Savage Island

Women who have been captured and sold as slave labor to a South American emerald mine hatch a plan for revolution and revenge.

What this film consists of is footage from "Escape from Hell" (1980) and "Hotel Paradise" (also 1980) spliced together with a new wraparound featuring Linda Blair. The new wraparound is directed by Nicholas Beardsley... but who is Nicholas Beardsley?

Of course, the new version makes no sense because the characters do not match up. The fact it is even comprehensible at all is something of a miracle. (Apparently Charles Band had a hand in creating this, but I am not sure the details on that.)

The two films this came from were both directed by Edoardo Mulargia ("Don't Wait, Django... Shoot!") and written by Sergio Chiusi ("SS Experiment Love Camp"), so if any credit is deserved, it should go to them. But why not just watch their real films?

Sadly, the quality is terrible (even on the Shout Factory release) and I suspect there is not much that can be done about that because the footage clearly did not come from original negatives.

There's no getting around it: this one is trash of the most wretched, yet irresistible, variety. It takes two existing movies - "Orinoco: Prigioniere del Sesso" and "Femmine Infernali" (both 1980) - and tries to combine them into one "story". This story deals with scantily clad female prisoners in South America who are forced into being slave labour, and searching for emeralds. Some mercenaries come to their aid.

About 10 minutes of new framing material was shot featuring Linda Blair, who didn't want to deceive people into thinking she was the star, despite being prominently featured in the promotional materials. Linda plays Daly, out to seek revenge on dastardly businessman Luker (Leon Askin).

As you might imagine, this gets pretty incoherent, and after a while some viewers may just give up trying to make any sense of things and just go with the flow. The archive footage is plenty sleazy, and will very much satisfy the exploitation loving crowd. There is a lot of full frontal female nudity, and a fair bit of violence. Not only do people get shot, but they fall victim to snakes and leeches as well. The poor quality of the picture is certainly appropriate for this kind of material.

Linda and Leon are fun, as are a number of the foreign performers in the original movies. Among those you may recognize are Anthony Steffen, Ajita Wilson, and Luciano Pigozzi. Hell, there's even a cameo role for none other than Penn Jillette, as a not very competent security guard.

The violence, nudity, and frequent action scenes help to ensure that, while this may be dumb, it isn't boring.

Five out of 10.

Daly (Linda Blair) walks into a high-rise, pulls a gun, and shoots a security guard (Penn Jillette!) in the forehead. Daly's there to tell her former employer about her mistreatment at the hands of his jungle thugs. This is done through flashbacks of events having nothing to do with Daly.

The "plot" has to do with emeralds and those profiting from them. However, it's mostly scenes of sweaty women fighting, sweaty men murdering each other, and sweaty women losing their clothes while fighting. This is punctuated by voiceover narration from Daly, to remind us that this monotonous mess is supposed to make some sort of sense.

Not even the perpetual parade of full frontal female nudity can ease the agony of this cinematic dog barf!...

"...You're going to remember this for a long time." And I have! Going back a few years, when I must have been so bored as to rent the most ridiculous, low budget films, this gem was etched in my mind. It's full of poorly done over-dubs. Hilarious! "I have some lovely letters and postcards from the outside world. How they ever found their way here is beyond me." Savage beach! A must not rent!

-GG

Escape From Hell??? Prison Of Sex??? Which is it???

This movie su-u-u-u-u-u-u-cked!

Take Linda Blair, put her in furs, have her cap a security guy, (A slumming Penn Jillete.) then put her face to face with a sleazy diamond merchant/slave farm owner. It must have sounded cool at one point.

Both of the early films that were ripped off, and had the Blair footage wrapped around, seemed like passable entertainment. But this horrid mess must have been made as a joke.

No coherence. Characters switching on and off at will. Seemingly endless shots of chicks in jungle gear sweating and running before dying. That does get boring when done wrong. And this was WRONG.

And who/where was that sneering voice coming from? (" Come on! You gotta WOOORRRKKK!!!!")

The late Leon Askin (Gen. Burkhalter in "Hogan's Heroes.") was the lone watchable one. His brief scenes seemed like the only serious ones.

Crap!