Review: The Being (1983)

Directed by: Jackie Kong
Starring: Martin Landau, José Ferrer
Written by: Jackie Kong
Music by: Don Preston
Country: United States
Available on: Blu-ray (Code Red)
IMDb

The Being (1983), the directorial debut of Jackie Kong (perhaps best known for the wacky cult horror flick Blood Diner (1987)), is a charming but pretty standard monster-in-a-small-town movie. Given how zany Blood Diner is, I was kind of let down by how straightforward this was. But I guess Kong was playing things conservatively so she could eventually get another directing job (Blood Diner was, after all, the last movie she did). The mutated monster here in thoroughly gooey and fun, and the small town setting works. But, the pacing is pretty slow and there is not nearly as much bloodletting as you’d hope. The editing is choppy as hell and the characters just spend a lot of the wandering around, occasionally encountering the mutant or seeing some green slime in its wake, and there are no attempts to make the characters anything other than plot-pushers. But there are some effective set pieces and deaths, and the creature effects are gross enough. While I really wish The Being had more of the weirdness of Blood Diner, it’s still a pretty entertaining monster movie. It would make a good double-feature with something like Scared to Death (1981).

Rating: 6 out of 10