Terror on Alcatraz

Frank Morris (Aldo Ray), the only man ever to escape from Alcatraz (in 1962), is also something of a sadist as demonstrated by a charming opening sequence of him burning his mistress' breast with a lit cigarette and slashing up a former prison guard with a straight razor. Eventually, he follows a tour group to Alcatraz island in an attempt to retrieve a key to a safety deposit box full of cash and jewels. Know-it-all Alcatraz buff Greg (Scott Ryder) recognizes him and, along with five others, sneaks back onto the island for a "cell block party" and to find out what Frank is up to. Frank, of course, is none too happy with the interfering, grabs a butcher knife and starts hacking away. After our heroine Terry (Lisa Ramirez) tricks Frank into falling off a cliff and he's believed to be dead, he turns up again in San Francisco to claim his fortune. 20 minutes later (!?) Frank gets his in a ludicrous, out of left field surprise shock ending.

Production values are low and the acting is pretty bad, but the premise is serviceable, the location work is decent and the gore FX are pretty good, plus we get a long and informative history lesson on Alcatraz from a tour guide...played by Mohammed Ali's wife, Veronica Porsche Ali! Clint Eastwood played the same Morris character (albeit a wee BIT different) in 1979's ESCAPE FROM ALCATRAZ.

Score: 4 out of 10

Despite an intriguing premise there isn't much in the way of terror as the title suggests or entertainment value in this rather tame TV slasher movie. Hell having a fantastic location like Alcatraz should have been at least watchable, but the sluggish pace, horrible grainy photography & cheap electronic keyboard score drags everything down with some very clumsy production.

The plot follows Aldo Ray who plays real life Alcatraz escapee Frank Morris intent on retrieving a map to a safe deposit key he left on the island when he escaped. But his plans are interrupted when a group of tourists decides to stray away from the tour and stay there themselves, so Frank decides to kill them off one by one.

Like I said the narrative had potential and some of the murders are surprisingly quite good, but everything just takes way too long to get going and we don't even get to know the cast during that time, they were simply fodder and nothing else. Although Aldo Ray does give a respectable performance as Frank, even if he does come across more as a mindless psychopathic thug than a calculated genius, but that could be down to the lack of enthusiastic script he had to work with, but does carry most of the runtime on his shoulders.

The only somewhat positive note is the curve ball ending, which was bizarre and totally unexpected, other than that there's not really much to recommend here, just a basic run of mill tedious slasher movie.

Part unofficial sequel to Escape from Alcatraz, part 1980s slasher film as prison escapee Frank Morris breaks back into Alcatraz to butcher some pesky kids with a meat cleaver. Morris had previously been portrayed on screen by Clint Eastwood, here he is played by Aldo Ray, presumably the years in-between were meant to have been rough on Frank.

Terror on Alcatraz works best during its first and third act where Ray is centre stage and the film has the feel of Paul Leder type character study of an unpleasant, mentality unbalanced person a' la I Dismember Mama and My Friends Need Killing. Its less involving when in slasher mode for its mid-section, a direction that you're left with the impression the film was reluctantly pushed towards.

There was this inexplicable trend for prison set horror films that briefly came and went in the late 1980s, leaving us with the likes of 'Slaughterhouse Rock', 'The Chair', 'Prison', 'The Destroyer' and John Saxon's only film as a director 'Death House'. Terror on Alcatraz though is the only one of the bunch whose release was promoted with its own tie-in scratch card competition, cause if the sight of Aldo Ray going bare chested and chopping up people with a meat cleaver isn't enough to reel in the punters, the chance to win $500, a tour around Alcatraz and some Pierre Cardin designer luggage must surely have sealed the deal.

If you love really bad movies, I mean REALLY BAD movies this one of the best bad movies made. It has the production value of the films we made in college....none.

Aldo Ray returns to Alcatraz playing escapee Frank Morris of the famed Morris/Anglin Escape of 62. The "plot" if you want to call it that involves Morris returning to Alcatraz to retrieve a treasure map that he forgot to take, keep in mind it took months to plan and execute the original escape.

So along with the Morris is a group partying teenagers or adults playing teenagers and of course, Morris has to kill them to get the map back....it could happen.

Some note worthy moments are the Rangers who carry shotguns, a female ranger that gets put in a stew pot. Watch this scene because she actually walks towards the killer saying "who's there" (scream). A

guy who plays an angry Indian who hates everyone and whines about the occupation, Indian rights, etc. The fat coke addict, the guy who talks about Alcatraz non-stop. The only time he doesn't talk about Alcatraz is when he is barfing on the ferry boat or getting killed. Ray is great though its easy to distinguish when he is sober or drunk in the film. The victims have to come to him to be murdered.

There are more memorable moments and its too bad this isn't on DVD, but it can be found on E-Bay in VHS form. Get it , Watch it!!!

I guess NIGHTMARE ON ALCATRAZ could have been a decent little thriller. It tries to be different, with an actual historical figure taking the place of the anonymous slasher killer stalking 25 year old teenagers around some decrepit, forlorn location where they shouldn't be. The old "randy teens busting into the closed down facility to have an unauthorized party" gimmick is a tried & true formula, CHOPPING MALL being my favorite example. This time they choose Alcatraz and do so on the same day that escaped felon Frank Morris decides to return to find a map to a safe deposit box key. Morris stalks and kills the kids for no apparent reason other than to give the film a body count.

What is strange is that after all of the blood has been shed the story then concerns itself with Morris' attempts to live it up & collect his old loot. Did we really need the scenes where he and his squeeze snooker their way out of a hotel bill? Or attempt to go out for an elegant dinner and end up with an inept effeminate waiter? The movie comes across as two film treatments combined into one script for the sake of economy: A slasher film about kids being stalked in the crumbling remains of Alcatraz -- an idea that would find a more interesting form in SLAUGHTERHOUSE ROCK -- and a film about Frank Morris coming back from obscurity to slice up his old prison guards & find the hidden loot. By combining the two formulae the film waters down either premise and goes on for about fifteen minutes too long trying to give both story skeins equal attention.

Then there is the execution of the film in general, which is too inept to be involving and not goofy enough to be genuine bad film fun. Aldo Ray gets star billing and does his best with an over the top portrayal of Morris but his histrionics are out of place, creating confusion in certain scenes where he carries on in a blind rage with no real motivation. The kids are the usual unlikable bunch but even their murders aren't handled with any finesse, and Morris' motivations in killing them are a mystery. At one point a kid who was dispatched is brought back for a shock sequence where he's still alive and the survivors flee in terror rather than free him, suggesting that the fleeing in terror part was more important than anything else. And when you've seen one group of kids fleeing in terror you've seen them all, really.

The film has nothing new to offer unless it be the pop culture tour of Alcatraz hosted by Muhammad Ali's wife, though I seriously doubt that anybody would be checking out the film for a history lesson.

4/10