Mad Doctor of Blood Island (1969)

It's complicated... I really like the directing, acting and writing but, there are issues with the way it's shot that I just can't deny. As much as I love the storytelling and the fantastic performance but, there are also certain scenes that didn't need to exist.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

This is one of those little gems that used to show up late at night on Fright Night with John Carradine as host and other venues on t.v. during the late 70's and early 80's. This movie was so heavily edited that I didn't realize how good it was until I found it on DVD about seven years ago. There was a lot of gore and nudity taken out of the t.v. prints that were thankfully restored on the DVD version. Cant have a "drive-in" classic without those elements now can you? The chlorophyll monster was downright original and appalling at the same time. I loved this Phillipino horror film classic for it's atmosphere and campiness though it is evident that the producers of this flick took their job seriously. Second in the Blood Island series and one of the best. 1970's Beast of Blood is also worth a look . Kudos to that other Romero horrormeister.

The second in the "Blood Island" series ups the ante with even more explicit sex and violence, recycling much from "Brides of Blood", including John Ashley. I didn't notice any other holdovers from the previous film, but the director hired actors who looked just like them anyway. There are carbon copies of Arcadio, Goro, Esteban Powers, and Alma, as well as the lovely Angelique Pettyjohn standing in for Beverly Hills.The plot is even wilder than before. This time, Ashley and damsel-in-distress-to-be Pettyjohn travel to Blood Island to locate her estranged father. No, the island is not called Matool. Anyway, what they discover is that the island is being stalked by a rampaging green humanoid monster, the result of a mad doctor's botched experiment involving chlorophyll used as a means of transforming human beings. Or something like that, right? Do we really care? There's a monster and it's killing people, and the protagonists don't have the sense to leave.Fans of naked ladies have plenty to look at, as the film literally opens with a nude woman being chased through the jungle by the creature. The gore in the film is gratuitous and ever-present, with the monster clawing people to death, ripping out their guts, and in one especially angry moment, attacking a young couple making out in the jungle. It rips off the man's arm (or was it a leg?) and efficiently removes the woman's head, tossing it in the air. What a cranky monster! It's also worth mentioning that the movie contains a very disturbing sequence where real animals are violently slaughtered on camera--a "native ritual" concludes with the natives rushing at some bound goats and pigs, stabbing them to death with knives, which was a genuine shock for me.Yet personally, I prefer "Brides of Blood" over this one, for one major reason. The director has attempted to disguise the ridiculous monster by using a pulsating zoom lens effect every time it's on screen. It's a gimmick that you'll either love or hate, and it's much more pronounced than the shakycam shenanigans of "The Blair Witch Project" or similar hand-held horror films. On a big screen, this effect would have been absolutely nauseating to me.Still, I'd recommend this movie to anybody who liked the first one, or anybody who digs grade-Z drive-in trash just like I do. The horror exotica settings do a lot to make the film interesting, and believe it or not, the ridiculous dialog exists alongside scenes that actually are well-written and memorable. Who expected THAT?

It seems this movie was also released under the title, 'The Revenge Of Dr X". IMDb has that listed as one of the variant titles for, 'The Double Garden', but the bad quality version I watched was definitely this movie. I had to search on the cast & crew to track it down.Hard to tell if 'The Double Garden' was also released under the 'Revenge Of Dr. X' title, or if it's a mistake in the database.Since the copy I saw was a downloaded Xvid rip, I don't have sufficient proof to submit the additional variant title to the database.It was also really bad quality. I shall look for a copy of the DVD to compare, so I can see if it's at least an uncut version.

This amazingly atmospheric ,surreal and sleazy drive-in masterpiece is a must-see for all fans of monsters, exotica, John Ashley, mad scientists, and cheesecake. I bought it based on its notorious reputation (and some seductive stills) and was not disappointed. It has some HG Lewis type gore, lots of gratuitous nudity, beautiful scenery, earnest bad acting, a seriously scary monster, and more. This is B Movie making at its finest, sheer exploitation with no apologies and no holds barred. Even the eerie exotica music score is cool. Eddie Romero's Filipino horror films of this era will appeal to all fans of 60s/70s Mexican and Spanish horror cinema. They are even as unique, bizarre, and compelling as the Japanese yakuza flicks from Seijun Suzuki of the same era, and much more colorful, entertaining and original than contemporary horror cinema. I also highly recommend "Brides of Blood" (the monster is kinda like a demonic tiki, a relative of the tree monster Tabanga in "From Hell it Came")and "The Blood Drinkers"m featuring a vampire that is as suave as a James Bond villain and incredible photography. I've heard some genre fans hate these movies for being so awful. I was pleasantly stunned at how wrong these naysayers were. What a great discovery.