Savage Island

"...You're going to remember this for a long time." And I have! Going back a few years, when I must have been so bored as to rent the most ridiculous, low budget films, this gem was etched in my mind. It's full of poorly done over-dubs. Hilarious! "I have some lovely letters and postcards from the outside world. How they ever found their way here is beyond me." Savage beach! A must not rent!

-GG

Escape From Hell??? Prison Of Sex??? Which is it???

This movie su-u-u-u-u-u-u-cked!

Take Linda Blair, put her in furs, have her cap a security guy, (A slumming Penn Jillete.) then put her face to face with a sleazy diamond merchant/slave farm owner. It must have sounded cool at one point.

Both of the early films that were ripped off, and had the Blair footage wrapped around, seemed like passable entertainment. But this horrid mess must have been made as a joke.

No coherence. Characters switching on and off at will. Seemingly endless shots of chicks in jungle gear sweating and running before dying. That does get boring when done wrong. And this was WRONG.

And who/where was that sneering voice coming from? (" Come on! You gotta WOOORRRKKK!!!!")

The late Leon Askin (Gen. Burkhalter in "Hogan's Heroes.") was the lone watchable one. His brief scenes seemed like the only serious ones.

Crap!

Rightfully atrocious. "Orinoco-Prison Of Sex" (a.k.a. "Escape From Hell") was an Italian-Spanish women-as-slaves-on-a-South-American-island-who-revolt thing, brought stateside in 1985, christened with a new title and spiced with fresh footage of Linda Blair as a vengeful "ex-employee." Those looking for some hot nude scenes and/or violent confrontations between sexy women in loincloths are bound to be disappointed (the Italian footage is dark, muddy, and un-erotic--not to mention coy, it cuts away at the best parts). As for Blair, she's amusing wrapped in cheap fur, packing heat and ordering her former captor around with a snarl. But, alas, Linda is once again stuck in a turkey. NO STARS from ****

I have this obscure movie on VHS and the cover features Linda Blair in a revealing outfit, holding a machine gun. In the actual movie, she does hold (and fire) a machine gun, BUT: A) Her outfit is a formal dress under a fur coat, B) Her part is a 5-minute cameo (plus a few lines of narration). The rest of "Savage Island" consists of copied-and-pasted footage from TWO Italian/Spanish Women-In-Prison films, one of which I've seen ("Escape from Hell") and one I haven't ("Orinoco - Prison of Sex"). The result is, as you might expect, a complete mess. There is no continuity between the scenes, sometimes even between the shots. 2 women start fighting dressed, in the next shot they are naked (because a lesbian scene in-between has been omitted). In one shot it is night, in the next shot it is day. In one shot the prisoners are in a circle, in the next shot they have formed lines. There are TWO different prison wardens, and the SAME female guard gets killed twice. It's all quite laughable and shameless. Rating: 0 out of 4 stars, pushed up to 0.5 because Linda Blair with a machine gun is sexy.

Women who have been captured and sold as slave labor to a South American emerald mine hatch a plan for revolution and revenge.

What this film consists of is footage from "Escape from Hell" (1980) and "Hotel Paradise" (also 1980) spliced together with a new wraparound featuring Linda Blair. The new wraparound is directed by Nicholas Beardsley... but who is Nicholas Beardsley?

Of course, the new version makes no sense because the characters do not match up. The fact it is even comprehensible at all is something of a miracle. (Apparently Charles Band had a hand in creating this, but I am not sure the details on that.)

The two films this came from were both directed by Edoardo Mulargia ("Don't Wait, Django... Shoot!") and written by Sergio Chiusi ("SS Experiment Love Camp"), so if any credit is deserved, it should go to them. But why not just watch their real films?

Sadly, the quality is terrible (even on the Shout Factory release) and I suspect there is not much that can be done about that because the footage clearly did not come from original negatives.