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.

I have this obscure movie on VHS and the cover features Linda Blair in a revealing outfit, holding a machine gun. In the actual movie, she does hold (and fire) a machine gun, BUT: A) Her outfit is a formal dress under a fur coat, B) Her part is a 5-minute cameo (plus a few lines of narration). The rest of "Savage Island" consists of copied-and-pasted footage from TWO Italian/Spanish Women-In-Prison films, one of which I've seen ("Escape from Hell") and one I haven't ("Orinoco - Prison of Sex"). The result is, as you might expect, a complete mess. There is no continuity between the scenes, sometimes even between the shots. 2 women start fighting dressed, in the next shot they are naked (because a lesbian scene in-between has been omitted). In one shot it is night, in the next shot it is day. In one shot the prisoners are in a circle, in the next shot they have formed lines. There are TWO different prison wardens, and the SAME female guard gets killed twice. It's all quite laughable and shameless. Rating: 0 out of 4 stars, pushed up to 0.5 because Linda Blair with a machine gun is sexy.

Savage Island (1985)

** (out of 4)

An escaped convict (Linda Blair) who was tortured manages to find the man (Leon Askin) who ran the operation. She then holds him at gunpoint while she explains the ordeal that she had to go through. This butcher job from Charles Band and Empire Pictures is actually two EuroTrash films, ESCAPE FROM HELL and HOTEL PARADISE, which were originally shot back-to-back with the same cast. Those two films are edited down in one 79-minute movie, which features newly shot stuff with Blair at the start and end. Why Band decided to shoot the new scenes is anyone's guess but he must have thought Blair on the poster would get more ticket sales. Overall this film is hard to fully judge because on one hand you're basically watching a chopped down version of ESCAPE FROM HELL and why do that when the full thing is available? You might as well watch that and if you must see the new scenes with Blair you can just fast forward through everything else here. As far as the new footage goes, it's all done pretty cheaply and doesn't feature anything that you must see. As for the two films that are edited into this, they both seem a lot better as there's all sorts of nudity, sex and of course silly violence. Ajita Wilson plays the lead prisoner who starts up a fight as the women are being killed and beaten in order to dig up diamonds for their evil owner. As for SAVAGE ISLAND, it's an ultra cheap film but with all the naughtiness going on, it's worth watching for exploitation fans.

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.

If you are into women-in-prison films, "Escape from Hell" in any good copy near the 89 minute Italian/Spanish original, would entitle you to watch the most erotic, and violent, nude lesbian fight - for possession of the third girl in a cell, between black Ajita Wilson and queen-bee Cintia Lodetti; and a gun duel between the same black fugitive and a Nazi female warden (Christina Lay?) to a mutual gory death. Both fights are at close quarters, and filmed in crude detail, which explains so many "director's cuts" of this film, for different markets.