THE TWILIGHT PEOPLE are "test tube terrors, half beast… all monster" on Blu-ray/DVD combo from VCI.

While diving deep in the Pacific Ocean, soldier of fortune Matt Farrell (John Ashley, BEAST OF THE YELLOW NIGHT) is captured by "hunter" Steinman (Jan Merlin, SILK 2) who procures subjects for Dr. Gordon (Charles Macaulay, THE HOUSE OF SEVEN CORPSES), an AMA-expelled Nobel Laureate scientist who is bent on creating a super race of beings who can adapt to Earth's rapidly-changing ecosystem. While Matt is a prisoner, he is not confined to his room and Steinman even encourages him to attempt an escape across the twenty miles of jungle to the sea if only for a chance to hunt him down. Although his fellow prisoner Juan (Eddie Garcia, THE BLOOD DRINKERS) assures him that escape is impossible and to make the best of it, Matt starts plotting his escape while also becoming attracted to Gordon's devoted daughter and colleague Neva (Pat Woodell, THE BIG DOLL HOUSE). While Matt is disturbed to discover a dungeon full of Gordon's half-animal, half-human mutant rejects, infatuated Neva becomes even more concerned for Matt's life even though her father insists that he and the other prime subjects will live on in his super beings but Neva can no longer bring herself to assist him. When Matt witnesses Gordon extracting Juan's brain, he and Neva plot to escape with the mutants. As Steinman and his soldiers give chase, Matt separates from them for a showdown with Steinman with Gordon as bait.

After the Blood Island films, it was just a matter of time before "The Island of Dr. Moreau" got the Filipino exploitation treatment with THE TWILIGHT PEOPLE courtesy of Eddie Romero who had been writing and directing Tagalog comedies for over a decade since the war before Valiant Films (later Hemisphere Pictures) came to the Philippines for "Blood Island" precursor TERROR IS A MAN and a series of war and spy films during the early 1960s along with the vampire film THE BLOOD DRINKERS before the Blood Island trio co-directed by Romero and Gerry de Leon. A long way away from his 1950s matinee idol status and already having moved behind the camera as producer, Ashley is rather stoic and bland here with the more interesting performances coming from Woodell, Macaulay, and Merlin; particularly the latter who worked more prolifically in television while one of his major feature credits in THE LIST OF ADRIAN MESSENGER was uncredited but had him acting in multiple roles under Bud Westmore prosthetic make-up. The then-unknown Pam Grier who was filming the New World Filipino women-in-prison films THE BIG DOLL HOUSE and WOMEN IN CAGES the same year has her recognizable features hidden under creature make-up and fangs as she does little more than paws and claws to dubbed-in panther roars. Ken Metcalfe (TNT JACKSON), who handled local casting on a number of movies shot in the Philippines like APOCALYPSE NOW and HAMBURGER HILL while also acting in and writing some of the exploitation efforts of Cirio H. Santiago, plays antelope man Kuzma while sound man Tony Gosalvez (NIGHT OF THE COBRA WOMAN) spreads his wings as Daro the Bat Man along with a wolf woman and a rape-happy ape man. The mutants are largely background figures for the first two acts of the film, and the extended ten minute segment during the third act in which they attempt to socialize and get into fights that have to be settled by Neva severely cripples the film's momentum. The love story feels rather obligatory, but the film is even bolder in suggesting a homoerotic motivation for Steinman wanting to hunt down Matt and Neva exasperated by Matt wanting to split up with her and the mutants during the escape as much to divert Steinman from them as to honor his promise to kill the other man. While there is plenty of gunfire during the climax, there are also some satisfying juicy attacks by the mutants on Steinman's guards with some torn-open throats and a clawed-out eye. The score consists of library tracks from KPM Records including Alan Parker's "Hippy" which was not only regularly utilized on NFL films in the 1970s but was also used on the title sequences for the US version of Sergio Martino's TORSO and Leon Klimovsky's NIGHT OF THE WALKING DEAD (aka STRANGE LOVE OF THE VAMPIRES).

Released theatrically by Dimension Pictures – with the associate producer and Woolner brothers executive producer credits appearing to have been added in since they do not match the rest of the credits in font or animation – THE TWILIGHT PEOPLE first came to VHS in 1982 from Charles Band's Cult Video in a slipcover that reproduced the film's poster art followed by a mid-1980s VCI clamshell edition while Direct Video released a possibly unauthorized edition retitled BEASTS – the same company also put out the Filipino-lensed THE THIRSTY DEAD as BLOOD HUNT. VCI re-released the film on slipcover VHS in 1999 followed by a 2000 DVD edition utilizing the same master with some additional smeary DNR. Mastered from a 2K scan of the original camera negative, VCI's 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.78:1 widescreen Blu-ray is a definite improvement over what has come before but it is still problematic. Detail overall gets an uptick, with the improvement most noticeable during the opening when the film cuts back and forth between the stock footage underwater and the original footage. Colors can be rich with the blues particularly vivid along with some green gels, but the color correction is inconsistent with color temperature of the film and the lighting sources leaving some scenes tinged in yellow (which does no favors for Merlin's blonde dye job and tanned skin) or skewed towards blue while some skintones are tinged lightly with green (which looks particularly unnatural in contrast the beautiful emerald gel lighting of the dungeon scenes). The brightness levels are also inconsistent from shot to shot with dull highlights and shadows that range from black to greyish sometimes between reverse angles. Some murky night-for-night shots clash severely with day-for-night cutaways while some staining makes some shots look like they have only been retimed on the edges and the third reel has a stripe of fading on the right side of the frame for the first few minutes. It is more than watchable by VCI's erratic standard but other parties might have done better with the same source materials. The LPCM 2.0 mono track is good when the original mix is good while some uneven mixing levels result in a scene or two with low voices and amplified hiss. Optional English SDH subtitles are also included.