Please Don't Eat the Babies

Although, I had no earthly idea on what to expect from this movie, this sure as hell wasn't what I would have had in mind, had anything actually come to mind. Once I heard of its existence, all I knew was that I had to own a movie called Please Don't Eat The Babies. unfortunately, I could only find a copy under its alternate title, Island Fury. Looking back, I guess I could call it a lose-lose situation. On one hand, I still don't get to be known as the guy who owns a movie called Please Don't Eat The Babies, and on the other hand, Island Fury would ultimately reveal itself to be an awful, pointless, boring, unwatchable piece of garbage. Yeah, definitely lose-lose.

I'm not even sure what genre they're going for here. Just early 80's badness, with a flashback that might actually be longer than the non-flashback. First up, two teenage girls are being chased by two bad guys, once caught, the bad guys bring to our attention that one of the girls have a coin on a string, around her neck, and somehow, these bad guys know of a lot more of these coins hidden on an island somewhere. And this is where things start to get weird, somehow these guys know of a trip the girls took to some island, years earlier, when they were only 10. I guess this is supposed to mean that the girls should know exactly where this alleged treasure is. So, now, we're in the past, while the girls try to retrace their steps, so these bad guys don't kill them, although, I wouldn't have minded if they had. In the flashback, the 10 year old counterparts are on a boat trip with their sisters and the sisters boyfriends, eventually stopping by an island for some air, they get mixed up with some kid and his killer grandparents. Any potential suspense or reasons to keep on watching never shows up, but the flashback was undeniably better than the present, which still isn't saying a whole lot.

For a while there I had forgotten about the original story. At one point, I thought maybe the director had too, and when the flashback ended, that would be the end, which would have worked for me considering this disappointment would have been a half-hour shorter. This pointless movie within a pointless movie does eventually end, and real stuff does happen, but it's stupid. I guess I didn't exactly expect a movie filled with infants being devoured, or anything like that, but I did expect some form of outlandish B-entertainment, mostly just a confusing, inept storyline, unsure of its genre. My advice would be to seek out something worthwhile like Attack Of The Beast Creatures. If anyone, I would only recommend this one to serious B-movie collectors who must have them all, anyone else interested probably has brain damage. What really gets me is that I still have no idea why they called it Please Don't Eat The Babies. 3/10

Hank Worden, Mose in "The Searchers", winds down a great career with this student film mish-mash of a movie. Yachters use Worden's small island pier/store to stock up on supplies. The island is off limits and there is a curfew for the paying customers. Yachters are supposed to drop a few bucks and push off. Any one breaking the rules discovers Worden has a family inland that bears more than a passing resemblance to the Texas Chainsaw Clan. Which would have been fine. The film gets even more inept trying to inject a monster menace. Aquatic cockroach things that Worden's family has a weird empathy with.

This is a particularly inept and difficult film to watch. Like many other of the early-80s American horror films of the same bracket, there is little in the way of atmosphere or gore to keep one interested. At this particular time, the gulf between US and European low budget horror was enormous. This particular movie takes the worst from the contemporary US horror films (such as HALLOWEEN) and 50s monster movies and creates an absolutely lamentable waste of time. Don't bother.

I'm generally pretty indulgent towards these low-budget, shaggy-dog horror movies from the 70's and 80's. After all, it was hard to make movies back then with very limited resources (I'm less indulgent today when any talentless idiot with a digital video camera can easily foist any kind of unwatchable dreck on an unsuspecting public). The problem with this movie is that, not only is not very competently made, but it's not just entertaining on any level(even an unintentional one).

The current version of this "Island Fury" is actually TWO lame movies--a wrap-around story which looks to have been shot around the time of the film's 1989 release, and the main story which was filmed earlier in the 80's (1983 I guess). In the frame story two older teenage girls are on vacation in the Far East when they are lured off on a treasure hunt to an island where it turns out they'd been years earlier when they were children with one of the girl's older sister and the sister's teenage/college age friends. This is the main story which involves the group running into a family of kindly old cannibals.

The plot is pretty pedestrian. The acting is terrible (having ten-year-old protagonists might be novel if they weren't even worse actresses than your usual teenage horror fodder). Compared to the protagonists the elderly cannibals aren't bad, but as the villains they really needed to be far more compelling. One of the older girls in the main story is played by Kirsten Baker who played a skinny-dipping, extreme short-shorts wearing camp counselor/"Jason" victim in "Friday the 13th Part II". She has a very nice bikini-clad ass. I say this not to be a sexist pig (well, not JUST to be a sexist pig), but because this movie is so frickin' boring I spent all my time staring at it whenever it was on screen (which unfortunately wasn't very much). Baker's bikini-clad tail gives the movie's only really compelling performance (not even Baker herself, she is pretty somnambulistic). Of course, Baker's ass gave an even better (and un-bikini-clad) performance in "Friday the 13th II", and that was a much more entertaining movie to boot. I give the filmmakers an "A" for effort here, but I really hope they kept their day jobs. . .

I'm going to champion ISLAND FURY here & take a chance by recommending it. Since the movie is issued on the same DVD as Wayne Crawford's BARRACUDA: THE LUCIFER PROJECT it's one that should end up on your shelves anyway. Linking themes between the two films are summer, boats, the ocean, and girls in swimsuits.

This is the less conventional of the two, telling the story of a pair of teenage girls in their mid 20s who find themselves abducted by a gang of pinheads for a golden doubloon one wears as a charm. The gang concludes there must be more where it came from, kidnap the two bimbos from a Chinatown carnival in an odd sequence, and are really mean to the ladies until one of them spills the story of how they ended up trapped on a secluded island as kids & terrorized by a family of cannibalistic hermits.

The film seems to be drawing it's inspiration from the 1982 shocker HUMONGOUS but with the addition of more teen friendly elements such as extensive profanity and Kirsten Baker, fresh from her nude swim in Friday THE 13TH PART 2 and with a new hair perm, who spends the entire film decked out in a red bikini to display her fabulous body. It may not seem like reason enough to bother with the movie but if like me you are a Wayne Crawford fan you'd end up with the DVD anyway & might as well enjoy it for what you can.

I liked the cannibal family, let by a Ma Barker type & good old Mose from THE SEARCHERS who both scuttle about fretting over "the young 'uns" who have come to visit. The movie's sense of humor might be lost on those looking for blood, guts and boobs, and quite frankly I wish the filmmakers had concentrated on either of the two story skeins; it feels as though two movie ideas were compressed into one, resulting in a lackluster conclusion that is far less interesting than some of the bits that lead up to it. I say give it a chance, no it's not a particularly clever film but in the right frame of mind it's a harmless distraction. With Kirsten Baker in a bikini. Hot.

5/10