Australian sexploitation that really doesn't have much of a plot outside of being the adventures of a young girl discovering her sexuality and ultimately discovering the power of love. So basically it has the same plot as most romance novels. I'm just assuming this though since I haven't actually read any. It's kind of like the Aussie version of an Emanuelle film except this one didn't spawn a million Italian rip-offs. Many attractive people get nekkind and there's ample lesbianism so if that's your bag dig in.
Well this wasn't very good. I would assume lesbianism was a tad more shocking 50 years ago but watching it these days there's really not much to recommend from this artsy-fartsy pretentious borefest. It's not particularly sexy unless a couple breaking up, then making up and then breaking up again and arguing about their crappy relationship are things that really turn you on.
On the plus side there are a few cool tunes on the soundtrack so if you dig flute jams you're in luck.
There are also some cool thigh-high boots in this that apparently is a fetish for whatever weirdo made this video:
A bunch of prostitutes are kidnapped and sent to an island prison. There's not much more of a plot than that but there is almost wall-to-wall nudity to look at so that's something. There's also a pretty lame gang-rape scene featuring a very young-looking girl which you'd think would be a difficult thing to make in a non-disturbing fashion. Besides being the most naked women-in-prison film that I think I've ever seen this one straddles that line between hardcore porn and softcore. There is not hardcore sex but there is a lot of full frontal vagina on show and fingers in said orifices.
This seems like a less thought out version of a Jess Franco film(which is saying a lot!) and that's due to it featuring a few of his frequent stars Karine Gambier (from VOODOO PASSION and SEXY SISTERS etc.) and Erik Falk (from BLUE RITA and BARBED WIRE DOLLS etc.) among others. It was also directed by Franco's frequent producer Erwin C. Dietrich giving it that familiar Eurosleaze look. A good time for the very non-discerning perverts out there. AKA CAGED WOMEN, PRISONERS OF WAR, ISLAND WOMEN and WOMEN'S PENITENTIARY VII(making this part of a series of women-in-prison films that had nothing to do with each other but were just re-titled when released onto VHS. For what I think is a complete list of these click here.)
Someone made a video featuring the rare non-nude scenes in the movie. Why, I'm not sure but the leather warden(Gambier) is nice!:
Probably what stood out the most to me about this Jess Franco-directed sex flick is the amazing looking sets on view. In what is probably Uncle Jess' most attractive-looking film we are told a yarn about some spy shenanigans involving a strip-club run by our man-hating title character(whose hair seems to be more purple than blue but whatever). There's also an absurd fight scene involving Eric Falk (who all good exploitation film fans should recognize as one of the main baddies in the great MAD FOXES), tons of full nudity, sex with gas-masks, magical green slime that turns men into nymphomaniacs and a fairly absurd plot to hold it all together.
You would think a movie named FOG ISLAND might have some fog in it. Well think again because there's none of that here. Undoubtedly it is cheaper to just reference there being fog and this is clearly one of those poverty row PRC studios low-budget affairs. It's also more of a murder mystery deal than a horror flick. It all takes place in an old spooky mansion, which was a pretty common setting back in the these days. There's a bunch of skulls around and George Zucco plays the main weirdo that invites a bunch of murder suspects to come hang out with him in hopes of getting rich or something. Lionel Atwill is one of his guests. The plot gets a bit convoluted and the crappy choppy print of this doesn't help clear things up. One of those old-timey classics that isn't really very classic.
Director Don Dohler is somewhere down around the Ed Wood-level of film-making and like Mr. Ed I find his films just as charmingly watchable in all their ineptness. This is his very first film and it's pretty ambitious because instead of just one monster on the loose we get 3! You see there's this alien who's transporting his collection of intergalactic zoo animals across the universe and then just happens to crash in the suburbs of Baltimore letting them all loose to roam the countryside and murder civilians. I know it's Baltimore just by all the delightful accents on display. The mayor of the town is played by Rich Dyszel, whose work I've enjoyed over the years in his Count Gor De Vol horror-movie host guise, and he just wants to make sure everything is safe for the new amusement park opening in town. So there's some obvious JAWS influence for ya.
Now the 3 monsters we get are 2 guys in rubber suits(one slimy and one hairy) and a stop-motion dinosaur-type creature, oh and there's also the alien fellow who's the main beady-eyed creep in the poster. This all shows me these guys weren't screwing around when it came to FX-work even if the acting is not exactly stellar. You can tell Dohler was a true monster kid and if you were ever one you'll probably get some kicks from this one.
Dohler did make a sequel, ALIEN FACTOR 2: THE ALIEN RAMPAGE, in 2002 which might be amusing if they didn't go overboard with the c.g.i. nonsense.
I'm not exactly sure why this one gets so much love from every horror fan out there or how in the hell it got 2 sequels. It does have a really good cast including Bruce Campbell, Tom Atkins, William Smith, Richard 'SHAFT' Roundtree and of course big-chinned Robert Z'Dar in the title role. Everyone of these actors has been in way better movies than this though. I guess on the positive side it's a horror movie from the late 80s that isn't full of jokes but that's about it.
You basically get a slasher movie where the twist is it's guy in a cop uniform doing all the killing. Is he a zombie? How does he have super-powers? Why is he killing innocent people? How did director William Lustig go from making something as amazing as MANIAC to this predictable crap? Well if you watch the movie none of these questions are really answered very well. Maybe one of the sequels clears things up. I'm not really curious enough to find out.
There was supposed to be an HBO series that's a "re-imagining" of this film series directed by Nicholas Winding Refn but apparently that hasn't materialized yet. I would imagine with all the cop-hating going on currently it would quite the eye-candy for all you trendy political types.
Not being a super big fan of any of the Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde films I've seen(though DR. BLACK & MR. HYDE is pretty groovy!) I wasn't expecting too much from this one and I wasn't disappointed. It's a Hammer Studios version of the familiar tale so the sets are amazing, you get to see dancing girls underwear and a snake-dancer lady but it's generally all pretty pedestrian stuff.
The Mr. Hyde here is actually a handsomer and less hairy version of Dr. Jekyll he just doesn't have any conscience to speak of which makes him the de facto "monster". Of course the people in Jekyll's life, including his friend Paul(Christopher Lee) who's sleeping with Jekyll's wife, are no great shakes either.
The original U.S. release of this edited some of the harsher language out because I guess Americans in 1960 couldn't handle hearing "trollop" in a theater. AKA JEKYLL'S INFERNO and HOUSE OF FRIGHT
You would think a movie about a heroic figure standing up to an evil gang of no-goodniks would be an uplifting tale that would make people feel proud of themselves or at least offer a little escapism. I guess neither of these ideas were good enough arguments though since this film was banned in Singapore all the way up until this year when the sole surviving print(kept in a fridge by star Peter Chong) was cleaned up and released. Apparently they didn't want anyone to think gangsters existed in their beautiful land.
It's a pretty standard story, obviously inspired by Bruce Lee's popularity at the time, of a noodle-shop proprietor hassled by gangsters until he can't take it anymore and it's revenge city(or I guess revenge country in this case since everything takes place in a very scenic countryside. You get our star taking on a bunch of gangsters, a bulldozer, a guy with a big iron mask and even scalping a guy with his bare hands. Nothing all that spectacular without the backstory but still decent stuff for martial-arts marks and probably the only movie I've ever seen from Singapore.
Lina Romay is best when she plays, as she usually does, a victim of some terrible oppressor(she's also pretty good as a vampiress but that's besides the point). In this Jesse Franco flick she is miscast as the madam of a whorehouse. Luckily she gets herself kidnapped and tortured(by Franco himself as a nasty henchman) right away so we can overlook this casting error. I was expecting a women-in-prison situation here but what we get is a wealthy girl held for drugged and led into the seedy world of prostitution by Miss Romay and company. There's also a ransom plot involving Franco's favorite big, fat fatty actor Victor Mendes. If you watch enough of these films you will encountere the same actors many times. This one even features a returning potty-mouthed bird from Franco's LOVE CAMP. I guess Jess liked the idea of judgmental pets.
This one is fairly middle-of-the-road Eurosleaze stuff with all the expected nudity, vaginas and all on display along with some lesbian romping and rapey stuff. AKA SWEDISH NYMPHO SLAVES(which is also an AKA fro Franco's SATANIC SISTERS for additional confusion)
