At the same time, you can feel the future exploitation lurking around every corner the close up surgery cut, Will’s proposition to Francis (“It’s been a long time, hasn’t it?”), and Francis’s brief self-frolicking. The small, likable cast and singular locations create some real tension, which leads to a few chilling moments. Moreau and Frankenstein’s central ideas? The believable acting, sympathetic situations, and Gerry De Leon’s tight black and white photography do much to propel Terror above what you’ve come to expect from this era’s b-movies. Maybe it’s due to the loose cribbing of Drs.
#Severin blood island series#
While it compiles a general plot template for the series (chiseled American hero gets tempted by heaving chanteuse, interacts with tampering mad doctor, battles visually bizarre monster), Terror Is A Man displays a level of classy sophistication that the forthcoming films would trade in for sheer thrills. Wait a minute…are we really on Blood Island? It all comes crashing down in an avalanche of cruelty, unrequited love, confusion, and obsession.
Gasp! When Girard’s mummy-puma beast escapes and kills a few villagers, Will finds himself torn between the good doctor’s logically brilliant experiments and his lust for Francis (Greta Thyssen from Journey To The Seventh Planet). Girard (Francis Lederer from Return Of Dracula), together with wife Francis and assistant Walter, is performing secret experiments concerning the evolutionary link between man and animal. Washed up on mysterious shores, sole shipwreck survivor Will finds himself at odds. Terror Is A Man (Gerry De Leon, 1959) sets the Blood Island blueprint, so let’s break ground. A little known thread of bizarre horror film history has been completely unearthed. The last two decades have seen the restoration and reissue of every Blood Island film on DVD and Blu-ray, thanks to the combined work of Image Entertainment, Retromedia, VCI, Wellspring, and Severin Films. Lucky for late-comers and reaquaintances alike, home video has come to the rescue. Several titles went MIA and the majority showed up on unwatchable VHS tapes and television broadcasts, often cut to ribbons and looking thick as muck. While the films were largely successful upon their initial gimmick-fueled releases (and re-releases), the 80s weren’t so loving. In other words, there’s reason to examine.įrom 1959 to 1973, director-writer-producer Eddie Romero, director Gerry De Leon, and producer-distributers Sam Sherman, Irwin Pizor, and Kane Lynn foisted the voodoos of Blood Island onto unsuspecting drive-in screens throughout the U.S. A juxtaposition of beautiful imagery with trashy drive-in thrills, these films are groundbreaking forebearers of the squelchy sex-n-violence that would dominate 70s horror. The results yield crude, yet accomplished works of template driven monster-art that never fail to fascinate.
Grab an instrumental exotica LP, charm an issue of Eerie Publications’ “Terror Tales” to life, spice things up with a little sexual energy, and burn the combined effects to film. Beautiful lands! Isolated tension! Steamy sexual underpinnings! Insupposable monsters! Neon art-gore! Always surpassing innocence, but never pushing the exploitation TOO far, Hemisphere Pictures’ Filipino horror films set on the mythical shores of “La Isle de Sangre” are living pop-art comic books, tailor made for adult thrill-seekers. We’re headed for trash film paradise we’re headed for Blood Island. Relax, grab that blue lei, and soak it all in.
As the salty air swifts clearer and the sleaze bubbles just below the water’s surface, I believe I detect the clink of cocktail glasses on the main deck. Our tiny vessel was beginning to leave port.
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