Frankenstein Island

This thing is so mind-boggling that words almost fail me. I literally spent 80% of it with my jaw dropped in utter disbelief, punctuated by bursts of incredulous laughter. Nothing in it makes ANY SENSE AT ALL! I mean, our castaways arrive on the island in a perfectly serviceable rubber raft, and the first thing they do is set off in quest of wood **to build a raft with!** Anytime anyone mentions a specific place name (i.e., Kansas City) they suffer stabbing pains in the right forearm for absolutely no reason whatsoever! Do I even need to mention the frequent cryptic appearances ("The golden thread! The power! The power!") by the Floating Head of John Carradine, the tribe of leopard-bikini-clad island girls who are really aliens, the mad doctress Sheila Frankenstein (also a Van Helsing relative) and her platinum Tammy Faye Bakker wig, a 200-year-old colleague of the original Doc Frankenstein, and a whole lot of skulls, tarantulas, blood transfusions and rocks? Or the climactic grade-Z kung-fu battle between the ski-hat zombies, our heroes, the jungle girls and the completely ineffectual Frankenstein Monster (yeah, he's in here too)? --Hysterically funny and a DO NOT MISS for any fan of the really, REALLY bad.

Director Jerry Warren's final film, FRANKENSTEIN ISLAND is his ultimate lead pipe to our brains! Opening with hot air balloons talking to each other, we know we're in Warren territory right away.

The four-man crew of one of the balloons, which apparently crashed into the ocean at some point off camera, arrives at the titular landmass, only to be captured by native women in matching leopard skin bikinis and flip-flops. Obviously, these wild women must dance -horribly- to a crazy bongo beat!

Then, after a brief interruption, it's smoking time! Out of skull bongs! Several severely annoying, idiot characters -especially that cackling guy!- are introduced, and many nonsensical events occur. This somehow leads to our heroes meeting Cameron Mitchell, playing the worst role of his career! He rambles. He murmurs. He blathers about nothing at all.

Enter the be-wigged Sheila Frankenstein Von Helsing (Katherine Victor), and on and on it goes.

This "film" is a true test of will for any viewer. Most won't survive its mind-evaporating effects! Warren's ability to induce coma is at its apex here. Absolutely nothing makes sense, and nothing really happens!

Wha...? More dancing?! Good lord!

Once the disembodied John Carradine appears, spouting, "The power! The power!! The power!!!", we know we're in hell! Good luck with this one my friends, but beware the spinning, pink bullet box of infinite terror!

Mr. Warren, your vengeance is complete!

P. S.- The finale features the bikini women vs. Zombies vs. A hand-waving, grumbling Frankenstein's monster in earth shoes! Plus, Benji the wonder dog, plastic fangs, and halfhearted karate! It's almost worth the wait.

Almost...

My VCR taped this movie in 1986 at 2:30am when it was supposed to be recording "Kings Row". I have never been happier at the error. Here is a film I show to old friends and new loves. It is so bad...so beyond bad, really, that this film could be a guest on Jerry Springer. Lets quickly move from the plot: stranded balloonists discover themselves on an island with Jacques Cousteau-like zombies, amazon women warriors in spandex leopard prints, and...a weird, unresolved Frankenstein motif. That aside, it is constant hilarity. Plastic pitchforks, the same we carried at Halloween as kids, are waved in front of the camera to suggest danger. A shoe box ,, painted red on the lower half and put on a gyro is the electronic brain for the monster. The actress playing Frankensteins relative, Sheila!!!, is a hoot since she is seen reading her lines from off set (behind bookcases, etc). The ending pales since the beginning is so rapturously inane and silly. It is not to be missed. Please don't turn off when the Mighty Kung Fus scenes occur...or the tiny skulls appear in a gas-lit barbeque to intimate danger. Or when poor Cameron Mitchell appears as Captian Ahab/Queeq explaining how he allowed his crew to become zombies. Best scene: at the very beginning, when the balloon crashes, the dog on board jumps off and pees on the seaweed as the titles run. Such honesty in cinema is so rare.

Briefly speaking, nothing in this movie makes any sense at all, either on the level of overall plot or of individual scenes or even lines. This would have to be one of the most relentlessly stupid movies ever made. As soon as it looks like something is remotely intelligible, the actors and director seem to do their utmost to bring in yet another non sequitur.

The dialogue seems to have been written by someone who's never actually heard a conversation between people before, and acted by people who've never participated in one.

However, it's extremely amusing. This is an extraordinarily bad movie, but that's not because it's boring. The pink lunchbox, the contact lenses with white-out on them, the rubber skulls, the guy who keeps laughing constantly for no reason, the suburban living room in the middle of the deserted island, the power that attacks your arm when you "mix the particular place, not here but on the outside" (that is, say the name of a city)... champagne cinema.

You could do much worse than track a copy down - but beware - some video copies have the goofiest scenes edited out!

I saw this movie when I was in the Navy in the early 80s. I still remember every horrible detail. The long hair of the soldiers. No two uniforms were the same. "The Power of the Golden Thread"... which was never explained. The aparition of Dr. Frankenstein, or his son, or grandson, or whoever. I prayed to God that something would make sense before I left the theatre. It never did make sense. I assumed as I left the theater, that some director's 14 year old son wanted to direct his own movie, and did so with about $5,000 of daddy's money. This is horrible even for an inexperienced 14 year old on a $5,000 budget.

YOU MUST SEE THIS MOVIE to appreciate how truly bad it is. You will be embarrassed for all associated with it. You will be angry with yourself for wasting your time to watch it. I can't believe I'm wasting my time writing about this horrible horrible movie. Can one suffer from PTSD merely from having watched a bad bad movie?