Sunday 22 May 2011

Review #86: 'Island of Death' (1976)

A British couple, Cristopher (Bob Behling) and Celia (Jane Lyle) arrive on a peaceful Greek island to seemingly indulge in photography and the sun. We come to discover that Christopher is a religious fanatic, who, when he's not taking photos and sleeping with his sister, enjoys a spot of goat-raping (goatsploitation?), gay-bashing, and feeding paint to sleazy decorators. He enjoys watching his soon-to-be-victims fornicating with Celia from a distance before flipping out and doing a bit of the ol' murdering. Complete with electronic sound effects, bad camerawork, and terrible acting, this is probably Tarantino's wet dream.

For the rest of us (I hope) this is bottom-of-the-barrel guff. I mean, this is shockingly bad stuff. I like a bit of cheap, guilty-pleasure crap as much as the next film fan, but this is just beyond explanation. Things just don't make sense. The aforementioned paint-feeding scene shows the victim being nailed to the floor, crucifixion-style, with the nails going barely a couple of millimetres into the ground, and then he proceeds to willingly opening his mouth and swallow the paint without struggling in the slightest, just making the odd murmur. Oh, the pain! It's a scene that Herschell Gordon Lewis would probably turn to his assistant and say 'listen, this is just too fucking shit!'. The film is basically this over and over again for 90 minutes, and it stops being funny after about 10. Avoid at all costs.


Directed by: Nico Mastorakis
Country: Greece

Rating: *

Tom Gillespie




Island of Death (1976) on IMDb



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