Here's one of those flicks that you just know Fatty 'n Baldy at SNEAK PREVIEWS woulda given the "Dog of the Week" award to, and seeing how the reincarnated Abbot and Costello were sometimes apt to bestow such awards upon quite a few funtime flickers let's just say that I was definitely more than THANKFUL to the pair for this portion of their program for hey, if it weren't for them lambasting a whole slew of low-grade fun flickers out there how else would I know which moom pitchers to go out and see!
This eyetalian job starring the second Mrs. Ringo Starr and a faded Hollywood bigname is definitely one of the few pieces of cinematic excursions of the past thirtysome years that really could be called the spiritual (if not actual celluloid) successor to all of those forties/fifties Saturday afternoon matinee flicks that drew in all of the kiddoids. Y'know, the ones like Eddie Haskell who were probably telling their parents they were going to see PINOCCHIO instead of fun trash like this (or was it VOODOO RIVER and BLOOD CURSE???).
The remnants of a prison ship whacked out by a storm are washed upon the beach of a mysterious uncharted island which, upon further examination, seems even creepier than the one Dr. Boris Balinkoff took the castaways to. Wherever this place is, voodoo rituals are being held while graves have been emptied and this weirdo twosome are giving the surviving ship's doctor more'n a bit of the creeps with their rather chillsome demeanor. Oh yeah, forgot to tell you about these gill creatures who look like every other gill creature wandering around a whole slew of backlots since the fifties! But whatever, it's sure grand that they got this last chance to act before the anti fun 'n games crowd banished 'em all to trash cinema ha ha land once the entire eighties PLAN 9 trash cinema chortle got into full swing only a few meager years later.
Can't find a fault with this, since it kept me glued to the Naugahyde and I didn't even feel like letting the disque roll when I hadda get up and take a leak. Nothing better'n a good 'n unpretentious sci-fi horror film with loads of mystery and strange plot twists where you have to suspend your sense of belief even more'n when you watch the tee-vee news, and even if I can't stand Barbara Bach I must say that it wasn't like I was waiting for her character to take that ever-promised dive into the eternal mung. This is grand on all levels from watching as a visual work of art to just having some weekend afternoon fun when its raining out, and hey if I were Siskel and Ebert I'd give ISLAND OF THE FISHMEN all the dogs in the world!
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