Monster Island

Two employees of marine researcher Billy Ford (Adrian Bouchet) discover a giant starfish on the ocean floor which has lava for blood. Annoyed by the submarine, the starfish rises to the surface, slaps a couple of ships and then decides to head for the coast to lay eggs. Ugly little dragons are hatching from these eggs and start to puke lava at anyone they meet. Bad, bad babies! General Horne (Eric Roberts) summons the army in vain to solve the monster problem. Billy Ford, however, meanwhile simply attempts to find a bigger monster and arrange a battle of the two...

Another ludicrous 'Pacific Rim' rip-off from the Asylum factory line which was ok most of the running time (I voted 4 of 10). The actors were passable, some locations looked good, for example the Swiss cheese caves, the pacing was never lame, and the effects were what you expect from suffering similar experiences.

I was looking forward to the low-budget mirth promised by this low-cost affair that promised to be a cheap-and-cheerful Godzilla/Pacific Rim romp, but it is really, really, really bad. The monster action is pretty limited and a giant lava-filled starfish is not really my idea of a menacing giant terror, I must say. This might be mitigated with a likeable and engaging cast of human characters, but alas...Sometimes Asylum films deliver the so-bad-it-is-great goods to at least entertain in a perverse way, but this effort is just dispiriting and beyond dull - which is a crime for a mammoth-beast-on-the-rampage flick. In terms of the nominal star, I thought that The Cloth must surely be the nadir of Eric Roberts' career, but apparently not. Hopefully The Killers will soon come a-calling for him to appear in another one of their videos so that he can say no to the next Asylum call.

So, my advice regarding this film is this: don't weigh anchor at this island, just sail on to a better movie.

I am about as anti-Asylum as they come. I have never seen an Asylum film that was worth the first 5 minutes of watching. For some reason this one brought me to break my "No Asylum movies" rule. Maybe I was bored, tired, whatever. Watched it.

Surprisingly, it wasn't terrible. It's a little slow in places, but the story is interesting enough. The ending was ludicrous, as is typical of Asylum films, but it wasn't completely lame. The actors for once were reasonably decent. The directing wasn't half bad. The monster was a bit of fun.

So I'm giving it a 5-star "mediocre" rating. Almost gave it a 6 just because Asylum managed to finally produce a film that wasn't a complete loser. This had plot, story, directing, acting, goofy-but-not-stupid ending. Why, for Asylum this is almost prime roast... if one doesn't mind the flies swarming around. Besides, it's a Kaiju (giant monster) film. What are people expecting, brilliant conversation? Asylum. Kaiju. Face it... it could have been much worse. As in "Atlantic Rim" worse. Now that was a loser.

Why are these filmmakers still allowed behind a camera. Worse dreck in celluloid history. Looks like they walked up to some random guy on the street and said: Here's a thousand bucks to make a movie about kaigus, see what you can do. Apparently the guy pocketed 900 dollars and used the remaining 100 to hire some actors, director, sets and an etch a sketch for the effects. Of course I didn't watch this whole dreck; just FF to see how bad it could get. There should be a law.

Where the hell are the monsters??? Glimpses and pieces... nothing I'd watch ever again and I love these kinds of movies!