Island Of Death (cert. 18) will be released on DVD (£15.99) by Arrow Video on 21st March 2011.
- PRE-ORDER NOW @AMAZON
Even among the sometimes unsalubrious company on the UK Video Nasty list, Island of Death stands out a gloriously cynical exercise in pushing the taboo button and standing back to enjoy the carnage that ensues.
Imagine a film where it almost feels like the Greek director and producer sat down with a napkin, wrote a wish list of disgust, designed to best the boundaries of imported US grindhouse, and then set about filming the said list to produce what amounts to an exploitation weapon, honed to pierce petty morality and injure the minds of the impressionable and all to wring a trashy buck out of fleapit patrons who think they’ve seen everything.
Seen through modern eyes, it’s easy to smirk at the 70s decor and fashions and the dreamy travelogue footage that pads out many exploitation flicks, but at it’s heart, Island of Death is a movie that wants audiences to question their sanity for watching. As you sit there and let the cavalcade of golden showers, scorched Lesbians, assassinated gay men, beheaded aging tarts and violated goats wash your eyes in filth, It’s best to give up asking why such a nice, normal looking couple of kids in their 20s, with a summer of freedom to enjoy in such idyllic surroundings, should instead want to embark on a facist rampage across a sleepy island, striking down anyone who doesn’t cling to the same narrow and hypocritical morality that they do.
- READ MORE ABOUT THE ARROW VIDEO EDITION
Instead, my advice is to enjoy Island of Death for what it is, the kind of outlandish exploitation cinema that could only happen in 70s Europe, when independents had a chance to make money by filming what the big studios wouldn’t, the kind of grimy trash that people actually want to watch in a dark room. In our irony washed modern world, big studios inject large amounts of cash into post-modern retro-styled Multiplex-ploitation but they’ll never recreate the on the hoof joys of Island of Death, a movie that feels like a bunch of kids got together to put on a show one summer but then someone spiked their drinks with something really nasty.
