Isle of the Damned (2008) - By Duane L. Martin

Film Reviews: Isle of the Damned (2008) - By Duane L. Martin
Posted on Tuesday, December 02, 2008 @ 16:32:52 Mountain Standard Time by Duane

You know, I don't often get a movie that has me saying, "WTF???" and laughing in just the first scene. This one sure as hell did. Isle of the Damned from writer Mark Leake and director Mark Colrgrove is a spoof of those old Italian cannibal movies, which I believe were mostly made in the 70's. One notable film from the genre is Slave of the Cannibal God starring, oddly enough, Stacy Keach and Ursula Andress. Basically these films involved primitive tribes of cannibals, footage of animals being slaughtered and eaten, stock footage of animals eating other animals, etc... Isle of the Damned is a spoof of those films, complete with made up Italian names, cannibalistic gore, a really hot girl, and a crazy cast of characters that really nailed down the spoof in a highly entertaining way.

The story revolves around a guy called Jack Steele (Larry Gamber) and his mostly homosexual teenage foster son Billy (Peter Crates). They're hired by a guy to find the lost treasure of Marco Polo in Argentina, and end up searching for it on an island full of cannibals. I can't even begin to tell you how much crazy stuff happens in this movie because the review would be a mile long. It'd be better if you just actually watched the thing. I have to say though, just one of the things I found highly amusing in this film is how the girl was treated like a sack of potatoes after Jack knocked her out to keep her quiet when she was freaking out. She was dropped, dragged, and generally just treated like an inanimate object as she was dragged through the island jungle while trying to evade the cannibals. It was really funny and actress Megan Mundane did a really great job in dealing with all of that.

The gore in this film was really well done, with all the expected scenes of cannibalism, in addition to several other depraved surprises, one in particular of which will likely have your stomach turning.

The costumes in the film, including the fake mustaches, wigs, etc... were all in my opinion too cartoonish for the film. It's kind of amusing at first, but some of them were just too cartoonish for me. I think the film would have been better served by using more natural looks on the actors. While in some ways the cartoonish look was fun, I just felt that it was...out of place in a way I guess.

This film was dubbed throughout. I mean...fully dubbed. Every bit of dialogue, every sound effect, etc... This was to give it that feel of the old dubbed Italian films, and worked out really well because the voices used were kind of doofy sounding. The sound effects dubbing was often times hilarious and really done in a fun way. There was a lot of work done on the dubbing in this film and I just want to congratulate them on what they achieved with that. All the little sound effects, including the burps and farts, just added so much to the film and made it seriously fun.

The gore effects were really well done, and there were also some really nice set pieces in this film that gave it just the right feel, such as impaled bodies, skinned corpses, etc... The gore was done more seriously, as it should have been. I think the film could have worked well if the gore had been cartoonish as well, but it was the kind of a thing that would have worked well either way and the more serious direction they chose to take with it worked brilliantly.

As far as the story goes, I thought the whole thing with the gay foster son Billy was actually pretty annoying and out of place in the film. He did have one really amusing scene at dinner, but generally, he was kind of the "Jar Jar Binks" of this film. I think most people watching it would just as soon have not had that character in it at all. No offense intended to Peter Crates who played the character, but I would have rather seen a different type of character there than the one we're presented with. Aside from that, the story is pretty decent and full of all the depravity you'd expect in a film of this nature.

All in all though, this is a great spoof of the old Italian cannibal movies and one hell of a lot of fun. It's definitely worth your time to check it out.

If you'd like to find out more about this film, you can check out the Dire Wit Films website at http://www.direwitfilms.com.