Scorpio Nights (1985) (2024)

Popular reviews

• Review by Philbert Dy ★★★★½

  There is no future for them. It's hard to imagine a future for anyone, living where they live, in the time this movie takes place. They talk of people dying in casual conversation, indicate worry for friends that might be activists, but shrug it off as just part of this world, this new society. They talk about cutting out the vocal cords of cats, so they can have some peace in their godforsaken homes. And they want to stay out of trouble, or so they think. Not much has changed, really.

  They're playing out a facsimile of life, their daily lives just a pattern of noise and motion, their ultimate fate decided long ago, when they were born into this…

• Review by Avirup 4

  Oh boy. Poverty porn? Well there's poverty and there's definitely porn. A nice portrait of poverty stricken part of Manila, a fine exploration of male gaze, objectification of women and represesd sexual desires. Peak erotic cinema. Proper filthy and truly great. That ending, holy shit..

• Review by chad ★★★★½

  i love this film so much??? at the surface, it's just a normal erotic thriller with a low budget. but taking it in a larger context, the claustrophobic cul-de-sac is a microcosm of the country and its patriarchal and macho-feudal system. the male gaze can clearly be observed, but the portrayal of women's sexuality here still got me amazed. the tagline says that the female lead needed to choose between love and passion, but she chose to have both because why the hell not? and that ending... good god. so morbid and haunting. truly a masterpiece.

• Review by Marck Ryan Cidro ★★★½

  Obviously, this film gives me some weird arousal to the point na napagod nalang din talaga ako haha. But aside from its sex scenes, which have been the biggest part of the totality of the film— hindi ko talaga makalimutan yung scene nung mga nagbabasketball tapos natamaan yung isa sa mukha at duguan, at sabi niya "hindi, okay lang" na parang wala lang. So, ball is life in all aspects here hahaha

• Review by Onatsky ★★★★★ 1

  What makes Peque Gallaga's SCORPIO NIGHTS more claustrophobic are the sounds of the radio being played in the background. You have a gut feeling that someone was killed and the political undertone was not intentional. You always see something new. A solid masterwork.

  It wasn't the story of two specific people. Because they were a metaphor. Because they were units in microcosmic study of a cultural sink phenomenon. I think that's proof that from the very beginning we had higher motives for SCORPIO NIGHTS other than purely gratuitous ones. -Peque Gallaga

  RIP Orestes Ojeda.

• Review by Daisy ★★★★★

  ok this was worth possibly giving my computer a virus. what the fuck. what the fuck?? watched for the porn stayed for the excellent execution of what Tolentino described as Brocka’s aesthetics of poverty — “that is, the proliferation of counter-images of abject social realities […]” in response to the Marcos regime’s wholesale censorship of the media and the bogus branding of his New Society. naturally Brocka’s contemporaries would share his artistic sensibilities, and what a very worthy contemporary Gallaga was.

  it’s no coincidence that something like this, something so provocative to the point of being disruptive, emerges just a year before the Filipino people — who themselves lived in a cacophony of noise inside a disintegrating home — decided…

• Review by Noel Vera ★★★★

  You can see what Gallaga was shooting for: a lowbudget version of Nagisha Oshima's In the Realm of the Senses complete with Japanese-style erotic lighting--though I can't help but picture Gallaga in a movie theater, watching Hilda Koronel under her ethereal mosquito netting in Lino Brocka's Insiang and thinking "yes." The difference between Oshima's beautifully crafted political tract and Gallaga's is tension: the wife bored beyond belief, open to try something--anything--new, the student alone in his overhead dorm pining for the lonely wife; looming behind, the figure of the guard with his holstered sidearm.

  criticafterdark.blogspot.com/2020/06/scorpio-nights-peque-gallaga-1985.html

• Review by louthe ★★★★

  Arriving at the early days of the end of Ferdinand Marcos' imposition of his horrific martial law, Peque Gallaga birthed in 1985 a controversial piece of Philippine erotic cinema with SCORPIO NIGHTS. The talk of the town upon the time of its release, it is said to be the boldest Filipino film ever made. And it absolutely owns that title seeing how it astonishes from time to time with its depiction of sex in all its explosive glory that cakes us in its sleaze and smut. It is its conceit, but such conceit doesn't pass off as a gimmick, as a mere attraction to lure viewers who would give in to its eroticism featuring full frontal nudity.

  Eroticism is actually…

• Review by saintlydior ★★★★½

  A very unique and one-of-a-kind Bomba film. With strong social commentary on the objectification of women, poverty, the male gaze, extreme obsession, and sexual desires. It was such a hardcore, erotic thriller that it did shock me to the core. That final act, for me, is one of the best ending sequences in Philippine cinema. Vivamax, take notes; this is how you do an erotic thriller. The closest one to this that I've watched was Silip sa Apoy (to be fair the movie was actually quite good), but even that movie was super flawed and can't come close to the brilliance of this movie. A new favorite.

• Review by ⸸𝕺𝖘𝖘𝖚𝖆𝖗𝖞 𝕬𝖓𝖌𝖊𝖑⸸ ★★★★

  Extreme lust absolutely destroys all those involved but my god, is it not beautiful to watch?

  This movie is filled to the brim with bad decision-making, so much so, that it feels so real. What a mess and what a messy ending.

  Film NSFW Link

• Review by patty ★★★★½

  THIS FILM >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
  VIVAMAX FILMS NOWADAYS, EXCEPT KITTY K7 (2022)

  9.5/10, THIS IS HOW YOU MAKE A BOMBA FILM WITH SOCIAL COMMENTARY!

• Review by John Vincent Quiobe ★★★½

  so this is the male gaze