Island of the Lost

There's nostalgic charm if you're a fan of the films of this era. I happen to hugely admire the Ivan Tors film and TV projects. This is possibly a script from the 1950s, as it was co-written by actor Richard Carlson, who made SF films with Tors in the 1950s. It's certainly creaky stuff that seems outdated even by the mid-1960s when it was made. It's far more a fantasy than the usual Tors material, which strove for believability and achieved it. This doesn't. The animal sequences, which were always top-notch in Tors films thanks to trainer Ralph Helfer (inventor of affection training), but here they are awkwardly shot and silly. The cast is likable but the script is just not up to making anything work to its advantage.

Wow this one was weird. I didn't know what to expect, but I was in for an unforgettable adventure....Unforgettable doesn't mean good.

All jokes aside I liked it, but It was without a doubt stupid. A scientist sets off to find an island which everyone but him doesn't believe to exist . He knows if he finds it that he will find "the missing link". What he finds is amazing to him and his family, but to me setting at home watching TV I laughed out loud. Killer ostriches with little spikes on their head and an alligator with some weird ass helmet on its head and they're suppose to be prehistoric.

The headhunters could've added so much to the story, but they are about as funny as the "creatures". Fun movie, I love when they're so bad that they're good...this is the epitome of that.

Don't miss this one - wish I could change my vote, I might go as far as 8 LOL

As of May 2011, this film is available on Netflix. Great scenery.

Jose De Vega is also in this film. This was made six years after he played a Hawaiian buddy of Elvis in Blue Hawaii. But he was Filipino and Colombian. So he played various ethnic rolls on television and also in the movies.

Lots of beautiful tropical scenery. But I keep remembering this was filmed in the area of West Palm Beach, FL. I am not sure why I ordered this DVD. It could have been because of Ivan Tors. He was the producer of Flipper. So all of the underwater scenes and "trained seal" scenes might have a familiar look about them. Only this time, there is a seal instead of Flipper.

Luke Halpin from Flipper is also a son in this flick. Not much of a part, though.

I saw this on late-night television when I was a boy. I remember telling my older brother that the only realistic actor was the wooden sailboat at the beginning. He laughed and said there must be something good in the rest of the film. I replied, "Well the sailboat makes a brief reappearance, as wreckage." In the many decades since, I had long forgotten the name of this gem. A decade ago, much like looking up a High School girlfriend, I searched Google, probably using terms like "Wrecked sailboat movie". That gave this title as a likely candidate, but I was not sure. And today, on this fine day, I looked up the title and found a bootleg on the intertube. What joy, this is that same rotten film from my youth. And it's even worse than I remembered. Interesting to see it is "outside art' from the Flipper TV show people. It gives me some appreciation for Roger Corman and the Troma gang. Maybe living in LA lets some talent in by osmosis, there was not much in Florida or the Bahamas, at least not in 1967.

I have always had an affinity for movies. I would always watch them to the end, even the bad ones. This movie was so bad, I finally learned some movies are unwatchable. Indeed, just a couple days ago I switched off Triangle of Sadness, which is far worse than this movie.

When I was a boy, you had to wait until 3:00 AM to see a low budget movie. Now they are just a click or two away.

Richard Greene is certainly a man who believes in family togetherness. He's an anthropologist who believes that somewhere in the vast Pacific there is a chain of undiscovered islands. Remember this is 1967 and by that time we and the Russians have had some men who've circled the globe and I'd think that from their vantage point they might have seen something that had hitherto been undiscovered. Anyway he packs his family which consists of his two daughters, a son, and two research assistants and goes off to the South Seas. At this point this actually does sound like Sterling Hayden who chucked his movie career for just such a venture.

When they get to the South Seas, they get themselves caught in the Pacific equivalent of the Bermuda Triangle. A lot of unexplained magnetic activity causes their compass to go haywire and Greene and the family are stranded on the Island of the Lost.

This is not any kind of island Gilligan would have found hospitable. Greene finds all kinds of strange exotic creatures, killer ostriches, saber tooth dogs and miniature prehistoric Dimetrodons. The family has to battle all of them and some hostile natives. There last encounter with unfriendly creatures however is when Greene and assistant Mart Hulswit go diving and meet some unfriendly garden variety sharks.

I'm still trying to figure why this maroon would take his family on such a dangerous trip, one that in fact turned out to be as dangerous as it was. But Island of the Lost isn't that good a film to be worried about it.

The film was produced by Ivan Tors and Ricou Browning, the same folks that brought us Flipper, that ever trusty friend in the sea. Which is why teen idol Luke Halpin was in this film as Greene's son. Luke's big moment is rocking out on a keyboard made of balsa and creating a truly eerie musical sound.

What's sad is that Luke Halpin once Flipper had run its course on television and films was just another ex-teenage idol. It's hard to believe that this was the only film offer around. Or maybe Halpin had a sincere case of loyalty to Ivan Tors who certainly had been good to him and his career so far. In any event like so many who sink below the radar once their series is canceled, it happened to Halpin. This film sure didn't keep him visible.

Island of the Lost is kind of laughable today, the special effects at which Tors was acclaimed a master back in the day are pretty lame. It's also hard to believe that television's Robin Hood, Richard Greene, had also sunk so low.

This one is bad news folks, skip the three hour tour to this Pacific paradise.