Voodoo Island (1957)

The Age of Commercialism

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

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

To put this in perspective: "Voodoo Island" is still waaaay better than anything Jerry Warren, Larry Buchanan or Bill Rebane ever put out (at least it has real actors and something approaching a budget), but if Karloff wasn't in it, no one would have even noticed this little piece of static time-filler.Problems with basic fact checking (voodoo is a Caribbean phenomenon, not a Polynesian one) production values (lets go to Hawaii to film our movie...and then film everything in black and white!), plotting (Elisha Cooke's demise and Karloff's acknowledgment that voodoo is real are completely flat and unmoving), casting (no one really is all that bad in this, but several actors are clearly phoning it in), dialog (the romantic arc between the two romantic leads reads and sounds like an ABC after-school special) and a complete lack of any momentum or suspense in the screenplay...all these problems consign "Voodoo Island" to Z movie dustbin status. You'll like Karloff, but he can't carry this film far enough.

Voodoo Island (1957) * 1/2 (out of 4) A man comes back from an island in a zombie-like state so a TV personality (Boris Karloff) goes back to see if it's really voodoo or something else. Before MGM released this film, I had heard plenty about it and none of it was very good. I was hoping for at least some camp but we don't even get that here and in the end the film comes off very badly and quite boring. Karloff doesn't manage to do anything good here, although I'm sure he cashed his paycheck pretty fast. The supporting cast are all really bad and the dialogue is horrible. With so many better horror films out there with Karloff then there's no point in watching this.

This movie was kind of sad to watch, because Karloff is a much better actor than this kind of tripe. It is always a sad commentary when the actors care more about the quality of a movie than the writers, directors and producers, who just were happy to tack Karloff's name on this turkey and run with it...Okay, apparently, the writers didn't know anything about Voodoo, other than Voodoo dolls and Zombies. They didn't know enough to know that Voodoo happens in the Caribbean, not in the South Pacific. I think this might have been an excuse for everyone to go to Hawaii...So the characters land on this island and encounter these man-eating plants that resemble... well, I won't tell you what they look like other than to say I am amazed they got past the censors in 1959. Apparently these plants feed by people being so dumb as to walk right into them, not only the explorers, but apparently, natives on this island as well...

"Voodoo Island" was Boris Karloff's first American film in four years. Nearing his 70th birthday, good parts must have been hard to come by, given that the old Gothic style horror for which he became famous, was now not in vogue.Hotel entrepreneur Howard Carlton (Owen Cunningham) is planning a new hotel/resort on a distant Pacific Island. A survey team that had been sent out earlier disappeared except for Mitchell (Glenn Dixon) who returned in a zombie like state. Carlton hires Philip Knight (Karloff) an investigative reporter to investigate the remote island where the disappearances occurred.The expedition includes Knight, his assistant Sara Adams, Carlton's front man Barney Finch (Murvyn Vye), Claire Winter (Jean Engstrom), local resort manager Martin Schuler (Elisha Cook) and his assistant Matthew Gunn (Rhodes Reason). Knight also insists that Mitchell be brought along. Before they leave for the island, Mitchell mysteriously dies and a voodoo death warning is left.When the expedition arrives at the "voodoo" island, strange things start to happen. First their boat breaks down and later they discover their food supply spoiled trapping them on the island all the while under the watchful eyes of mysterious natives. Then, while enjoying a swim Claire is killed by a flesh eating plant. The rest are captured by the natives. Schuler refuses to leave and later becomes a zombie as does Finch while watching two children play. Will the others escape?Karloff is totally miscast as the fast talking "Gerardo" type investigative reporter. Although he does his best, he certainly deserved better. He would make two more films in 1958 and then disappear from the screen until 1963 when Roger Corman "rediscovered" him for "The Raven".The cast spends most of the film trudging across the jungle island. We never see any so-called black magic and are left to wonder how the zombies are created. We do get to see some cheap looking dolls with pins in them though. This was obviously a film on a low budget. Most of it was shot outdoors and the special effects are cheaply done.Strictly for the lower half of a double bill.