Unknown Island (1948)

Just perfect...

Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

Yo, there's no way for me to review this film without saying, take your *insert ethnicity + "ass" here* to see this film,like now. You have to see it in order to know what you're really messing with.

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

Unknown Island was a film often shown when I was a kid on Saturday morning. Being an independent film it was probably sold to television very early before the big studios started selling off their libraries. For the time the special effects were pretty good, especially when you realize that this is an independent without big studio special effects department available.Philip Reed and Virginia Grey go into a Singapore dive looking for the notorious Captain Tarnowski played by Barton MacLane. They're looking to charter his tramp freighter which is primarily used by trappers for the wild animals they capture. There's this Unknown Island reputed to have prehistoric beasts on it and Reed wants to photograph them.Of course with Grey around everybody's hormones go into overdrive. Among those others are Richard Denning who has been to the island before and has barely drawn a sober breath since. As for MacLane he develops plans for the dinosaurs and for Grey.Not too much research was used as prehistoric animals from all eras get to appear here. Including the giant megatherium sloth which was one of the largest prehistoric mammals. Of course the fact that they were primarily vegetarian didn't get in the way. I suppose they had to learn to eat meat especially with all the T-Rexes around. The fight between the giant sloth and a T-Rex is a beauty.And of the human players Barton MacLane looks like he's having a ball doing a fabulous job of overacting as a man gone crazy with chronic malaria and drink. The other humans in the cast also get in the spirit of the project.Unknown Island is not bad for an independent film and it's a lot of fun.

I found it hard to do anything but like this movie.Yes, it's from 1948, it's low budget, and the "special effects" are quite limited to what they had at that moment, under that limited budget.Still, I liked all the actors. Barton McLane takes over the movie as the gruff, dubious Captain, someone you shouldn't trust with your lunch, never mind your life. Virginia Grey as Carole hits the nail on the head as the classy rich lady who's no pushover.I liked the fact that here you have a format (action/adventure/sci-fi) which usually demands two-fisted heroism and black-and-white morality, which is peopled with nothing but hateful, dysfunctional, dishonorable characters with their own selfish agendas and motives, a trend starting to peak at that time with the entire (then unnamed) film noir genre which was just at that moment at its height. I liked the direction, which is quite unusual for 1948. The monster attack sequences are cut quite tightly, with alternating close-ups of horrific monster faces, nasty gushing red blood (taking advantage of the Cinecolor format employed). Check out the climactic "monster vs. monster" battle at the film's end for the most exciting, tightly edited sequence, bordering on the surreal or something out of German Expressionist cinema, but in blaring color.I even liked the stop-motion miniature dinosaurs (used sparingly) and the man-sized dinosaur costumes (a la Godzilla) that were used more liberally. The T-Rex attack sequence about 46 minutes in where they pelt them with grenades and blow them up is just HILARIOUS! Yes, from our perspective these costumes are very cheesy, but for the time and the budget involved, I thought they were quite cool, and hating on the people that created them is shooting fish (or T-Rexes) in a barrel. You have to grade on a curve here, people, we're talking about 1948. Overall, much better than other low budget jungle adventure flicks from around that time, such as The Lost Continent, and a lovable way to spend 72 minutes. This is an enjoyable romp for when you just want to turn on a movie and get lost in a story, and not think about matters like whether the plot makes any sense. Don't analyze, just have fun.

A lot of this movie looks like a re-do of some elements of King Kong, which had been released 15 years earlier. The stop-motion technology of Kong was here replaced by a forced-perspective split-screen approach to animate the ferocious gigantic beasts. Compared to today's CGI, the effects may seem as primitive as the dinosaurs it shows, but it's a fun movie to watch.There's a bunch of tough sea dogs, one pretty girl, and some others introduced in pre-adventure bar room brawls and so on. Some explorer guy hears legends of the existence of the mysterious uncharted island, where prehistoric life has somehow avoided extinction, and books the sea dogs for a voyage to the island. Sound familiar? Apparently, this guy had heard about horrible deaths in the earlier film, and had aspirations to get killed in the same way.I love the creatures in this film. They're not as scary as others you've seen, but they're certainly a novelty to see. They move slowly and stare with curiosity at panicky human characters who like to shoot at them. In a couple of scenes, one of the grinning dinosaurs even looks like he's about to sing the Barney song, "I Love You, You Love Me." Be on the lookout for Kong's toothy cousin, who stages the obligatory rematch with one of Barney's more vicious relatives.It's all some good dinosaur fun, which was probably quite cool for its time, and it certainly can still entertain today, if you look past the cheap effects. The actors approach their characters with enthusiasm, and there is a good balance of character development, action, and plot development. A decent watch, for some fun drive-in nostalgia.

Bad. Really bad!! But it's not one thing wrong with it; it's many, many little things that turn this into garbage. The acting in this film was very good. But if the Captain had a disease like malaria then he should have been in a hospital and not on this trip. The goofy effects and dinosaur costumes were just lame. Now I know what the people who like this movie are saying to themselves. It's 1948, give them some slack, the technology was around. But take a look at King Kong of 1933 and tell me they could have done better if they tried.