"Terror Is A Man" is a sci-fi film with more superior acting, production values and cinematography than one would expect for a low budget film. The film’s fine camerawork, competent acting, its mournful score, and dialogue help to keep the audience’s interest in what might otherwise be in parts a somewhat dull presentation.
Directed by Gerardo de Leon
Produced by Kane W. Lynn, Eddie Romero
Written by Paul Harber (writer), H.G. Wells (novel: The Island of Dr. Moreau - uncredited)
Music by Ariston Avelino
Cinematogrphy: Emmanuel I. Rojas
Edited by Gervacio Santos
Distributed by Valiant Films (United States); E.J. Fancey (United Kingdom); Astral Films (Canada); Hemisphere Pictures (re-release)
Running time: 89 minutes
Country: Philippines/United States
Cast
Francis Lederer: Dr. Charles Girard
Greta Thyssen: Frances Girard
Richard Derr: William Fitzgerald
Oscar Keesee: Walter Perrera
Lilia Duran: Selene
Peyton Keesee: Tiago - the Boy
Flory Carlos : Beast-Man
What If?…..the events of the film, Terror Is A Man were contained in the pages of a book written by one of the characters after the events had happened? Let’s see as we read excerpts from…...
The Beast of Blood Island
By
William Fitzgerald
Prologue
The following account is true and begins with me being a shipwrecked castaway on an island whose native inhabitants had inexplicably fled. It is a story about my secretive host, Dr. Charles Girard and his unholy scientific work. It is a story that also involves Girard’s beautiful wife; his unscrupulous assistant; a female native servant and her young brother.
More chilling and shocking still, it is a story of another mysterious presence on the lonely island in the middle of the ocean – a beastly presence with a bloody murderous intent……….
Read on for more.....
The following contains spoilers.....
………..As fate would have it, I was the sole survivor of the freighter, “Pedro Queen” that was lost during the dreadful storm I described earlier. There was a sudden explosion on board and I was the only one up top. By some kind of miracle I wound up as the sole occupant of a lifeboat that washed ashore on Isla de Sangre ("Blood Island"), 1000 miles from the coast of Peru.
As I lay unconscious in the boat, I was eventually discovered by Dr. Charles Girard and his assistant, Walter.
That night, as I lay in a bed I gradually emerged from the mists that had rolled in and shrouded my mind and briefly regained consciousness where I seemed to recall hearing Dr Girard and Walter conferring about the recapture of an escaped laboratory animal. I remember something about Walter hearing it crying and moaning and questioning whether they would want to have “it” back again.
The next day I awoke feeling a little bit more like a human being again. The wooden bars on my window seemed to reinforce my strange feeling of being almost imprisoned on this little island what (as I was to soon learn) with no boats or radio being available.
I decided to go for a wander around the house only to discover that apart from Tiago, the young native boy, there was only myself and the native servant, Selene in the house. Unable to get any response from her, I then decided to do some exploring. It seemed a bit odd learning from young Tiago that nobody else lived on the entire island apart from he and his sister, the Girards’, and Walter.
Before exiting the house, I spotted a staircase that led down to the black depths of a mysterious basement which I decided not to descend. Had I done so, who knows what dark secret I might have been confronted with that lay lurking at the bottom. I had already danced with destiny enough for one life-time.
Once outside, I eventually came across the rather eerily disconcerting sight of a deserted village. The still-smoldering cooking fires seemed to suggest that the inhabitants had left en-mass and in a hurry!
I was to learn later that the villagers had good cause for their hasty departure. Something had been stalking the villagers. Something had emerged from the depths of the jungle and had killed a couple of villagers before retreating back into the jungle.
With my mind in a whirl and still feeling the effects of my recent ordeal, I almost fell into a pit trap covered with leaves and branches that had been dug earlier by Dr Girard and Walter……...
Chapter 2
……...It was at this time that I first met Frances Girard, the doctor’s wife. Something about her drew my attention and interest. I felt that the attraction was definitely mutual! Still, she was the wife of the good doctor and it wouldn’t do to let my eyes linger on her for too long!
During dinner that night, I toasted my hosts by declaring that “I’d like to drink to destiny or the fates or whatever it was that brought me ashore to your island.” I then discovered that the next supply boat would not be expected for another two months. Trapped for two long months!
I also learned that Dr Girard had been a surgeon and had left a successful surgical practice in New York to conduct his research in seclusion. He felt that he had made too much money and that it was taking him away from what he was trying to do.
According to the doctor, until the previous night the island had indeed been inhabited. The islanders left supposedly due to fear and superstition. His only human companionship now being his wife, who acted as his nurse and Walter who was his assistant. As to the actual nature of the doctor’s work - I was yet to find out.
After dinner was over I began to learn a bit more about my hosts and what was taking place on the island.
Chapter 3
……...When Dr Girard and Walter left to check the traps, I found myself alone with Frances. She informed me about how unhappy she was with her situation and with her husband’s work. She told me that she was “afraid of the darkness and the night” and that she had to get away on the next boat whether or not her husband had finished his work. The strength of what she was feeling could be gauged from her conviction that she would wind up dying on this island. She then appealed to me for help.
I must note at this point that some time later, I came across Frances sunbathing on the beach and the same topic of conversation as the one we had when we were alone earlier came up once again. She told me that she was afraid of her husband and asked me once more if I would help her. It was at this point that we kissed.
Yes, I know. You probably think that I was some kind of a sap falling for the oldest trick in the book. A beautiful blonde dame with a beauty contest body finds herself trapped in a loveless marriage feeling alone, isolated and desperate. She spins me a melodramatic sob-story about her dreadful husband, uses every asset she has to sucker me in and whamo! I find myself moving in on another man’s wife and like the sucker I am I become her lifeline.
After all, Frances seemed to have initially viewed her marriage with Girard as a kind of fairy tale in which she would marry a wealthy surgeon and live in marital bliss on an island. She also knew the nature of Girard’s work. And now it was going all sour for her as she found herself stuck with a man who thought more about his work than he did of his own wife. Then I turned up!
Was I really developing genuine feelings for Frances? Or was I simply allowing lust to lead me away from what I understood to be right and wrong? In that regard was I any different to her husband Girard who as you shall soon see had abandoned his own sense of ethics and morality in pursuance of scientific advancement?
Was I unwittingly entering into another kind of trap - a sort of emotional human bondage? Still, when I moved to kiss Frances again she told me before flouncing away from me that she wasn’t “lonely, just frightened.” Man, who knows what goes on in a woman’s mind?…….
Chapter 4
Girard and Walter eventually returned with a creature secured in a net attached to a pole which they carried between them. As Girard prepared to go down to his basement surgery, he told me that he deliberately used too much sedative on the animal, and had to revive it carefully.
Girard passionately indicated that his work was the most important thing in his life. He had came to the island to work in seclusion and not to have his time wasted. With this barb possibly being aimed at the likes of me, I quickly made some excuse that I was exhausted and headed off to bed.
With my curiosity piqued, however, I soon stealthily made my way down to the sinister dark abode of the basement surgery and witnessed Girard and his wife working on some heavily bandaged creature that seemed to possess an almost human-like form under the sheet that covered its body.
My presence was almost discovered but I found a place to conceal myself. From this vantage point I could see the bandaged creature being wheeled into a cell-like room with a heavily barred door. I could also see Frances staring with sadness and compassion through the bars at the creature and hear her whisper, "I'm sorry."…….
Chapter 5
…….I found myself in Girard’s study where I noticed on a desktop books bearing titles such as, “Phalanges and Hand” and “Osteology.” At this point the doctor entered and instead of chewing me out for having dared entered his private domain, he entered into an interesting discussion with me concerning the nature of his work. According to Girard, “surgery has remained primitive.” His interest was to “bring about the modification of a species” whereby the subject would lose the characteristics of its own species and take on those of another. In order to achieve this, it would be necessary to enlarge and alter the cellular structure of a brain by means of chemicals.
Girard had spent the previous two years surgically transforming a panther into a man and had employed the use of chemicals to enlarge its brain. I later learned that Girard had performed 53 operations on the creature during that time.
He then declared, “I can alter living matter.” I told him that he had given me something to think about….Evolution would no longer take place by means of natural selection but by Girard’s selection! Should human beings play at being God by wielding such power?
By taking me into his confidence, Girard had provided a truly shocking and startling revelation but one that I needed to see with my own eyes. I therefore agreed to sit in on Girard's next surgery……..
Chapter 6
…….My relationship with Frances moved almost inevitably to the next level and a certain religious commandment promptly bit the dust. With a societal admonishing finger waving in my direction, all I can say it was not something that I was proud of and not something without potential consequences for us and others around us. I guess you can’t help who you fall in love with. I just knew that I would have to talk with Frances about this new turn of events. This would inevitably mean having to talk with her husband about what had happened between Frances and me.
My sense of complicity in something that did not square with long held ingrained notions of what is right was compounded by my agreeing to assist Girard with the surgical procedure on an obviously terror-stricken living being.
When the surgery commenced I cannot tell you how fervently I wished for some kind of announcement or even an alarm bell to warn me to close my eyes or look away so I could be spared my first sight of a surgical incision! But what other horror would my imagination have conjured instead had I actually closed my eyes? Besides, if you order someone to look away, their impulse is to take a peak at what is too horrible to see! For many people, there is a certain mesmerizing effect associated with horrific and shocking spectacles that make it impossible to look away.
Speaking of shocking and horrific, I later learned from Frances that Walter had tried to force himself on her in the surgery when she went down to help clean up after the operation. It turned out that Walter knew about what happened between Frances and I on the beach and was intent on using this to have his way with her. Fortunately for her the creature became agitated allowing her to escape Walter’s clutches. Apparently the creature sensed that Frances felt sympathy for it but that Walter was hated and feared due to his mistreatment of the creature………...
Chapter 7
……….The next day, Dr Girard and I engaged in a discussion of his work. What really bothered me the most is that when I gazed into the creature’s eyes, I was convinced that it possessed a….soul! Girard then responded in a triumphant tone of voice, "Then it is a soul that I gave him!" He fervently believed that the creature would be the first of a new race, a man, a truly rational being able to begin a life and build a civilization unencumbered by the baggage of thousands of years of human evolution and development.
My suspicions about the nature of Girard’s work and the effect it was having on transforming his very own humanity seemed to have been borne out by his outburst when he declared, "I am a scientist, not a philosopher. I cannot worry about the moral implications of my work. A tender moment! There will be plenty who will want to do that later."
Girard went onto question why any man should value the life of any other man above himself and ask what are the lives of four that were killed by the creature? He admitted that the instinct to kill out of fear cannot be removed by a scalpel. All that interested him was to “succeed in creating a higher, a perfect man.”
I wondered if what the doctor had created could be considered as being a man. Girard believed that was what he had in fact created, and to prove it, (having already operated on the creature’s larynx) he proceeded to teach the creature to speak the word, "man." To my utter amazement, it managed to utter the word, “man.”
Chapter 8
Suddenly our wonder at what lay before us, was shattered by the entrance of that fool, Walter. At the sight of this….man, the creature became enraged. The poor creature was soon subdued when Walter’s burning torch came into contact with its bandages and coverings which caught alight.
“No more of an animal than you are!” Walter certainly proved those words of Dr Girard’s to be true by pulling a gun on Frances and me after I slugged him for mouthing off and acting like an hysterical fool. Walter then returned to the lab with the gun intent on killing the creature but it managed to break free of its restraints, and employed its new (clawed) hands to murderous use……...
As if on cue, the house's generator failed, plunging everything into darkness. After the creature fled the house and made it outside, Girard and I set out to re-capture or kill it.
In the meantime, it turned out that Selene went in search of Tiago but managed to cross paths outside the house with the creature which mauled and killed her. I carried her lifeless body into the house when Girard and I went back after hearing Frances screaming.
It was soon apparent to Girard and I that the creature had come back and attacked and taken Frances. It seemed to me that Girard attached more importance to finding the creature instead of finding his wife.
Finally, Girard and I managed to catch up with the creature who to our horror had a hold of Frances and was perilously close to a cliff edge. The creature seemed to have no ill-intent toward Frances and appeared to be trying to avoid having her come to harm. In fact, he put Frances down on the ground when Girard commanded him to.
Girard attempted to calm the creature down but both Frances and I warned him to keep away from the it. He was so intent on his creation that as he was in the process approaching it he was killed by being thrown off the cliff by the creature. I then had no choice but to act quickly by shooting the creature. The gunshot only wounded it and it staggered away.
For some reason, it was Tiago who helped the wounded creature into a nearby boat in which it presumably escaped. Why had Tiago done this? Was it his youth and innocence that allowed him to truly empathize with and have compassion for the creature’s predicament and true nature? Had the creature recognized this in Tiago, the boy whose sister he had killed?……..
Epilogue
I finally came across Frances on the beach staring out toward the horizon, searching for a sight of the boat. She simply stated, "He wanted to help me."
The ambiguity of those words played on my mind throughout our marriage together. At first I though she meant that the creature wanted to help her – that its humanity had overcome its basic animal instincts and savagery. Could she perhaps have been referring to her dead husband, Girard. Had something human broken through the unemotional and rational scientific shell he had surrounded himself with? Frances never could (or would) explain to me what she had meant.
In the years that followed, I just continued to delude myself that a new sun would rise for us in the form of a continuous dawn of a new day that would be our marriage. Little did I realize that the sun must eventually set.
Without the bubble of our isolated island prison and its tormented and inhuman heart of darkness, mundane real life in the hum-drum real world took over and we just gradually drifted apart, divorced and went our separate ways in search of new sunrises……..
Terror is a Man was shot entirely in Manila, Philippines. The film was theatrically released in the U.S. in December 1959 on a double bill with another Eddie Romero film, The Scavengers. It was re-released to theaters in 1969 by distributor Sam Sherman as Blood Creature.
Terror Is A Man seems to have been influenced by H.G. Wells novel,"The Island of Doctor Moreau." Unlike the latter story, in Terror is a Man there is only one single victim of scientific experimentation. We therefore don’t have a sense of any kind of society being developed among a collection of new beings. We are left with a creature who is a victim we can feel sympathy for but one that appears to behave like the creatures we are familiar with in "Frankenstein" and “The Mummy.”
The fine direction, camera work, music score and black and white photography combine to create and eerie and suspenseful mood and oppressive atmosphere. This serves to prevent the film from becoming too dull as the creature is kept lurking in the background for much of the running time.
The script contains some interesting debates and discussions between Girard and Fitzgerald about the doctor’s project and its implications (see above).
The following contains spoilers.....
Chapter 1
Isla de Sangre
………..As fate would have it, I was the sole survivor of the freighter, “Pedro Queen” that was lost during the dreadful storm I described earlier. There was a sudden explosion on board and I was the only one up top. By some kind of miracle I wound up as the sole occupant of a lifeboat that washed ashore on Isla de Sangre ("Blood Island"), 1000 miles from the coast of Peru.
As I lay unconscious in the boat, I was eventually discovered by Dr. Charles Girard and his assistant, Walter.
That night, as I lay in a bed I gradually emerged from the mists that had rolled in and shrouded my mind and briefly regained consciousness where I seemed to recall hearing Dr Girard and Walter conferring about the recapture of an escaped laboratory animal. I remember something about Walter hearing it crying and moaning and questioning whether they would want to have “it” back again.
The next day I awoke feeling a little bit more like a human being again. The wooden bars on my window seemed to reinforce my strange feeling of being almost imprisoned on this little island what (as I was to soon learn) with no boats or radio being available.
I decided to go for a wander around the house only to discover that apart from Tiago, the young native boy, there was only myself and the native servant, Selene in the house. Unable to get any response from her, I then decided to do some exploring. It seemed a bit odd learning from young Tiago that nobody else lived on the entire island apart from he and his sister, the Girards’, and Walter.
Before exiting the house, I spotted a staircase that led down to the black depths of a mysterious basement which I decided not to descend. Had I done so, who knows what dark secret I might have been confronted with that lay lurking at the bottom. I had already danced with destiny enough for one life-time.
Once outside, I eventually came across the rather eerily disconcerting sight of a deserted village. The still-smoldering cooking fires seemed to suggest that the inhabitants had left en-mass and in a hurry!
I was to learn later that the villagers had good cause for their hasty departure. Something had been stalking the villagers. Something had emerged from the depths of the jungle and had killed a couple of villagers before retreating back into the jungle.
With my mind in a whirl and still feeling the effects of my recent ordeal, I almost fell into a pit trap covered with leaves and branches that had been dug earlier by Dr Girard and Walter……...
Chapter 2
My Hosts
……...It was at this time that I first met Frances Girard, the doctor’s wife. Something about her drew my attention and interest. I felt that the attraction was definitely mutual! Still, she was the wife of the good doctor and it wouldn’t do to let my eyes linger on her for too long!
During dinner that night, I toasted my hosts by declaring that “I’d like to drink to destiny or the fates or whatever it was that brought me ashore to your island.” I then discovered that the next supply boat would not be expected for another two months. Trapped for two long months!
I also learned that Dr Girard had been a surgeon and had left a successful surgical practice in New York to conduct his research in seclusion. He felt that he had made too much money and that it was taking him away from what he was trying to do.
According to the doctor, until the previous night the island had indeed been inhabited. The islanders left supposedly due to fear and superstition. His only human companionship now being his wife, who acted as his nurse and Walter who was his assistant. As to the actual nature of the doctor’s work - I was yet to find out.
After dinner was over I began to learn a bit more about my hosts and what was taking place on the island.
Chapter 3
An Appeal
……...When Dr Girard and Walter left to check the traps, I found myself alone with Frances. She informed me about how unhappy she was with her situation and with her husband’s work. She told me that she was “afraid of the darkness and the night” and that she had to get away on the next boat whether or not her husband had finished his work. The strength of what she was feeling could be gauged from her conviction that she would wind up dying on this island. She then appealed to me for help.
I must note at this point that some time later, I came across Frances sunbathing on the beach and the same topic of conversation as the one we had when we were alone earlier came up once again. She told me that she was afraid of her husband and asked me once more if I would help her. It was at this point that we kissed.
Yes, I know. You probably think that I was some kind of a sap falling for the oldest trick in the book. A beautiful blonde dame with a beauty contest body finds herself trapped in a loveless marriage feeling alone, isolated and desperate. She spins me a melodramatic sob-story about her dreadful husband, uses every asset she has to sucker me in and whamo! I find myself moving in on another man’s wife and like the sucker I am I become her lifeline.
After all, Frances seemed to have initially viewed her marriage with Girard as a kind of fairy tale in which she would marry a wealthy surgeon and live in marital bliss on an island. She also knew the nature of Girard’s work. And now it was going all sour for her as she found herself stuck with a man who thought more about his work than he did of his own wife. Then I turned up!
Was I really developing genuine feelings for Frances? Or was I simply allowing lust to lead me away from what I understood to be right and wrong? In that regard was I any different to her husband Girard who as you shall soon see had abandoned his own sense of ethics and morality in pursuance of scientific advancement?
Was I unwittingly entering into another kind of trap - a sort of emotional human bondage? Still, when I moved to kiss Frances again she told me before flouncing away from me that she wasn’t “lonely, just frightened.” Man, who knows what goes on in a woman’s mind?…….
Chapter 4
Test Subject
Girard and Walter eventually returned with a creature secured in a net attached to a pole which they carried between them. As Girard prepared to go down to his basement surgery, he told me that he deliberately used too much sedative on the animal, and had to revive it carefully.
Girard passionately indicated that his work was the most important thing in his life. He had came to the island to work in seclusion and not to have his time wasted. With this barb possibly being aimed at the likes of me, I quickly made some excuse that I was exhausted and headed off to bed.
With my curiosity piqued, however, I soon stealthily made my way down to the sinister dark abode of the basement surgery and witnessed Girard and his wife working on some heavily bandaged creature that seemed to possess an almost human-like form under the sheet that covered its body.
My presence was almost discovered but I found a place to conceal myself. From this vantage point I could see the bandaged creature being wheeled into a cell-like room with a heavily barred door. I could also see Frances staring with sadness and compassion through the bars at the creature and hear her whisper, "I'm sorry."…….
Chapter 5
The Work
…….I found myself in Girard’s study where I noticed on a desktop books bearing titles such as, “Phalanges and Hand” and “Osteology.” At this point the doctor entered and instead of chewing me out for having dared entered his private domain, he entered into an interesting discussion with me concerning the nature of his work. According to Girard, “surgery has remained primitive.” His interest was to “bring about the modification of a species” whereby the subject would lose the characteristics of its own species and take on those of another. In order to achieve this, it would be necessary to enlarge and alter the cellular structure of a brain by means of chemicals.
Girard had spent the previous two years surgically transforming a panther into a man and had employed the use of chemicals to enlarge its brain. I later learned that Girard had performed 53 operations on the creature during that time.
He then declared, “I can alter living matter.” I told him that he had given me something to think about….Evolution would no longer take place by means of natural selection but by Girard’s selection! Should human beings play at being God by wielding such power?
By taking me into his confidence, Girard had provided a truly shocking and startling revelation but one that I needed to see with my own eyes. I therefore agreed to sit in on Girard's next surgery……..
Chapter 6
The Experiment
…….My relationship with Frances moved almost inevitably to the next level and a certain religious commandment promptly bit the dust. With a societal admonishing finger waving in my direction, all I can say it was not something that I was proud of and not something without potential consequences for us and others around us. I guess you can’t help who you fall in love with. I just knew that I would have to talk with Frances about this new turn of events. This would inevitably mean having to talk with her husband about what had happened between Frances and me.
My sense of complicity in something that did not square with long held ingrained notions of what is right was compounded by my agreeing to assist Girard with the surgical procedure on an obviously terror-stricken living being.
When the surgery commenced I cannot tell you how fervently I wished for some kind of announcement or even an alarm bell to warn me to close my eyes or look away so I could be spared my first sight of a surgical incision! But what other horror would my imagination have conjured instead had I actually closed my eyes? Besides, if you order someone to look away, their impulse is to take a peak at what is too horrible to see! For many people, there is a certain mesmerizing effect associated with horrific and shocking spectacles that make it impossible to look away.
Speaking of shocking and horrific, I later learned from Frances that Walter had tried to force himself on her in the surgery when she went down to help clean up after the operation. It turned out that Walter knew about what happened between Frances and I on the beach and was intent on using this to have his way with her. Fortunately for her the creature became agitated allowing her to escape Walter’s clutches. Apparently the creature sensed that Frances felt sympathy for it but that Walter was hated and feared due to his mistreatment of the creature………...
Chapter 7
New Man
……….The next day, Dr Girard and I engaged in a discussion of his work. What really bothered me the most is that when I gazed into the creature’s eyes, I was convinced that it possessed a….soul! Girard then responded in a triumphant tone of voice, "Then it is a soul that I gave him!" He fervently believed that the creature would be the first of a new race, a man, a truly rational being able to begin a life and build a civilization unencumbered by the baggage of thousands of years of human evolution and development.
My suspicions about the nature of Girard’s work and the effect it was having on transforming his very own humanity seemed to have been borne out by his outburst when he declared, "I am a scientist, not a philosopher. I cannot worry about the moral implications of my work. A tender moment! There will be plenty who will want to do that later."
Girard went onto question why any man should value the life of any other man above himself and ask what are the lives of four that were killed by the creature? He admitted that the instinct to kill out of fear cannot be removed by a scalpel. All that interested him was to “succeed in creating a higher, a perfect man.”
I wondered if what the doctor had created could be considered as being a man. Girard believed that was what he had in fact created, and to prove it, (having already operated on the creature’s larynx) he proceeded to teach the creature to speak the word, "man." To my utter amazement, it managed to utter the word, “man.”
Chapter 8
Liberation
Suddenly our wonder at what lay before us, was shattered by the entrance of that fool, Walter. At the sight of this….man, the creature became enraged. The poor creature was soon subdued when Walter’s burning torch came into contact with its bandages and coverings which caught alight.
“No more of an animal than you are!” Walter certainly proved those words of Dr Girard’s to be true by pulling a gun on Frances and me after I slugged him for mouthing off and acting like an hysterical fool. Walter then returned to the lab with the gun intent on killing the creature but it managed to break free of its restraints, and employed its new (clawed) hands to murderous use……...
As if on cue, the house's generator failed, plunging everything into darkness. After the creature fled the house and made it outside, Girard and I set out to re-capture or kill it.
In the meantime, it turned out that Selene went in search of Tiago but managed to cross paths outside the house with the creature which mauled and killed her. I carried her lifeless body into the house when Girard and I went back after hearing Frances screaming.
It was soon apparent to Girard and I that the creature had come back and attacked and taken Frances. It seemed to me that Girard attached more importance to finding the creature instead of finding his wife.
Finally, Girard and I managed to catch up with the creature who to our horror had a hold of Frances and was perilously close to a cliff edge. The creature seemed to have no ill-intent toward Frances and appeared to be trying to avoid having her come to harm. In fact, he put Frances down on the ground when Girard commanded him to.
Girard attempted to calm the creature down but both Frances and I warned him to keep away from the it. He was so intent on his creation that as he was in the process approaching it he was killed by being thrown off the cliff by the creature. I then had no choice but to act quickly by shooting the creature. The gunshot only wounded it and it staggered away.
For some reason, it was Tiago who helped the wounded creature into a nearby boat in which it presumably escaped. Why had Tiago done this? Was it his youth and innocence that allowed him to truly empathize with and have compassion for the creature’s predicament and true nature? Had the creature recognized this in Tiago, the boy whose sister he had killed?……..
Epilogue
“The Sun Will Be Up Soon”
I finally came across Frances on the beach staring out toward the horizon, searching for a sight of the boat. She simply stated, "He wanted to help me."
The ambiguity of those words played on my mind throughout our marriage together. At first I though she meant that the creature wanted to help her – that its humanity had overcome its basic animal instincts and savagery. Could she perhaps have been referring to her dead husband, Girard. Had something human broken through the unemotional and rational scientific shell he had surrounded himself with? Frances never could (or would) explain to me what she had meant.
In the years that followed, I just continued to delude myself that a new sun would rise for us in the form of a continuous dawn of a new day that would be our marriage. Little did I realize that the sun must eventually set.
Without the bubble of our isolated island prison and its tormented and inhuman heart of darkness, mundane real life in the hum-drum real world took over and we just gradually drifted apart, divorced and went our separate ways in search of new sunrises……..
Points of Interest
Terror is a Man was shot entirely in Manila, Philippines. The film was theatrically released in the U.S. in December 1959 on a double bill with another Eddie Romero film, The Scavengers. It was re-released to theaters in 1969 by distributor Sam Sherman as Blood Creature.
Terror Is A Man seems to have been influenced by H.G. Wells novel,"The Island of Doctor Moreau." Unlike the latter story, in Terror is a Man there is only one single victim of scientific experimentation. We therefore don’t have a sense of any kind of society being developed among a collection of new beings. We are left with a creature who is a victim we can feel sympathy for but one that appears to behave like the creatures we are familiar with in "Frankenstein" and “The Mummy.”
The fine direction, camera work, music score and black and white photography combine to create and eerie and suspenseful mood and oppressive atmosphere. This serves to prevent the film from becoming too dull as the creature is kept lurking in the background for much of the running time.
The script contains some interesting debates and discussions between Girard and Fitzgerald about the doctor’s project and its implications (see above).
In terms of good camera work, we have the fine example of the almost continuous sequence shot from the creature’s point of view as it stalked the nearby village, and its killing of two villagers before retreating back into the jungle.
Greta Thyssen who played Frances Girard was Miss Denmark of 1954. She played her role as Girard’s dissatisfied wife well despite being used as negligee and bathing suit wearing eye-candy. Greta Thyssen also played in the sci-fi film, Journey to the Seventh Planet (1962).
The stand-out performances in the film would have to go to Francis Lederer who plays the role of scientist Charles Girard. He is not your usual stereotypical mad-scientist but instead he comes across as a calm, reasonable and even-tempered surgeon who believes in what he's doing. He honestly doesn’t see anything at all wrong about the nature of his work. He is almost relieved at he prospect of being able to share his ideas and what he has accomplished with Fitzgerald. Although Girard’s experiments cause the creature immense suffering, he does display genuine sympathy and fondness for it.
The creature is played in such a way that despite the killings it has committed, we can’t help but feel pity for it considering it had no say in what it became. Its nature is gradually revealed via the make-up effects that at first show bits of its appearance that eventually fall away to reveal more of its combination of human-like and animal characteristics.
Greta Thyssen who played Frances Girard was Miss Denmark of 1954. She played her role as Girard’s dissatisfied wife well despite being used as negligee and bathing suit wearing eye-candy. Greta Thyssen also played in the sci-fi film, Journey to the Seventh Planet (1962).
The creature is played in such a way that despite the killings it has committed, we can’t help but feel pity for it considering it had no say in what it became. Its nature is gradually revealed via the make-up effects that at first show bits of its appearance that eventually fall away to reveal more of its combination of human-like and animal characteristics.
©Chris Christopoulos 2019
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