La regina degli uomini pesce

This follow-up to Sergio Martino's "The Island of the Fishmen" (1979) is set in the future. Two teenage boys prowl the sewers of post-apocalypse New York and survive by hunting rats for food.

They are illiterate and have only superficial knowledge of the world prior to the great holocaust. The early scenes depict the boys' struggle to escape the ruined city and the warriors who rule it with an iron fist. Once outside, they encounter an elderly man named Socrates who takes them to a pristine tropical island somewhere in the Atlantic or Caribbean. The island is ruled by an evil queen whose oppresses the population and exploits a species of horrible fishmen. The outsiders join a young princess who hopes to overthrow the queen and free her sister and a prince from powerful spells. The film is something of a science fiction/fantasy that is suitable for young viewers.

Sergio Martino has a fairly long resume as both a director and a screenwriter. "The Island of the Fishmen" was set in the nineteenth century and benefited from fairly decent production values and a decent cast. Unfortunately, Mr. Martino didn't leave it at that. "The Fishmen and Their Queen" does not qualify as a sequel. Instead, it is a fragment of a film that fills in gaps through the shameful use of re-edited footage from two previous Martino films: "2019: After the Fall of New York" (1983) and the first fishmen film. The acting is horrible, the storyline is implausible and juvenile, and the final result is boring. Though evidently intended for teenage viewers, the film is so bad on so many levels that it seems to lack appeal for even the target audience. For fans of Martino's original work, this is one to avoid. For parents who think their twelve or thirteen year olds will like this, look elsewhere.

I wasn't even aware there was a sequel to "Island of the Fishmen" until I purchased the specially restored DVD-edition of the original, which also loudly announced the world-premiere of "The Fishmen and their Queen" on disc. Hey, at least now we know why it was such a well-kept secret. This is a seriously stupid and useless movie, unworthy of the cool original. I'm actually surprised that Sergio Martino himself is responsible for delivering this incoherent nonsense, because he stands as one of the best directors of Italian horror and he surely knows better than to exploit his own successful classics…or at least I thought he did. The script is never original or adventurous, only tedious and extremely childish. Martino incomprehensibly blends two premises of his previous movies ("Island of the Fishmen", of course, and "After the Fall of New York") and turns it into a light-headed, bloodless fairy-tale/fantasy flick. Two teenagers escape from apocalyptic New York with the help of an insane race car driver (best part of the entire movie) and head to the open sea, along with an old seaman. They arrive on an island where time seemingly stopped, ruled by a ravishing yet malicious queen. The further events taking place on the island are imbecile, infantile and totally uninteresting. The titular mutant fish-creatures are totally irrelevant to the "plot" and they're only shown through re-edited footage of the 1979 original. Most of the filming sets and scenery look impressive, but that's because you've already seen them in the above-mentioned movies. The only new aspects are the attractive female cast-members (Ramona Badescu, Natascia Castrignano), but that hardly enough to make a sequel worthwhile. The poorly written dialogues are unintentionally hilarious and, on top of it all, the film also suffers from a terrible dubbing. The ending is so incredibly lame it even makes Disney's "Bambi" look like a petrifying horror movie. Trust me, no matter how exceptional it may seem to come across a copy of this extremely rare movie…avoid at all costs!

I want to make more of the points hinted at in the previous reviews. Whereas they see certain things about this movie as a negative, I wish to make it clear that, however tedious some folk may find this, lovers of trash cinema may well find something else here. Yes, it is very sad that Martino stooped this low, but, to be fair, many other directors have done the same over the years (Lucio Fulci, Peter Jackson, etc). What I loved about this barmy pic is that it seems like it was scripted by Alan Partridge, or at least the dubbed version anyway. Yes, there is a fair bit of 'sampled' footage, especially in the first thirty minutes, and the new footage of the fishmen shows either some bad recreations or some costumes degenerated through almost twenty years of storage. No, it's not a high point for Sergio, but I enjoyed it for all the wrong reasons. The only thing it did lack was a proper helping of sleaze but I believe it was made for TV so make do with some casual racism and inappropriate teenage love.