Island of Blood

In the movie's best scene, a girl is showering and we are treated to an amusing killer's point of view shot. He is looking at her through a hole in the wall, but then turns to the pipes where a make-shift plastic jug labeled "battery acid" is attached. Soon the girl is covered in black goo and blood and dies an agonizing death. "Island of Blood" is not one of the most gory slasher, some of the deaths are pretty sick, while others are more standard. Sure enough there is a twist ending and horror fans will be pleased since it involves exploitation films. I won't say how. The movie did finish on an exciting note, but it saves all its clever moments for the end. Not totally crazy from start to finish like I had hoped.

My review was written in October 1986 after watching the film on Vestron video cassette.

"Whodunit?" is a very trite slasher film shot in 1981 and finally surfacing for home video fans. Pic's alternate title "Island of Blood" is more appropriate.

Dated horror formula is rigidly adhered to: a group of youngsters arrives at a remote island on the California coast where they expect to act in or provide music for a feature film. Pic's director Franklin Phlem (Ron Gardner) and fast-talking producer Steve Faith (Terry Goodman) arrive for a weekend of rehearsals, during which the cast members are gorily killed off one by one, with a portable cassette player blaring a rock song each time that describes the method of each murder.

Despite the title, film offers little suspense and the final twist (involving the making of a snuff film) is disappointing. Acting and tech credits are weak. Irony is that the awful feature being rehearsed, namely a goody-goody up with people message pic, is subjected to satirical barbs, yet is no worse than the actual feature "Whodunit?".

A film crew set out for an island that will be the perfect location for their positive comedy/crap movie.Unfortunately the unknown killer starts slaughtering them with the aid of a chainsaw,machete,acid and nail gun whilst catchy punk song "Face to Face" is playing in the background.Very entertaining and watchable slasher based on Agatha Christie's famous novel "And Then There Were None".The song "Face to Face" is fantastic and it's played about a hundred times,so you will remember it long after the film is over.Someone's killing our crew members according to the lyrics.The acting is flat,the night scenes are badly lit and the script is routine,but after watching "A Serbian Film" I enjoyed loopy final twist of "Island of Blood" even more.A generous 7 out of 10.

Another worthy entry in the seemingly endless list of horrible 80's slashers, "Scared Alive" (a.k.a. "Island of Blood" and a.k.a. "Whodunit") is a wondrously inept and totally redundant low-budget flick with all the right ingredients: a senseless basic premise, unmemorable characters, a complete absence of logic, laughable dialogs, various but totally non-shocking killing methods and one remotely ingenious little gimmick (a constantly repeated rock song of which the lyrics reveal how the next victim will die a gruesome death). The movie starts with a bunch of idiots (= aspiring actors/actresses) gathering on an island, allegedly to start shooting a movie after the weekend when the rest of the technical crew arrives. None of them has a clue what the movie will be about, why they were selected or what they will do on this geographically isolated island location for the rest of the weekend, but hey, that's totally normal right? Then, and luckily quite fast and at a regular pace, they're being picked off one by one by an unseen killer. His/her curious modus operandi involves hanging a walkman somewhere near to the next victim that is repeatedly playing the same song entitled "Face to Face". The singer states with what weapon the character is going to get killed, resulting in a boy drowning in a pool filled with boiling water ("Boil me! Boil me!), a poor girl showering in battery acid ("Burn me! Burn me!), another poor chick getting her face nail-gunned to the wall ("Nail me! Nail me!) etc … Some of the murder sequences are wickedly entertaining, but overall seen is "Scared Alive" just another very dumb and forgettable slasher. The attempts to mislead the viewer and throw in red herrings fail miserably and literally none of the characters deserves a bit of sympathy. The idea behind the unforeseeable "twist-at-the-end" is rather admirable, but still very implausible and badly processed. I also think the make-up artists were all schizophrenic, as some murders are illustrated quite sick and explicitly, whereas certain others are lame and occurring off-screen. Let's just conclude it's a really bizarre and amateurish slasher movie only intended for avid genre fanatics. Oh, and the complete lack of nudity – especially with one shower sequence and one alleged sex sequence - is unforgivable!

This little-seen early-'80s slasher is fully deserving of its obscurity: the unimaginative by-the-numbers plot sees a group of young film-makers gather on an island where they are bumped off one-by-one by an unseen maniac who likes to play a really bad new wave/punk song on his tape player while he is at work. The acting is basic (one of the actresses can't even blow out a candle convincingly), the direction and editing are clumsy, the characters are all unlikeable, and the dialogue is absolutely terrible (my favourite line: a guy hands a girl a nail gun "Take this - it fires nails like a gun." Talk about stating the obvious!).

To be fair, the deaths are quite nasty in concept, however the majority of the movie takes place in the dark, and many potentially disturbing scenes are hard to make out. A bloke is boiled to death in a swimming pool (the only death that takes place during the day), someone is speared, another guy is attacked with a chainsaw, a man is stabbed by a machete, and a girl taking a (nudity-free) shower is burned by battery acid, but the effects aren't great and gore-hounds will be left disappointed, at least until the final act in which we get to see a couple of the victims a little clearer (a guy's severed head with nails in his face and a girl with nails in her forehead).

In an attempt to differentiate his film from countless other slashers of the time, writer/director Bill Naud chucks in a twist ending that is totally implausible. And if you haven't already had a gutful of that terrible new-wave song (Face to Face by Factor Four), it plays in full over the end credits. Aaarrrgh!