La isla de la muerte

The heroine in the clutches of a vampire tree, the hero leaping to her aid with an axe - slashing at blood-sucking branches with his weapon - then being attacked by the mad scientist who created the tree, also with an axe!

An axe battle between the two, under the writhing blood-sucking branches, in the middle of a rain-drenched thunderstorm. GREAT staging! What happens next is bloody (incredibly bloody, in fact), outrageous, melodramatic, over-the-top, and (dare I say?) EXCITING!

Now come on - isn't that last ten minutes worth the previous hour and 20 minutes of bad dubbing and odd characterisation?

And what the HELL is that old German woman gibbering on about?

Fans of Man-Eating Plants should check out the Mel Welles site.

n upbeat, typically sixties animated credits sequence leads us into this strange but not totally successful flesh-eating plant film. If you're going to deliver a weird plant film – give us more weird plants and less inter-personal drama!

A group of rubes are talked into taking a short cruise an a botanical tour of an almost deserted island. Amongst those travelling are a drunken slutty wife and her boring husband, a lady who loves talking pictures of everything, a young girl (Elisa Montes – a regular Western actress), a young guy, and a botanist, who is the only person who would realistically want to go on a tour like this. Things take a turn for the worst almost right away when an old man covered in weird wounds stumbles in front of the car and dies.

Cameron Mitchell shows up as the Baron who own the usual big scary mansion and tells everyone not to worry about the dead guy as he was insane and sick anyway (the old woman takes a picture of the corpse for good measure). Cameron, who is dubbed by someone else, explains that he's got all sorts of weird plants everyone can have a look at (and I admit I drifted away from his botanical jibber jabber – and I have an allotment!).

He's still gibbering on about nitrogen in the soil or what not during dinner, but at least he dishes up a cucumber that tastes like beef! This leads to more jibber jabber, plus there's the twin brother of the dead guy that frightens the crap out of people, and apart from the strange porcupine plants he shows them, the film settles in for people bickering for a while when we should have more footage of whatever strange plant is sucking people's blood out.

I guess people go on about the ending as it's the only really interesting part of the film. Turns out there's this huge tree that attacks people and Cameron wanted to feed it the tourist, plus the thing spews blood everywhere when you hit it with an axe. It's very possibly that I would have liked this film more if the print wasn't full screen, jerky and twitchy, but then again the film did say 'Starring Cameron Mitchell' so what was I expecting?

Killer plants will return to Euro-cinema in Contamination .7!

Cameron Mitchell will return to crappy films as a mad doctor in Nightmare In Wax, a crappy overacting criminal in Greek giallo Medusa, a member of the KKK in the Klansman, as whatever he was in the slasher film Haunts, a terrible psychic in shitty South African slasher film The Demon, a cop versus Satan in The Nightmare Never Ends, a mumbling cult leader in Martial Arse film Low Blow, a grizzled bar owner in great eighties action film Codename: Vengeance, and also as a crooked country park owner in Memorial Valley Massacre – and those are just the Cameron Mitchell films I own!

In spite of one of the alternate release titles making this obscure little film sound as if it concerns the hungry amblings of a tiger, it's actually a taut little horror entry concerning a blood-drinking tree which preys on the unwary visitors to an isolated island.

I caught this one on late night television in the early 1970s, and bits of it still stick with me, due to a certain nastiness in the effects work. Cameron Mitchell seems to be a researcher who is studying a bizarre tree which literally drains the life from anyone unwise enough to sleep within groping distance of its slim, mobile branches.

Constructed like a willow, the creature is capable of extending whiplike branches and fastening a cuplike sucking "mouth" to a victim. From there on, things are strictly downhill.

Not strictly a carbon copy of other "plants gone bad" films, such as THE WOMAN EATER or NAVY VS. THE NIGHT MONSTERS, ISLA reflects the stronger attempts many European producers were attempting in order to draw in the jaded horror film crowd. Over the years, this desire to punch up the graphic content resulted in such unique entries as the Blind Dead series and the deja-producing BLOOD AND BLACK LACE.

Needless to say, though creepiness was evoked, the inclusion of stronger content or wilder plot tricks didn't necessarily ensure boxoffice success.

Not Mitchell's worse, but miles below the early promise he showed in his film career.

It's always quite a painful and embarrassing establishment having to admit after watching a movie that the opening credits were, in fact, the best part. My mate and I got suckered into watching this Spanish/German co-production because of the appealing title in English – "Man Eater of Hydra" – and because we saw a little preview of the credits, which are animated and really look like a lot of fun. The film itself, unfortunately, never at one point surpasses the level of mediocrity, but it's still very endurable in case you're a tolerant fan of cheap 60's Euro-exploitation and/or an admirer of the charismatic B-movie villain Cameron Mitchell. I was quite intrigued to discover here on the IMDb that director Mel Welles also co-directed the Roger Corman vehicle "Little Shop of Horrors" (albeit unaccredited), as that particular no- budget classic actually has fairly many components in common with this "Man Eater of Hydra". With a slight bit of imagination, this film could even have been titled "Little Shop on Horror Island", because it likewise deals with murderous plants on a rampage. An assembly of stereotypical, and thus very dim-witted, tourists goes on an excursion to Baron Von Weser's island to visit the famous botanical gardens. Immediately upon their arrival, the witness the gruesome death of one of the Baron's servants, but he assures the group that this man was ill since a very long time already. Still, the cadavers start piling up and all the blood has been drained from their bodies. The stupider guests begin to believe in the old legend of a vampire living on the island, but the smarter ones gradually discover that the Baron is secretly experiencing with crossbreeding flesh-eating plants. "Man Eater of Hydra" is slow-paced and cheaply produced, but it could still be entertaining if you watch it with the right mindset. Instead of anticipating suspense and bloody carnage, please yourself with spotting all silly dialogs and obligatory horror clichés, like thunderstorms and grisly looking servants. The film could also be discovered as some sort of homage to those typical "Mad Scientist" horror movies of the 30's and 40's, in which the role of evil genius on his private island was standard played by either Boris Karloff or Bela Lugosi. From that point of view, Cameron Mitchell was a terrific choice to play the Baron, as he always drags this sinister aura around with him. And hey, even if you end up hating the film, at least admit that the crazy animated opening credits were fantastic.

I hadn't watched this film for about 15 years, but after watching it again I must say that it works quite well. There is an excellent sense of atmosphere created, and Cameron Mitchell underplays his part more in the manner of a Karloff than of a Lugosi (as this is really an update of the old "mad doctor" films of the 30s and 40s). We take six diverse people--an unhappy married couple with a younger wife, a scientist, an older eccentric lady who is voiced in a Fran Drescher manner, a heroic young man (George Martin), and a desirable young woman for him to be interested in--who choose to vacation at the estate of a Count who is engaged in odd scientific research, and watch them deal with the gradual sense of doom...and the gradually more aggressive killer plants developed by Cameron Mitchell. The film is well-paced, and it leads to an exciting climax. MANEATER OF HYDRA/ISLAND OF THE DOOMED must have looked great on a massive drive-in screen back in 1967--it's still worth seeing today for the fan of 60's Euro-horror and for fans of the great Cameron Mitchell (although Mitchell does not dub his own voice).