Island of Terror (1966)

Good movie, but best of all time? Hardly . . .

A Masterpiece!

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

Watching it is like watching the spectacle of a class clown at their best: you laugh at their jokes, instigate their defiance, and "ooooh" when they get in trouble.

Planet Film Productions, who distributed (as far as I can tell) a total of six films, beginning in 1951 and ending their run with this, have put together a good, solidly made production featuring an scholarly Peter Cushing. Also, amidst the nicely creepy locations beautifully captured by director Terence Fisher, are the reasons for the 'terror' extolled by the title: b-movie style slithering 'Silicates', long-necked snail-like creatures that move around with staggering slowness. These monsters either destroy the nicely conveyed spooky atmosphere, or provide a somewhat silly high-point among the serious faces and long coats - depending on your point of view.The bodies of a series of murdered humans/animals have one gruesome thing in common: their bones have been liquefied, leaving the cadavers 'all soft and flabby.' Dr. Bryan Stanley (Cushing) and his authoritarian gang Drs David West and Reginald Landers (Edward Judd and Eddie Byrne) investigate, together with Toni Merrill (Carole Gray) - who has constantly to fight against their 'stay here, things might get dangerous', and then screams in terror whenever they are confronted by the Silicates. Girls, eh? The actors do a good job of staring in terror at these wonderfully daft creatures, who occasionally exude slimy spaghetti when attacked. Gray in particular does her best with Merrill, who looks pretty but is written as the wilting female who needs to be looked after.Terence Fisher doesn't make much of effort to make these monsters look particularly terrifying. A couple of zoom-ins, otherwise it seems to be a case of 'point the camera at them and let them get on with it.' ("They don't seem to be moving very fast," Stanley says at one point.) And yet the briefly seen boneless corpses are very effective, as is the depiction of something unpleasant happening to stoic Dr. Stanley's hand toward the end, which is genuinely shocking.Overall, this is good fun. The island setting is authentic and the sets are packed with convincing rural detail. It remains a lesser-known Peter Cushing film, however. "We were lucky this is an island. If it had happened anywhere else, I don't think we would have been able to destroy them," says West shortly before the film ends with an ominous final scene. Tremendous.

Although the science is somewhat suspect Island Of Terror still is one of the better products from Hammer Studios in Great Britain. The creatures on the island are soulless and scary. They would be as they are just large one cell creatures who subdivide like an amoeba.Working on one of the Channel Islands on a cure for cancer Dr. Peter Forbes-Robertson has created these silicon based big size amoeba who eat animal bone and leave the carcasses like the deflated balloons after the Thanksgiving Day Parade. They are out of the laboratory now and wreaking havoc on the island.Fortunately other scientists like Peter Cushing and Edward Judd are frantically working on a way to kill these creatures who are not just soulless but also impervious to just about everything they try. And it isn't like there's a stockpile of weapons on this peaceful Channel island.Carole Gray is also around to bolster morale for the scientists, especially Judd and to scream when these creatures approach. She does well on both counts.I'm flippant, but Island Of Terror is not a bad horror film and the coda to the ending gives us all reason for concern.

Terence Fisher directed this thriller about a group of scientists on an isolated island who are conducting cancer research experiments involving living tissues that goes horribly wrong, resulting in the creation of a horde of killer tentacle creatures that attack people and liquefy and digest bone matter. Two scientists(played by Peter Cushing and Edward Judd) go to the island to investigate, but instead find themselves in a life and death struggle for survival, as they must find a way to destroy these silicates before they infect the world... Unique type of monsters here, and they are genuinely unsettling, with an effective score, but there is something needlessly crass about this premise(especially the ending) that makes it off-putting.

Sorry to disappoint anyone expecting silly cats. Sillicats are nothing more than the pizza-monsters in the "Star Trek" episode "The Devil In The Dark", plus a long elephant-like trunk glued in the middle, which flaps about somewhat when targeting a luckless islander.Not too much padding, as is usual in low-budget monster fare, but there is a hilariously drawn-out scene which shows nothing more than the two scientists putting on some large condoms (suits) in a lab. Perhaps the director was forced to show the entire sequence of putting on those goofy suits because if he'd cut straight to Cushing dressed as a condom the scene would have garnered some unintentional laughs. This way the audience at least has time to adjust to the fact that the two heroes will be dressing as condoms. Dramatic music accompanies this protracted scene, just in case we notice how irrelevant this scene is. This was a typical "trick" in the meager 50s/60s B-movie weapons arsenal: when you know the scene is lame, put on some mega-dramatic music on top of it.Fancy that, the young scientist putting his girlfriend in charge of controlling the villagers in the town hall (or village hut). And what exactly qualifies her to control the rabble? This is exactly how Mira Markovic and Elena Ceausescu got to where they were: spineless husbands pushing their ugly wives to power. (OK, fine, this actress is neither ugly nor evil, the comparison is slightly flawed, so shoot me.) A bit too silly how even an ax cannot even slightly damage the sillicats. If they're made out of silicon, they're not made out of steel.Watch for Cushing get all jovial and cracking jokes, mere hours after having had his hand amputated by an ax. So very English. So B-movie.IOT is a charming little monster-invasion flick, with little action and a lot of talking which is typical of its type, but very much watchable.