Horror Extreme Movie Catalog

One the best low-budget horror film. Effects are not bad for its time. Directed by the great Jackie Kong, the guy who gave us Blood Diner.

When it comes to cult movies you'll be hard pressed to find a bigger fan than me. While I do enjoy mainstream movies ever since I was a child I always favored cult flicks. What most seem to write off as trash I see the greatness in. But The Being was pretty much for me a complete waste of time. I do understand the appeal; again being a fan of cult cinema I normally like these movies, but The Being was just flat out bad.

I wasn't expecting a brilliant masterpiece; I was expecting a cheesy low budget horror flick that could be classified as the so bad it's good. But instead I simply got a so bad its bad movie. The gore level was actually kind of low. The first murder scene had decent blood flow, but nothing great. Than later a cop gets punched through the back. Not as cool as it sounds believe it or not. Most of the kill scenes are off camera and that is a major letdown. All I wanted was a gory good time, but got a gore-less bad time.

The Being marked the feature film debut by writer/director Jackie Kong and its quite amazing she managed to get anymore work after this. This was her debut, but it was a terrible one. As a filmmaker I hate to trash other filmmakers. It's really not an easy job, but this movie was just an all out hack job. The script was terrible; nothing the characters say is very interesting, which I sort of expected. It was just bad writing and not in an entertaining way. As a director Kong, is even worse. There is no sense of pacing or anything.

The Being was produced and starred Bill Osco who used the name Rexx Coltrane. He also happens to be married to Jackie Kong. Osco had previously been involved in the porn industry and quite honestly maybe he should have stayed there. The one really odd thing is his voice for whatever reason was dubbed and it was dubbed by Stacey Keach. Stacey Keach is actually a very good actor, though he's done his fair share of lousy movies. Keach probably needed the money. He just says the dialogue. There is no emotion at all put into any of the lines.

The Being does have some once popular actors and best known among the bunch are Dorothy Malone, Jose Ferrer and none other than Martin Landau. All must have been rather desperate for work to appear in this movie. I'm willing to bet Landau never mentions this movie.

For me, The Being was pretty much a total waste, the 2nd half of the movie has some fairly decent moments. And what I mean by that is they are so bad they actually sort of work. But really with the exception of a scene or two everything is just bad. By the end I was barley paying attention. The gore level is low, most of the kills off camera and not even entreatingly bad. I can't say I recommend this, but while I hated the movie I do get the appeal it has. Watch at your own risk.