Director: Ralph Brooke
Writer: Ralph Brooke
From: Cult Cinema
Watch: archive.org
A quartet of teenagers travel to what they think is a deserted island only to find themselves trapped by a maniac who hunts people for sport.
A review on IMDB refers to this as “A Cut-Rate Version of Most Dangerous Game,” and that about sums it up. The “teens” (each of them was in their late-20’s when they filmed this) rock up on the island, get captured, and twiddle their thumbs trying to figure out what’s going on, although they don’t put too much effort into that. They’re like the Scooby gang on Quaaludes. About halfway through they learn that their host is planning on hunting them and turning their corpses into trophies. They manage to evade him long enough for a henchman he abandoned earlier to arrive and kill him. Useless white heroes at their best.
I’m not going into detail about this movie because, well, there’s not a lot of detail to go into. The heroes don’t actually defeat the villain—one of his own henchmen does—and one of the girls ends up with a higher body count than anyone except the villain. That element’s kind of interesting, but not much is done with it. There is an unintentionally hilarious sequence shortly after the teens are brought into the murderer’s mansion where people keep bursting into the room to introduce themselves and their relation to the plot.
Another reason I’m not going into detail is I’ve seen this movie before, several times maybe. This is part of the Horror box set, so I watched it then, and it’s episode 0607 of Mystery Science Theater 3000. The episode is on Volume 1 if you want to watch it (there isn’t presently an official streaming copy online, although unofficial copies aren’t hard to find). That’s the version I watched this time around, and it’s fine. The riffs are all right and the host segments are super-short, almost absurd. Forrester’s mother visits (first appearance of Pearl), but that’s only in the opening and closing segment. Not a whole lot is done with it. There’s a short at the beginning, ”Uncle Jim’s Dairy Farm” that’s probably funnier than anything in the movie.
The movie itself, though, is in the public domain and I uploaded this to archive.org here seven-and-a-half years ago next Friday! Strange coincidence. I’m trying to find some enthusiasm in talking about this, but I really can’t. It’s a boring flick. The one upside is that it stars Robert Reed, aka Mike Brady from The Brady Bunch, so there’s some fun to be had with that. It’s a simple, inoffensive little film that’s only barely over an hour. Grab your snarky friends and have a run at it.
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