Shame on you, The Island Monster. If you have "Monster" in the title, as well as Boris Karloff as the star, you should probably at least attempt to be a horror movie. I was fooled last year by the Karloff-less Devil Monster (also on the 50 Tales of Terror budget set), and now this. I'll still count it, since it's on the set, but man. If this I was watching a really boring movie a day, this would qualify for sure though. What an uninteresting drag of a film.
The Island Monster is about a family man/narcotics officer named Mario Andreani (Renato Vicario) who is assigned to stop a drug-running operation on an island off the coast of Italy. So at least the "Island" part is accurate. He goes kind of undercover, and gets involved with a beautiful local singer, who is in on the drug business. (But she has a heart of gold, you see, because she wants to get out. Of course she does.) Karloff appears as a local philanthropist early in the film, but things are not as they seem... Andreani's annoying wife and annoying kid show up to visit him (thanks for ruining his cover!), and the smugglers kidnap the annoying kid. At least the family has a dog, so they aren't entirely hateable. As you can probably tell, The Island Monster is really more of a crime film than anything, and not a very good one at that.
You kind of hope that Karloff will at least be entertaining, but sadly he's not all that great here. Not helping matters in the least is that fact that the film was originally shot in Italian, and the distributors of the film did not pony up to have Karloff himself dub his English dialogue. So you get a Karloff-impersonator doing his lines, and it just doesn't have the same impact. The dubbing overall is pretty bad - especially the annoying daughter. She has this wince-inducing high-pitched scream that is just terrible.
Aside from moving along very slowly, for much of the film they don't even bother with having any sort of soundtrack to help distract you from the fact that there is *nothing* going on. Maybe there was something better in the original version, but there is a lot of dead air in the English version of The Island Monster. You are just left alone with your thoughts, which tend to be along the lines of "I wish I was doing something else."
The transfer on the 50 Tales of Terror set did not do the movie any favors either. It looks okay, but the sound is super muffled, making much of the dialogue difficult to hear.
Is there anything good here? Franca Marzi is very good as the sultry singer Andreani gets involved with - she's as close as you get here to a character you actually care about. And then there's the afore mentioned dog:
 |
| Watch out for that annoying kid... |
Name: ??? (couldn't tell)
Breed: Some sort of German Shepard / Terrier mix?
Function: To save the day. To be something to distract you from how bad the rest of The Island Monster is. He has an interesting story - according to Andreani, he's the best guard dog around, even though he failed out of police dog school. (I would rather see that movie.) He knows how to stow away in cars/boats to get to the titular island as well.
Fate: He makes it. It looks like he's going to take a bullet in the end, but everything ends up okay.
Overall, The Island Monster is just a chore to sit through. Nothing interesting happens - no action, no comedy, no horror, no romance, no tension - nothing. Even with bad movies, I don't usually get bored until at least an hour in. Here? 23 minutes.
I would avoid this film.
No comments:
Post a Comment