Island City (1994)

A waste of 90 minutes of my life

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

We loved this movie and were really bummed when they didn't go to series. Really wish the Sci-fi channel would pick it up and run with it. The story line is good. It takes place in the future after a youth drug goes wrong. The youth drug was suppose to be a fountain of youth, but for most people it mutated them into violent creatures. Now the remaining people who have not been affected by the drug live in a secured city were they are trying to find a cure for the mutation. The city is pretty advanced with a force field protecting it, teleportation via telephone and a pretty advanced tracking system. Also everyone who lives there have a crystal implant that lets everyone know who is genetically compatible, so as not to breed any more mutants.They characters are pretty good too, there is Greg 23 who is a clone and has like 30 siblings that all look like him and every one of them has some sort of flaw. Then there is Lt. Mindy who is half rec (mutant) he is pretty much human with the exception that his features are strong and angular and he is very strong. Pretty much most of the characters are likable it is a very good sci-fi and a movie you can watch several time and still enjoy.Hopefully it will be released onto DVD soon and maybe the Sci-fi channel will buy the rights and make it into a series. We always wondered what would have become of the everyone and how they would have evolved.

Although it was a low budget film, it had a great concept and reminded me of some oldies but goodies that I re-watch occasionally (Genesis II, Planet Earth, Damnation Alley, Ultimate Warrior etc). The casting was pretty good and there was some real chemistry between the actors. Special effects are about what you expect from the low budget but did not distract from the film. The folks that really disliked it probably are not big fans of the low budget "B" sci-fi type films and may like the big budget blockbuster flicks at the theater that have the backing for better scripts and effects. I am glad that I had the chance to tape it from a TV broadcast. Hopefully, it was not edited too much. I am having a friend dub it on to a DVD for me so it will keep it's quality in my library and not deteriorate. Any "B" sci-fi fans out there will enjoy watching this. I would have really liked to see it released as a series, just to see where the writers wanted to go with the basic idea.

On second thought, that would be cruel. It's a big nothing of a movie with no redeeming qualities whatsoever. Violent mutants, brought about by the side effects of some heart medication, threaten the existence of the title city and instead succeed in torturing anyone who sits through this sorry excuse for a made-for-tv movie. So lame, it actually hurts. The only advantage for me was that I caught it on tv rather than being suckered into throwing away money to rent it at Blockbusters, so consider yourself warned.Rating: NO STARS out of *****

The turning point in my "enjoyment" of this obvious TV-series pilot came when the heroine announced that no one in this future post-apocalyptic world is allowed to have sexual relations with anyone not of a "compatible" genome type, for fear that they will have killer mutant babies. It's the 21st century, and no one's heard of contraceptives?I turned off the TV at that point.