Happy Friday the 13th, Enemaniacs!

For this week’s B-Movie Enema review, what better way to celebrate this once or twice-a-year occasion than to cover a movie about the one person who best embodies Friday the 13th? That’s right, we’ve got a movie featuring the Lord of the Flies himself, Satan! What… You thought I was gonna do that Jason fella? Well, you shoulda learned last October, the last time the 13th fell on a Friday, I’m gonna be a goof about this and always fuck it up. I’m saving Mr. Voorhees for another time.

No, for this week, I’m going to return to the filmography of Filipino director Eddie Romero. The last time we saw a Romero film was the kooky Beyond Atlantis movie. What we’re looking at today is the movie that preceded that movie by a couple years, 1971’s Beast of the Yellow Night. Like I said, this has a bit more… devilish flavor to it.

This features the return of a couple actors who were in Beyond Atlantis. The first is Vic Diaz playing Satan himself. Diaz was very well known in films from the Philippines. The other is star and co-producer John Ashley. As I mentioned in the review for Beyond Atlantis, Ashley had a multi-faceted career in show business. To start, he was an actor and a singer. As an actor, he had fairly steady work for 25 years on several TV shows and movies. For people of a certain age, he’d be particularly recognizable as the narrator in the opening moments of every episode of The A-Team. While he had more roles as an actor, his biggest contribution came later in the second facet of his career as a producer. He served as a producer on The A-Team as well as several other TV series in the 80s. Beast of the Yellow Night was his first film as a producer. He often worked with Eddie Romero in the early days of the 70s. He also cut a deal to have this movie released as one of the earliest releases distributed by Roger Corman’s New World Pictures.

By the end of the 70s, Ashley got an Associate Producer credit for what is pretty much the biggest, most famous movie on his resume, Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now. He got that producer credit because he was familiar with the Philippines and worked as a liaison for the production. To help save money on a movie that had a ballooning budget, Ashley’s production company was used as a loan-out business for various things. One of the things Ashley provided was a handful of Huey choppers like the ones used during the Vietnam War. Alas, after about a year on that film, Ashley wanted to return to the States to go back to managing his theater business in Oklahoma. That was the end of his time making films in the Philippines as the islands were becoming less and less used as a destination for filming.

Beast of the Yellow Night opens in a “Small town in Southeast Asia” in 1946. An older couple watches as a string of headlights come driving into the town. Basically, we’ve got a bunch of police jeeps. They stopped at the Municipal Building, picked up a couple guys, and then they all moved on out of town. Outside of town, the men in the jeeps trickle into the wilderness to recover the bodies of two men and two children, all of which are dead and left rather torn up and bloody. The police hear and then shoot a woman in the woods. I’m not sure if they suspected she was guilty of the murders, but she certainly was out of place in the woods where bodies were found and no one else would be expected to be found.

We then see Joseph Langdon, played by John Ashley, walking through the wooded area and in pretty bad shape. He looks tired, pretty dirty, and likely malnourished. Where he fell to the ground he saw some fruit hanging from one of the trees, but the stuff isn’t edible. He then hears a voice telling him to keep running. The voice then mocks Langdon by calling him a thief, traitor, and murderer. Apparently, Langdon is evil and this voice knows it and wants to make a deal.

Now, if you are watching this movie, and you hear the voice speaking to Langdon, and you hear what these two are saying to each other, you quickly realize who this voice belongs to. Yeah, it’s Satan. You first get the idea when Langdon asks for his help, and he responds by saying Langdon must serve him forever. When Langdon more or less agrees to the terms to be saved, we see a snake, some yellow smoke (which is pretty much everywhere in this forest), and Satan makes himself seen and he’s played by good ol’ Vic Diaz.

The woman shot by the police earlier was there to meet with Langdon, but, of course, she’s dead. Satan dumps fresh meat for Langdon saying that it’s probably the best meat he’ll ever eat. He says he should chow down on it. Now… I’m pretty sure of a few things. First, he dumped that meat onto the ground so you’re now eating underbrush and dirt and bugs with that meat. Second, that shit is raw, man. It doesn’t matter, Langdon goes to town.

The movie then goes about 25 years into the future. At a funeral, Satan watches from afar and then watches a particularly good-looking young woman walk away at the conclusion of the service before going over to the open grave to check things out. Satan speaks to Langdon who appears to be in the grave. This transitions to the story of Philip Rogers and his wife Julia. Philip was killed in an industrial accident that mangled his face. Philip seemingly died, but he began moving again in the hospital bed when Julia requested to see him. When the nurse removes Philip’s bandages over his face, his face has been repaired. This causes the doctor to have a heart attack. With Philip in seeming perfect health, he’s sent home with Julia.

So this is all a little confusing if you don’t fully understand what you’re seeing. Allow me to explain this as best as I can. Langdon is like an agent of Satan. Langdon was a murderer and an all-around bad guy. But when Satan took him on as a servant, Langdon was now tasked with body-hopping from person to person to bring out the worst parts of them. So, he is placed inside someone’s body, and he activates the latent evil that is in that person. Then, Satan will have Langdon, possessing that body, to go and do the devil’s work.

Sometimes, that ends with the person being possessed being killed. That’s why Satan was addressing Langdon in the grave at that funeral. My take on what I saw in that scene at the funeral was basically as simple as Satan told Langdon to inhabit the body of a man who was married and had a family, but maybe he took a lover and he ended up dead after what went down with all that. That’s why there was the young, pretty girl at the funeral getting the evil eye from an older lady who was mourning.

So that’s what the deal is with the movie’s plot. I don’t know if this is based on some Filipino myth or what, but yeah. It gives this movie a little different feel and vibe. It’s a little trippy in some ways because all of this information is not clearly told to you in the first 20 or so minutes. You have to kind of pick up on that yourself. It requires the movie to clearly provide evidence of what’s going on and it also forces you to be able to pick up on those clues too.

Alright, so, as it stands, Langdon is currently Philip Rogers. He’s a guy who had a pretty terrible accident that he supposedly was disfigured and died from. However, he’s very clearly alive and his face is fixed. He also has a hot wife. The love scene between the two of them is… artistically… shot. They embraced, and then it goes to a black box stage with red tinted lighting and she’s tits out and he’s getting all up ons.

Rogers is a bit of a turd. I guess he always was. He throws out his board of directors at work. He then plans to rid himself of Julia. He has a close confidant, his brother Earl. It’s very clear Earl and Julia have eyes for each other. He knows if he straight divorces her, she’ll take off and never be seen again. He at least wants her to have a chance at a good life, so he thinks Earl should make a play for her. After all, he can help the two of them to get together so they both get what they want.

Now, Satan is picking up on some bad ideas that Langdon has about his current situation. He’s starting to like having a face. He’s starting to express some thoughts on the idea of having his own identity again. Satan warns him to not do that. He doesn’t want to escalate this situation but he sure could if Langdon doesn’t get back on the program here.

What’s specifically interesting here is we know Langdon is to bring out the latent evil in everyone he touches. However, in some ways, as Rogers, he’s actually doing people a favor. Sure, okay… He threw out his board of directors so they are out of a job, but they’re rich. They’ll land on their feet I’m sure. Now, he would like to free Julia from her marriage to Roger, but doesn’t just want her to get lost. He wants his brother Earl to step in so she can have a good life, right? Well, that seems a little less than evil. He’s making sure she isn’t completely devastated financially or whatever, and he’s wanting to help get his brother’s dick wet. All the while, both of them will be out of his hair. Win-win-win, am I right? Besides, she’s already not so sure about her marriage to this guy. After a couple months of not speaking to her, she went and picked up some strange while on a trip. But since his revival, Philip has been nicer and warmer and just… different. She likes this version of her husband.

Maybe I need to revise my original take on what’s going on in this movie. Maybe it isn’t so much that Langdon is bringing out the latent evil of the guy he’s possessing. He does say he brings out the evil in those he touches. So now I’m thinking he possesses a body, and then the people around that guy are drug down toward evil by way of Langdon making situations occur that lead to these people doing bad things. He possessed that one guy who we saw the funeral for and he cheated on his wife and the guy wound up dead with the competing women both at the funeral.

Eh, whatever, it’s not really hurting this movie and, besides, Langdon is now a werewolf. Wait… what?

Hell yeah he is! So here’s the deal. Remember when Satan was all like, “I suggest you don’t keep going with this wanting individuality and an identity of your own anymore, Buster.” and Langdon was all like, “I AM A MAN!” and shit? Well, this is what Satan didn’t want to have to do. Langdon’s attempts at resisting his duty as an agent of the devil lead to him turning into a werewolf-like creature.

Bitchin’!

Well, after he turned into a monster and ripped an old man’s arm off before eating his guts and shit, Langdon-monster ran off and eventually got hit by a train. That reverted him back to being Philip Rogers. Now the police are involved. They can’t imagine that a guy’s arm was ripped off, his guts are all spilling out and stuff, and his heart’s been ripped from his chest, but that’s what they find. The coroner wonders what type of tool could be used to scoop a guy’s heart out of his body.

The following night, Philip and Julia are about to get into the business of making love when he suddenly kicks Julia out of the room and tells her to go away for her own good. He changes into the monster again and considers going to the door to eat Julia’s face and guts, but he stops himself and escapes through a window to eat some other poor bastard’s face and guts. That poor bastard happens to be a woman who approached him not realizing he’s a monster man.

The police and other locals chase after Langdon as the monster but he basically kills four or five of the guys before the rest of the angry mob is more than happy to no longer fuck with him. The monster runs off to escape the police and ends up getting assistance from a blind man who has a place for him to hide. This is a nice little nod to Bride of Frankenstein when the monster makes friends with the old blind man.

When Philip Rogers escaped his home after he turned into the monster, he bent bars on the windows. Considering the murderer seems to be extremely strong, and Rogers had an argument with his wife before disappearing, the police wonder if maybe Rogers has a connection to what’s going on. After all, he’s an American. Everyone knows we Americans have bar-bending, face-slashing strength.

The blind guy is an old criminal who became known as The Bandit. When he was captured 30 years ago, he was not hanged for his crimes. Instead, he just was in prison for decades. He is still fighting on, though. That’s because he says he still has work to do. After Rogers says he won’t ever get his soul back, the old man says the soul is the one thing that is never lost. This gives Rogers/Langdon the will to keep fighting back against Satan to retain his soul and identity.

When Rogers gets home, one of the inspectors who is looking for him, Santos, recognizes Rogers as Joseph Langdon. The problem is the records from 1946 were sent back to America long ago. So he can’t prove that Rogers and Langdon have the exact same appearance. Still, Rogers is arrested. The following day, he’s released from prison because there’s just not the perfect evidence to show he’s capable of perpetrating horrific crimes like they saw over the last couple of days, but I have to guess Santos is not going to be quick to let go of the idea that Rogers is indeed Langdon. Besides, when protestors outside the jail get pissy about Rogers’ release from jail, someone shivs Rogers in the gut, but almost instantly, the wound goes away. You see, one of the things about working for Satan is he can’t die. So he got stabbed, but the wound went away immediately.

That does raise a question… Whenever Langdon possesses a body, does he always still just look like Langdon? Or was this something of an accident or Langdon’s doing to resist Satan? Did Rogers always look like Langdon? I have to kind of believe Rogers and Langdon always looked like one another. The reason for this is that his wife and brother didn’t reject him outright when they took his bandage off at the hospital. Although it has also been stated by Julia that she’s not sure who he is anymore, I just took that as he was a cold and distant guy, and now he’s just different. Maybe she meant that physically? But I don’t really buy that either. The scene in the hospital earlier, when Langdon took over Rogers’ body, is just played much more straightforwardly. He was dead and his face was messed up. But then he wasn’t and his face was fixed. That shock alone caused the doctor to have a heart attack. That’s it.

The thing is this movie isn’t overly good at explaining exactly what the rules of Langdon’s job from Satan are. We don’t know if he takes the place of someone or if he inhabits the body. If he just inhabits the body, does he look like Langdon? I dunno. I don’t think that’s the case because Julia and Earl didn’t seem to not recognize him when he came home. The strength of this movie is more the weirdness of the idea. That’s why I wondered if it is based on some Filipino folklore. In most Western media, Langdon would be Langdon but he’s just owned or possessed by the devil directly. Here, this is the job that Langdon does for Satan. He needed help, got it, but to get that help, he had to take on these duties. It’s not to kill people for Satan or collect their souls or anything like that. It’s to make things Satan wants done to be coaxed out of people around Langdon. When Langdon tries to resist Satan’s control over his soul, Satan augments his deal further by making Langdon a bloodthirsty monster every night.

Julia and Philip are going to make love, but night comes and it makes Philip not cum. Instead, he turns into a monster. When she screams, that alerts the police outside. Soon, they are inside and the monster has to escape. He fights through the police and goes to hang out with the old blind man in his little shack. An associate of the old man is also there and the monster wounds him. The next day, the old man and Rogers try to leave the city by way of a caravan but get stopped at a roadblock set up by the government. The pair escape into a field of tall grass, but they are quickly surrounded by police. I’m guessing the police were trained by Americans because they fire with very little order to stop or freeze first.

The old man and Rogers plan to give themselves up realizing there is no place to run, one of the police guys shoots the old man dead. This triggers the transformation into the monster man. Before he dies, the old man’s final words were to Langdon to “Pray for me…” Praying for the old man as the monster man allows for the other detective on the case, Campos, to shoot Langdon dead revealing he has now escaped Satan’s control.

Generally, I actually liked Beast of the Yellow Night more than I expected to. I knew this was a fairly small budget film and I expected a little cheapness to it, ya know? That said, it’s not perfect. The melodrama, while expected, plays off a little more like a soap opera than moments of emotional impact. Still, the movie does movie pretty well, the monster man that Langdon/Rogers turned into is pretty cool. Earlier I mentioned the oddity of the plot and how it feels more like folklore from the Philippines than it does like a monster movie horror film. There’s enough to appreciate here nonetheless.

And, if nothing else, this movie, at just over 83 minutes, movies at a good clip so it can’t really bore anyone.

I guess that basically does it for this week’s review. Tomorrow, on B-Movie Enema: The Series, we return to the world of Bulldog Drummond as we watch Deadlier Than the Male! You can go to the right-hand side of the page to find where you can find that new episode as well as the older episodes on the B-Movie Enema YouTube page, Vimeo, or the Roku app available now for free! Next week, the review will be all about a girl who sends out her deadly spider pets to get revenge in the drive-in classic Kiss of the Tarantula.

Until then, I’m gonna go see if I can get Langdon some kind of sunscreen. He looks like he could really use it.