Insel der neuen Monster

This movie surprised me. The box is misleading, the tagline is misleading and the costumes and tone of the film are misleading. The movie is quite gory, well-acted and beautifully shot. The special-effects are top-notch and seem to be ahead of their time, until you realize this movie came out in 1979, not in 1963 like it's tone would suggest. It is a unique take on the Dr. Moreau story, and one of the better versions filmed. The first fifteen minutes are the highlight and the most shocking, but the film doesn't ever really fall apart. Definitely worth-seeing if you are a fan of dramatic costume/horror classics and gore-fests.

I saw this movie on television as SCREAMERS and loved it. I heard an interesting story about this film. When Roger Corman released it to drive-ins in the summer of 1981, his trailer department sent out an advance trailer which was not actually footage from the film. It was allegedly footage of a naked woman being chased around a laboratory set by a monster. During the film's opening at drive-in's, irate customers complained the did not see the movie they paid to see. Theater owners called Corman and said their customers felt ripped off. So Corman had to run off copies of the footage, and send the positive film to theater owners to splice into the film themselves. Since the footage was never part of the film negative, it has not appeared in any video, DVD or television broadcast. Has anyone ever seen this footage? Anyone who saw this film at a drive-in in the summer of 1981 remember this?

Colourful if nonsensical tale set upon an uncharted island where Richard Johnson turns in a decent performance as a mad baddie searching for the lost gold of Atlantis and Barbara Bach doesn't do very much at all. The whole thing looks like much of it was made up as they went along with little bits of excitement every now and again to keep it going. There are some decent bits, I particularly like the home made diving bell contraption that lowers them down to peek at Atlantis and I have a soft spot for the fishmen themselves. Clearly copied from the 'Creature From The Black Lagoon', they are nevertheless pretty distinctive with their big fish eyes and facial colouring and especially effective when seen six or so at a time.

Menacingly marooned upon this desolated isle of multitudinous madness, malevolently manhandled by increasingly malign mermen, and tormented by a tyrannical toffee nosed toff (Richard Johnson), these ragged, starveling, long-suffering sailors fatefully discover that its gill or be killed in genre maestro, Sergio Martino's small scale, sinisterly subaquatic shocker 'Island of The Fishmen'. Luridly Lovecraftian, and teasingly exotic, this unfathomably fabulous, successfully genre-bending 70s creature feature is certain to get its hooks deep into you long before the final reel!

Handsomely shot, with an engagingly boy's own text, beloved Euro-cult icons, Richard Johnson, Claudio Cassinelli, and the exquisitely beautiful Barbara Bach provide the weighty dramatic ballast that keeps this far from waterlogged, frequently fin-tastic Italian fright-flick afloat! No mere B-Movie minnow, this leviathan of diabolical dentistry proves to be kinkier than Jules Verne, delves deeper into twisted animalistic terror than H. G. Wells, and delivers more shocks than a startled stingray! Long neglected, Sergio Martino's far-flung fright-fest now sparkles on remastered HD, revealing a dazzlingly toothsome treasure chest of tantalizing terror for future horror fans to discover! Not only is Martino's rip roaring, high seas adventure enormously fun to watch, the sinfully scrumptious, brine-soaked Barbara Bach is quite ravishing to behold, and the beguilingly boggle-eyed mermen make for uncommonly striking protagonists.

This is a very enjoyable lost island adventure movie. A group of men are shipwrecked on an island ruled by a white "master" accompanied by an attractive white woman (Barbara Bach), inhabited by voodoo-practicing natives as well as some CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON type "fish men". The plot is silly (as in most movies of this type), the acting and the lines are cheesy in most cases, but it is a v-e-r-y polished-looking effort. The scene of Barbara Bach secretly leaving her manor at dawn (or dusk), crossing a shallow lake, and feeding the fish men a potion on the seashore is especially very poetic looking. The undersea footage of the ruins of Atlantis is also very impressive. One minor defect: the voodoo subplot seems to go nowhere. Surely, there are elements of THE ISLAND OF DR MOREAU in the plot, but I think the idea to make this movie was kicked off by previous year's WARLORDS OF ATLANTIS from Britain. By the way, I think the "man whose inside turned outside" tag-line in the movie's US publicity refers to the scene of a man in the lab tank who is slowly being mutated towards a fish man.