1959's "Terror Is a Man" was the very first Filipino horror title issued in the US (eventually rereleased as "Blood Creature," the word blood seemingly an obsession with that country's efforts), and set on Isla de Sangre, some 9 years before John Ashley would make Blood Island famous with the trilogy "Brides of Blood," "Mad Doctor of Blood Island," and "Beast of Blood." Directors Gerry De Leon and Eddie Romero were also involved in titles like "The Blood Drinkers," "Blood of the Vampires," "Beast of the Yellow Night," "The Woman Hunt," "The Twilight People," and "Beyond Atlantis." As an early example of Philippine terror, it's generally more atmospheric in black and white, and benefits from the final screen performance of Francis Lederer ("The Return of Dracula"), who plays the mad scientist Charles Girard not as a raving lunatic but an even tempered surgeon who believes in what he's doing on Blood Island, here located roughly 100 miles off the coast of Peru. Though clearly inspired by the H.G. Wells novel "The Island of Dr. Moreau" there is only one creation, a panther being slowly transformed into a man, periodically escaping to ravage the local village until everyone paddles away leaving only the inhabitants of the Girard home to fend for themselves. Greta Thyssen ("Journey to the Seventh Planet") plays the doctor's nurse/wife, Richard Derr the lone survivor of a shipwreck, basically present as a crutch for the lonely wife, offering no resistance to the experiment until the very end. Like the later titles the makeup is quite good though mostly kept in shadow, the creature bandaged like a walking mummy with its facial characteristics still that of a panther. Were it not lacking in incident it might have been a classic but the slack pacing offsets good work from its small cast, the posters comparing it to both "Frankenstein" and "Dracula" (copied fairly closely for Hammer's "The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb"). There was a William Castle-type gimmick on its original release, a warning bell sounding before its most shocking scenes, though on television it only goes off once for a single surgical incision, hardly in the same league as "Eyes Without a Face."
Review of Terror Is a Man
