Insel des Grauens

No this is no masterpiece, it isn't even all that good really. But it is entertaining enough to occupy 72 minutes of your time if you have some time to waste. The acting is fine and the special FX have a certain surprising charm except for the disappointing giant sloth. I enjoyed the romantic interest undertone of the film centering around Carole Lane(Virginia Grey) and the three men who desire her. All in all, this is a fun time waster.

"Unknown Island" is a horror/fantasy film made in Cinecolor. I mention this because Cinecolor is not a true color process but one made up of two colors instead of the three colors in Technicolor. The colors were much more garish and intense than Technicolor and over time, the films tended to look very orangy-red and greenish-blue....and many colors in the spectrum simply weren't present at all (such as yellows and purples). So why did folks use this inferior two-color process? Price! It was cheap to buy...about the same price as black & white film....whereas Technicolor was very expensive by comparison. I mention this because you might wonder why "Unknown Island" looks the way it does.

The story begins in Singapore. A young couple (Phillip Reed and Virginia Grey) approach Captain Tarnowski (Barton MacLane) with a strange proposition. They want to hire him and his boat to take them to an island which supposedly has living dinosaurs!! Apparently, Ted (Reed) saw dinosaurs when he flew over the island during the war...and now he wants to return to capitalize on this. Naturally, bad things are gonna happen, as the story is quite similar to "King Kong"...and you know it's best they leave these creatures alone!

So is it any good? Well, yes and no. The actors are quite good and the moments when they aren't encountering dinosaurs are also good. But the dinosaurs themselves are pretty limp. Many look like plastic dinosaurs and others are folks wearing clumsy dinosaur costumes...and they all look pretty bad. With a bigger budget might have come better looking creatures. Because of this, while the movie is worth seeing, the film is uneven and the dinosaurs pretty lame.

By the way, early in the film a sailor points out Tarnowski for the couple. That sailor is played by Snub Pollard, a gifted silent comedian whose career changed dramatically when the sound era arrived. Now in the talkies, he was no longer a star or co-star but made a career out of playing various bit parts...possibly because he was an Aussie and perhaps his accent stood in his way...though when he spoke, I never noticed his accent being all that strong.

Unknown Island was a film often shown when I was a kid on Saturday morning. Being an independent film it was probably sold to television very early before the big studios started selling off their libraries. For the time the special effects were pretty good, especially when you realize that this is an independent without big studio special effects department available.

Philip Reed and Virginia Grey go into a Singapore dive looking for the notorious Captain Tarnowski played by Barton MacLane. They're looking to charter his tramp freighter which is primarily used by trappers for the wild animals they capture. There's this Unknown Island reputed to have prehistoric beasts on it and Reed wants to photograph them.

Of course with Grey around everybody's hormones go into overdrive. Among those others are Richard Denning who has been to the island before and has barely drawn a sober breath since. As for MacLane he develops plans for the dinosaurs and for Grey.

Not too much research was used as prehistoric animals from all eras get to appear here. Including the giant megatherium sloth which was one of the largest prehistoric mammals. Of course the fact that they were primarily vegetarian didn't get in the way. I suppose they had to learn to eat meat especially with all the T-Rexes around. The fight between the giant sloth and a T-Rex is a beauty.

And of the human players Barton MacLane looks like he's having a ball doing a fabulous job of overacting as a man gone crazy with chronic malaria and drink. The other humans in the cast also get in the spirit of the project.

Unknown Island is not bad for an independent film and it's a lot of fun.

Unknown Island is a low budget adventure-thriller in Cinecolor. The acting is creaky, and the prehistoric beasts look ridiculous. An engaged couple charter the ship of a salty captain to sail to a mysterious island rumored to have live dinosaurs. The man chartering the ship (Ted Osborne) says he only wants to take pictures of the beasts he once witnessed as he flew over the island in an airplane (we are then shown a hilarious "photograph" he took from the airplane of one of the dinosaurs), but we soon learn he is a selfish and slimy type of guy. His fiancee (Virginia Grey) is helping finance the expedition, and seems to want to only take a leisurely part in the trip. The salty captain of the ship (Barton MacLane) proves to be a masher to the lady, and a selfish jerk as he decides he wants one of the beasts to take back for the profit. His decision leaves everyone on the island longer, and in constant threat of danger from the wild, prehistoric beasts. Richard Denning has also once witnessed the horrible beasts of the island, and he plays an alcoholic who learns to sober up during the return to the island. A mutual interest becomes established between his character and the woman. Upon nearing the island we get to witness a brontosaurus pair, which are badly animated stop-motion models. The cast is "menaced" on the island by ridiculous carnivorous dinosaurs that make hilarious vocal noises, and by a sloth creature which is a man in a sloth suit (LOL.) There's even a rubber dimetrodon creeping around the island. The salty captain's workers don't always appear to be the ethnic types they're supposed to be, which is funny as a flub in the film. I will say the jungle setting does look nice, and the Cinecolor is interesting. Bad special effects, flubs, and a general ridiculousness make this movie somewhat laughable and fun to watch.

Given the slick computer assisted graphics seen in Jurassic Park and the like, the sight of wobbly dinosaurs and a gorilla-like giant sloth will likely provoke more laughter than anxiety this days. But, the monsters gave me bad dreams for months-- nay, years!! after seeing this movie. A classic adventure tale of a lost island that has perserved a haven for dinosaurs. Pretty amazing stuff...for a kid in 1948.