Death Island Cinema
Terminal Island (1973); Island of Death (1976); The Island of the Fishmen (1979)
Terminal Island (1973)
WHERE WE DUMP OUR HUMAN GARBAGE!
Terminal Island starts with a rip-off Johnny Cash theme song and a rip-off Pam Grier protagonist, but in the end has an original note or two and probably even influenced the far superior Escape from New York (1981), not to mention dozens of other “death island” type flicks over the years.*
The year is 1973. It is a kinder, gentler, more progressive society and the death penalty has been abolished. What are we going to do with murderers but ship them out to an island to kill each other in some Lord of the Flies setup? Makes sense, right?
Of course, were this written and filmed today they would have added in a reality show and corporate sponsors so the government weasels could actually make a buck off of the prisoners’ misery and death. More of a Running Man (1987) vibe — also a better movie than Terminal Island.
In this film, however, the aforementioned Pam Grier discount model, Carmen, is dumped on the island where she is a greeted by a handsome and drug-addicted Tom Selleck, pre-Magnum P.I. He’s a doctor who we find out later has been sent to the island for the crime of euthanasia.
They then make their way to an encampment run by the insane and creepy Bobby, the original Star Trek’s Captain Pike, and muscleman Monk, played by Roger Mosely, who will later serve as Magnum’s helicopter pilot and Vietnam war buddy. He greets Carmen with a boot to the head.
Just after this scene, we get the wild and stunning-by-today’s-standards line from Carmen: “I’m gonna wipe out that big n — ger f — got and crush his balls till they turn to Jello.” Though instead of doing that awesome move she just kind of fades into the movie’s periphery.
In Bobby’s camp, the woman are kept as sex slaves; there’s a funny moment when Monk enters their room with his clipboard listing off sex partners for the evening. But there’s very little sex and surprisingly little skin even, with more farm work than fornication.
The women sensibly escape and/or are rescued when a gang of rival prisoners come upon them doing laundry by the river. The women are treated better in this camp, given agency even, and are allowed to show their skills in the wilderness by building bombs and making poison. They live, and die, as equals to the men.
The film is directed by Stephanie Rothman, who got into directing after being an assistant to the legendary indie filmmaker Roger Corman. Over the intervening years, the exploitation films she made for his New World Pictures have come to be seen as a feminist take on the genre.
Island of Death (1976)
A legitimately disturbing experience
Island of Death is Bonnie and Clyde in paradise on a cocktail of acid, methamphetamine, and whatever that fictional drug was that made people insane in Alien Nation (1988).
Jeezus Christo, what did I just watch.
Having recently watched one of the original “death island” movies, Terminal Island (1973), I thought I could go for the next logical step: the actual Island of Death. I did not know what I was in for.
I am rarely all that shocked by media, but this was shocking. Especially with how far it was willing to go, upping the ante with each successive atrocity. Not bloody and gory mind you, or even scary, just ruthlessly fucked up. Also transgressive and boundary pushing and, well, sorta kinda interesting.
The first weird bit is when Christopher, the main guy, calls his mom and has sex with his girlfriend Celia in the phone booth with his mom listening. Pretty weird!
It gets much much worse. The next scene totally unmoors you from anything you were prepared to watch when Christopher happily cuddles a cute little goat and then fucks it and kills it…
What??? This is not at all what most reasonable people expected to happen, even in a low-budget exploitation flick. And that’s kind of the selling point of the movie. You aren’t expecting what comes when Christopher and Celia embark on their next atrocity. I won’t spoil any further horrors, but the rote plot description on wikipedia does the job if you prefer not to subject yourself to the visual miasma.
Wickerman (1973) was almost certainly an influence on this movie, for the weird folk music if not the overall vibe of creepy murderous hippy/pagans.
Island of Death is one of the “video nasties” the half-decent movie Censor (2021) is based on. Red Letter Media does a video on Censor if you’re interested.
I’m done.
The Island of the Fishmen (1979)
Doctor Moreau and Zombies
Compared to the other “Death Island” flicks, Island of the Fishmen is Oscar caliber cinema. In reality, it’s kinda boring Euro-horror with some gory additions.
The Island of the Fishmen (1979) AKA L’isola degli uomini pesce AKA SCREAMERS opens with spooky camera movement and a breathy soundtrack as a shining, animal, black, webbed hand reaches out of a dark cave. We see the words “The Caribbean Sea 1891” and meet a disparate gang of treasure hunters exploring a haunted island. Their greed predictably overcomes their good sense and they are dispatched in short order in amusingly cheap and gory fashion; this is clearly a morality play.
The second group to land on the island is a gang of shipwrecked prisoners and a goodly doctor (presumably our hero); several are eaten by sea monsters before they can make it to shore, while others are finished off on land by monsters or native traps. Bond girl Barbara Bach shows up on horseback and leads the remaining prisoners to some posh dude’s plantation with native servants and a new theme of colonialism enters the mix. Barbara then rides off to deliver some weird milk to the sea monsters and I’m all in.
We then get a plot twist involving Atlantis, some additional character convolutions, amusingly sped up fight scenes, and stock footage of volcanoes.
There are apparently two versions of this film — Italian and American, with the latter titled Screamers and having a good deal of additional gore and zombies that are kind of confusing when you think about them later on. The whole opening sequence I mentioned with the treasure hunters and haunted cave was added on for American audiences — gotta say I enjoyed that bit even if it was incongruous, so I’d put in my vote for that version.