Mercy Island

We are promised opalescent waters at the start of this drama, but all we actually get is a muddied hybrid of half a dozen stories with a group stranded on a remote Florida Key from where, in my humble opinion, they ought never to escape. "Ramsey" (Ray Middleton) and his wife "Leslie" (Gloria Dickson) are off chasing the marlin when their boat runs aground and the propeller gets lost. Together with the captain (Forrester Harvey), their tour guide (Bill Shirley) and the mischievous young "Wiccy" (Terry Kilburn) they set off into the interior where they stumble upon an house that has it's very own scientist! This one isn't bonkers, though, nor does he experiment on the local flora and fauna - in fact "Sanderson" (Otto Kruger) comes across as possibly the most sane of the bunch, only he does have a secret to hide. Now "Ramsey" is an aspiring lawyer so reckons he can take the doctor back to civilisation and secure his acquittal, but just about everyone else thinks that's a daft idea. Is he going to go along with the consensus, or is it possible that he's actually the one who is not the full shilling? The real question here is: why would we care? Aside from a little eccentricity from Harvey and the young Kilburn doing his best Johnny Sheffield impersonation the entire film belongs to a dog. In an area replete with alligators, I struggled from early on to discover where they were. Couldn't they have saved us from this early on by eating most the cast and the crew? Perhaps they feared they were too chewy? They would not have been wrong! The rudimentary production includes some obvious archive photography, is seriously over-scripted and though the score was nominated for an Oscar, this rest is distinctly raspberry territory, sorry,

Six people are stranded on an island in the Florida keys. With no food, and one of their members losing his mind -- perhaps because of a blow to his head, perhaps out of simple insanity -- they struggle to bring matters to a head or or escape depending on their individual desires.

Given a pretty good cast, including Ray Middleton, Gloria Dickson, and Otto Kruger, this cheap Republic Pictures is surprisingly uninteresting. Somehow Cy Feuer and Walter Scharf's score rated an Academy Award nomination. I don't understand it myself.

"Mercy Island" is a cheap B-movie from Republic Pictures. Surprisingly, it WAS Oscar-nominated...for Best Musical Score. Don't take this to mean that it's an especially good movie!

The story is supposedly set in the Florida Keys on the island of Mercy...a fictional island (I checked). However, it was mostly filmed in Hollywood, though some of the stock footage did appear to be on Islamorada, Florida in the Keys. And, laughably, the actors did most of their roaming about on the 'island' by having the island on a rear projected screen!

An obnoxious lawyer, Warren Ramsey, hires a fishing boat...and it soon becomes apparent that he thinks he knows far more than the experienced captain. As a result, they end up going aground on the island and are temporarily stuck there. Once on this seemingly abandoned island, they meet up with Dr. Sanderson...a man who disappeared to this island after unjustly being accused of murder. Everyone likes him...except for Ramsey, who hates and suspects everyone. So, Ramsey plans on telling authorities about the Doctor...and bosses everyone around like he's Il Duce! What's next? See the film.

This is not a terrible film...it's watchable and reasonably entertaining for an ultra-low budget movie from a third-tier studio. The best thing about it is Otto Kruger, a fine actor, playing the poor doctor. The worst is the one-dimensional and over the top acting by Ray Middleton (Ramsey) and the overuse of stock footage.