Please Don't Eat the Babies (1983)

Pretty Good

People are voting emotionally.

A waste of 90 minutes of my life

Funny, strange, confrontational and subversive, this is one of the most interesting experiences you'll have at the cinema this year.

Amateurish account of two young women abducted by thugs after the gold coin worn by one of them is recognised as a rare antiquity. After a lot of threats and intimidation, the girls finally agree to reveal the location of the treasure, recounting in flashback the horrific events they survived as a pair of precocious teenagers when their group was drugged and dismembered by a family of deranged maniacs on a remote island.An earthquake, a bizarre ritualistic castration, random close-ups of cockroaches, a village idiot and a pair of not-so-wholesome old folks with sinister intentions are just a few of the dubious encounters you'll experience in this offbeat thriller. 30's cowboy staple Hank Worden looks frail but delivers his corn-fed dialogue ("I done got him that time granny, now how 'bout some pie") with professionalism, while the only other recognisable face is that of Kirsten Baker ("Friday the 13th Part II") in a frivolous (and topless) supporting role.Low budget props and special effects (e.g. the sponge-dummy "body" lying on the ground in the barn when Todd is attempting his escape) earn a high camp value while a couple of gruesome meat hook / meat cleaver incidents and a gratuitous sex scene up the sadism ratio considerably. Quirky and amateurish, but curiously entertaining nonetheless, the film's legacy of wisdom is a warning to all: don't accept herbal tea from old folks.

Although, I had no earthly idea on what to expect from this movie, this sure as hell wasn't what I would have had in mind, had anything actually come to mind. Once I heard of its existence, all I knew was that I had to own a movie called Please Don't Eat The Babies. unfortunately, I could only find a copy under its alternate title, Island Fury. Looking back, I guess I could call it a lose-lose situation. On one hand, I still don't get to be known as the guy who owns a movie called Please Don't Eat The Babies, and on the other hand, Island Fury would ultimately reveal itself to be an awful, pointless, boring, unwatchable piece of garbage. Yeah, definitely lose-lose.I'm not even sure what genre they're going for here. Just early 80's badness, with a flashback that might actually be longer than the non-flashback. First up, two teenage girls are being chased by two bad guys, once caught, the bad guys bring to our attention that one of the girls have a coin on a string, around her neck, and somehow, these bad guys know of a lot more of these coins hidden on an island somewhere. And this is where things start to get weird, somehow these guys know of a trip the girls took to some island, years earlier, when they were only 10. I guess this is supposed to mean that the girls should know exactly where this alleged treasure is. So, now, we're in the past, while the girls try to retrace their steps, so these bad guys don't kill them, although, I wouldn't have minded if they had. In the flashback, the 10 year old counterparts are on a boat trip with their sisters and the sisters boyfriends, eventually stopping by an island for some air, they get mixed up with some kid and his killer grandparents. Any potential suspense or reasons to keep on watching never shows up, but the flashback was undeniably better than the present, which still isn't saying a whole lot.For a while there I had forgotten about the original story. At one point, I thought maybe the director had too, and when the flashback ended, that would be the end, which would have worked for me considering this disappointment would have been a half-hour shorter. This pointless movie within a pointless movie does eventually end, and real stuff does happen, but it's stupid. I guess I didn't exactly expect a movie filled with infants being devoured, or anything like that, but I did expect some form of outlandish B-entertainment, mostly just a confusing, inept storyline, unsure of its genre. My advice would be to seek out something worthwhile like Attack Of The Beast Creatures. If anyone, I would only recommend this one to serious B-movie collectors who must have them all, anyone else interested probably has brain damage. What really gets me is that I still have no idea why they called it Please Don't Eat The Babies. 3/10

~Spoiler~Island Fury, a.k.a. Please Don't Eat the Babies, is definitely one of the weirder movies I've seen. That is saying a lot, believe me. The film has two separate timelines going on at once. One takes place in the present that follows two women who are being chased by some two-bit thugs who kidnap them and force them to help find some buried treasure on an island. The second timeline focuses on the same two women when they were little girls during their original trip to the island. In the flashback story, definitely the more entertaining of the two, the girls are traveling with some tweens who decide to treasure hunt on the island. They are taken in by a family who lives on the island and whose presence should raise about a hundred red flags if our characters were smart. Lucky for us, they aren't. The scenes where the tweens are being attacked by the family are truly bizarre. The patriarch of the family is played by Hank Worden, who is about 100 years old in this picture. He was the star of many great westerns in the past, but I know him as the "Elderly and Senile Room Service Waiter" from Twin Peaks. So if you can imagine him being menacing, or trying to be, you will see the dilemma the viewer is faced with. These scenes consist of Worden walking outside his cabin, firing his rifle towards the main characters, and simply walking back into the cabin. This happens several times and is downright goofy. Other head scratching moments that aren't even mentioned by any of the characters are giant bugs, underwater fissures and earthquakes, a nude lady who likes to castrate men, and some...thing who kills people with a pitchfork. I almost believe this is a Night Train to Terror situation where many movies were pieced together and the footage is totally incoherent. There is no logic to Island Fury and for that reason I wish more people would watch it just so I could discuss it with someone. Should you choose to accept this mission, don't say I didn't warn you.

Hank Worden, Mose in "The Searchers", winds down a great career with this student film mish-mash of a movie. Yachters use Worden's small island pier/store to stock up on supplies. The island is off limits and there is a curfew for the paying customers. Yachters are supposed to drop a few bucks and push off. Any one breaking the rules discovers Worden has a family inland that bears more than a passing resemblance to the Texas Chainsaw Clan. Which would have been fine. The film gets even more inept trying to inject a monster menace. Aquatic cockroach things that Worden's family has a weird empathy with.