I've only seen one, before this one, and this one doesn't suck nearly as hard as Crocodile, but still, it's bad. It took about four sittings to get through this one.
There's a big yellow snake on the cover, but you won't see one in this movie. Instead, you see a chubby Filipino (I never understood why "Philippines" starts with a "ph" but "Filipino" starts with an "f") who plays Satan. (I'm not sure if the "big yellow serpent" connection is supposed to be a racist dig or a snide dig at said, all I know is, I didn't catch myself thinking of this guy as the big yellow snake until after I'd written and posted this whole damn review, and damn if I didn't feel like an asshole, goddammit, so I apologized and tweaked this review a bit when I brought it over to the Cavalcade Of Schlock, something I damn near never do) Some white guy wanders into the jungle in 1946, and is spared from death by the timely arrival of this uniquely Asian Mephistopheles, who offers him a deal he can't refuse. 24 years later, this guy's still young and spry, but he occasionally turns into a dirt-poor-man's Incredible Hulk.
There's more to the plot, but it's hard to follow when it takes you four days to watch. This guy has the decency to try to pawn off his girlfriend onto his best friend, since it's hard to meet a woman's needs when every six hours or so you turn into a guy in a blue werewolf mask. He meets a blind guy who, natch, does not judge him for the monster he looks like (and doesn't seem to judge him for the monster he acts like either, but I guess he can't see all those mangled bodies either). He seems to be immune to bullets, though...I don't want to ruin the ending, but it does seem to refute the total nonchalance with which he handles dozens of point-blank bullet wounds.
I'm not entirely sure what the title refers to, maybe the fact that the film seems to be shot in as many shades of yellow as the cinematographer could think of names for (urine yellow, jaundice yellow, stomach acid yellow). After all I saw this past weekend, I think I've had quite enough of that color for a while (if you have to ask, yes, it did...uh, come from within), not like I was ever a fan in the first place.
I guess there are a few kind words to be said about this one; that guy who plays the devil has fun in his role, bringing up the oft-ignored point that while we often lament the scarcity of truly good men, we overlook that the truly evil are just as rare. And it does make me feel a little warm and fuzzy inside that even a country with as few opportunities for making good movies as the Philippines circa 1970 can actually scrape up enough cash to make any movie, no matter how bad it is.
Still, this is crap, total butt-wad, worse than stubbing your bare toe on a pile of jagged bricks while running. Written and directed by Eddie Romero, who served as an associate producer on Apocalypse Now. No relation to George.
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