Frankenstein Island

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?

Where on Earth do I even start to try and attempt to write a review of Frankenstein island? It's not going to be easy but I'll try to explain the basic plot to begin with. We open with shots of hot air balloons, supposedly over the ocean somewhere, but we never see the ocean and balloons in the same shot together so we have to take their word for it. It seems their looking for a balloon that crashed in a tornado around this area, at this point I asked myself what is there to 'crash' a balloon into in the middle of the ocean? And why are they using balloons to search for them? Why not a helicopter which would make a lot more sense? Then again nothing in this film makes sense. Anyway, one of the balloonists says "the water, man! The ocean! Anyway you shake it, those poor devils either ended up on it, in it or under it!" This sort of inane dialogue that sounds like it was written by a five year old continues throughout the entire film. After that they presumably give up as their never seen or mentioned again. Then we get the opening credits, after which we are introduced to our main characters. Four men stumble onto a beach somewhere, carrying a perfectly good inflatable raft, this obviously how they made it to the island. Curtis (Tain Bodkin), Dino (Patrick O'Neil), Mark (Robert Christopher), Dr Paul Hadley (Robert Clarke) and Melvin their dog, for some unknown reason they decide to leave their life raft behind, which is a great idea considering their trapped on an island surrounded by the ocean, and enter some caves nearby. While walking along in the surprisingly well lit cave some strange device projects the image of Dr Frankenstein (John Carridine) momentarily, for absolutely no reason, you had better get used to things happening for no reason, as it happens a lot. They all exit the cave safely and are greeted to a barren landscape of trees, bushes and fields. The directors local wood then. As they approach some trees while talking, Curtis suddenly grabs his wrist and scream in pain. This is accompanied by weird electronic sounds. Scary. The sounds stop and Curtis is fine again. As 'explained' later in the film it was down to Curtis mentioning the name of a place, in fact it happens to anyone who commits this mortal sin. Then they notice that a woman dressed in a Leopard print bikini is tied horizontally between two trees, and is surrounded by plastic skulls on sticks. Not something you would expect to see everyday. It turns out that she is a member of a tribe of young beautiful primitive females who speak perfect English. Oh and their also half alien, this film is so insane its untrue! At the half alien/half primitive female's camp, just a few rocks with a fire in the middle, Dino looks on at a woman looking at herself in a mirror. Mark walks over to him and Dino says "thats the weirdest thing I've ever seen", when the film cut back its a different woman, this time she's holding a small snake. At this point I again asked myself another pressing question, why would someone describe looking at a woman admiring herself in a mirror and a woman holding a snake as the weirdest thing he's ever seen? When earlier in the day he had witnessed a half naked woman tied between two trees and surrounded by skulls? I think this film was made up as they went along. More barmy characters are introduced, Sheila Frankenstein (Katherine Victor) the great, great granddaughter of Dr Frankenstein, two old guys who run around for her, Sheila's husband Dr Von Helsing (George Mitchell), Clay Jason (Cameron Mitchell) who's supposedly been imprisoned on the island for seventeen years, and bunch of idiotic stupid looking zombie guards who wear blue jeans, black turtle neck sweaters silly black hate and over sized sunglasses, and a few even sport fake mustache's, you have to see them to believe how idiotic they look, and eventually the Frankenstein monster itself. I could go on forever about how bad this film is, the script makes no sense at all, about half way through the film the four start to discuss leaving the island and building a raft, yet at the start of the film they are clearly seen with a perfectly good rubber dinghy, and a sequence where about ten people hide behind one tree to escape the attention of a zombie guard. The Frankentein monsters rampage is depicted by it knocking over a table with some beakers on it, and just waving its arms about. The ending is awful too, but then what did you expect? The fight sequence here is laughable, the actors look more like their dancing with each other, check out how far the punches and kicks miss by! At one point for no reason, one of the zombie guards grows vampire fangs, obviously the sort you buy on Halloween from any good corner shop. One zombie guard also uses a small plastic devils trident, probably brought from the same shop as the fangs and plastic skulls. I could go on and on about how bad, idiotic, stupid, lame, boring, and poorly made this is but I think you get the idea. Its not all bad however, at one point Doc comes out with one of the funniest lines I've ever heard in a film, while Sheila is showing our hero's her garden, Doc picks up a large vegetable and says "those are the most beautiful vegetables I've ever seen". Absolutely hilarious, as is the whole film, you really have to see it to believe it, and even then you might not. How Jerry Warren had the nerve to film this rubbish I'll never know. Not bad in a good kind of way, just plain bad.

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 read the reviews. I said to myself, "Well, this could not possibly be as bad as all that." Well, it is. It starts right away. The patterns on the balloons keep changing from shot to shot in the credits. And there are many of them talking on the radio. What happened to the other folks with radios? Did they not call for a rescue ship? Nobody knows... It never comes up in the movie.

Then these four goofs come on shore and one is still holding a raft in his hand and it talking about having to build a raft. Why? At that point they just arrived and have not searched around the island and already have a fully inflated rubber raft.

And they immediately ask "How will we get over these bluffs?" Why do they need to. Wait for the pickup from the people who are coming to get you. No mention of that. Seems like the opening credits and radio chatter is from a different movie.

Well, it goes from there off onto several different plot threads. They intersect from time to time, minimally. And there is that laughing fool. He even laughs while he is drinking his moonshine. Quite a talent. And what is he laughing at so much? That spinning, pink ammo box is just too much! And the confusion of plots (snakes, tarantulas, machine guns, trident that turns women into vampires, a brain without a head running everything, John Carradine speaking gibberish) continues until, thankfully, this movie is done.

My great thanks to the director for not making the movie ANY LONGER! And you won't believe the ending. I guess it is an ending. Or they just ran out of film. Not fulfilling at all.