FTP: Island of Terror (1966)

MARCH 19, 2020

GENRE: MONSTER
SOURCE: BLU-RAY (OWN COLLECTION)

Scream Factory put Island of Terror out in June of 2017, and I won it at trivia that or the following month. I started watching it one night shortly thereafter, but didn't get far before falling asleep, and for whatever reason, didn't finish it the next day or whatever. And then it just disappeared for a while before I finally found it under my subwoofer, at which point I said "Oh good I can finally finish it!" and put it on my shelf... and then forgot about it again. Long story short, it's been almost three years since I started it, so I obviously had to start from the beginning as the only thing I remembered was that I was digging it so far.

"Luckily", like most Americans I suddenly have a lot of time on my hands, so I made it my first "I can't go anywhere so I'm gonna start making a dent in this endless pile of unwatched movies" selection. And I was happy to discover that the rest of the movie was as enjoyable to me as a newly christened 40 year old as the first 30-35 minutes that I saw in my thirties. In some ways it's a bit like a Quatermass movie; the heroes (Peter Cushing, Edward Judd, Eddie Byrne) are all doctors and thus men of science, using their intelligence to stop the threat instead of traditional weapons, and the monster, while interesting in concept, is goofy as all hell in execution. The "silicates", as they're called, are the result of an experiment designed to cure cancer using man-made cells that would attack the cancer in the host's body, but instead the cells became the creatures that are now attacking everyone on the "damn little island" (Cushing's words), which are seemingly invulnerable to explosives and other traditional means of attack.

Unfortunately they look something like a cross between a turtle and an ostrich, with a long "neck" type thing (and a point on the end instead of a head) coming out of a shell that wriggles its way along the ground. Granted, given the way that they were formed it wouldn't make much sense for them to take on a humanoid or traditional "monster" appearance, but I couldn't help but snicker every time they appeared. Also, the filmmakers had to cheat to make them more menacing; they somehow escaped from a completely locked down building, and then later they're able to climb trees and such despite not having any means of doing so. The flipside: they're all over the island, and there's a pretty great shock kill relatively early on when one falls on top of a character who seemed like a candidate for survival. So I can forgive the creative license, because otherwise the heroes would simply have to go upstairs and wait for the things to die of starvation, or keep doing stupid things in order to provide the film with its action.

Instead they do the smart thing! They lock themselves down in a smaller building, study the doctor's notes to find a way to fight them, etc. Cushing and Judd make a good team, too - Judd's a lot younger (five years previous, he was apparently a candidate for Bond) and from the way Judd's character is introduced it doesn't seem like they have much of a friendship (just fellow colleagues) but they banter and look out for one another, and even do small things like help each other take off their doctor's scrubs with a casual familiarity - it's the sort of thing that always charms me. And even with the goofiness of the monsters' appearance, there's no denying that they are indeed menacing, as the body count is rather high by the end. Even Cushing doesn't get away unscathed - Judd has to lop his hand off when a monster starts feeding on it.

Oh yeah, and the monsters suck out the bones of their victims, leaving them a rubbery puddle of flesh. Whatever failings the FX guys had for the monsters, they made up for it with their mushy corpses, they look pretty great for their time. Unfortunately, none of them are on the Blu-ray to talk about it, and for that matter no one else from the movie is either. By now almost everyone from the movie is dead (heroine Carole Gray seems to be the only exception, though she is long retired), so the only bonus feature is a rather snooty historian commentary by a guy who doesn't have much nice to say about it (other than that it's preferable to The Projected Man, which it was released on double feature with), though he thankfully actually has done research about it rather than rattle off filmographies like some of his peers. It's a decent enough listen, but I do wish he'd give it a little more credit than he offers; sure it has some script issues but it's still effective where it counts and offers another top notch turn from Cushing, seemingly relishing playing a charming hero in between Frankenstein movies. It's a "pile" movie I will be keeping, so take that, historian guy!

What say you?

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