Island of the Fishmen (1981)

I first read about Sergio Martino's Island of the Fishmen in Chas Balun's '80s book Horror Holocaust, where it went by the alternative title of Screamers. Since Balun's book was all about the splatter, I immediately added the film to my mental list of must see gore movies, but have only recently been able to track down a copy of the film (via YouTube). Unfortunately, what I had forgotten was that Screamers, released by Roger Corman's New World company, was a re-edited version of Martino's movie, with extra footage added to make it more marketable to the US market, and that the original version, which I had found, was virtually blood-free!The untampered Island of The Fishmen is a formulaic Jules Verne-style adventure in which a small group of castaways are washed up on an uncharted island where the owner Edmond Rackham (Richard Johnson) has creating half-man/half-fish mutants in an effort to retrieve a valuable lost treasure from the submerged ruins of Atlantis. There is lots of dreary talking and plenty of unremarkable action, but graphic violence is limited to a man having his face clawed and another falling into a trap full of spikes, making it far from the gloriously gory epic I had long hoped it would be. The film doesn't even make the most of the presence of Bond beauty Barbara Bach, who remains fully clothed throughout (unless you count her strip down to Victorian underwear, which practically covers her entire body anyway!).Shot in the same tropical locations as Lucio Fulci's Zombie, and with atmospheric cinematography from Giancarlo Ferrando, Martino's film has the look and feel of many a classic Italian gorefest, but remains a remarkably dry affair, and while the fishmen themselves are entertaining thanks to their ridiculous design and expressionless faces, the film as a whole is a rather tedious affair. I guess I'll just have to satisfy my yearning for excessively gory fish-man horror with repeat viewings of Corman's Humanoids Of The Deep (1980)—at least until I can get my hands on a copy of 'Screamers'.

Yes, the video cover of this movie made me want to watch this film as a child. It was called "Screamers" on this particular cover with the tagline "Men turned inside out!". It even featured this warped looking skeleton on the cover as well that made all sorts of cool gory images run through my mind. Perhaps some sort of movie about some strange virus that caused a person's flesh to burn off, maybe a movie about undead zombies that are more bloody looking than what you usually get, a science experiment gone incredibly wrong and now strange men with the flesh dripping off their bones go on the rampage. Yes, all these thoughts ran through my mind, one that did not was fish guys on some island with virtually no gore and all bore. This movie is really more like the Island of Dr. Moreau than anything else and quite frankly that movie bored me too, it is way to much scientist and not enough killing for my tastes. These films are to much figure stuff out and not enough blood for my tastes. Yes I know, I have strange tastes, but I can not help it, I like my horror movies either really bloody or fast moving and exciting this movie is really neither.

I saw this movie on television as SCREAMERS and loved it. I heard an interesting story about this film. When Roger Corman released it to drive-ins in the summer of 1981, his trailer department sent out an advance trailer which was not actually footage from the film. It was allegedly footage of a naked woman being chased around a laboratory set by a monster. During the film's opening at drive-in's, irate customers complained the did not see the movie they paid to see. Theater owners called Corman and said their customers felt ripped off. So Corman had to run off copies of the footage, and send the positive film to theater owners to splice into the film themselves. Since the footage was never part of the film negative, it has not appeared in any video, DVD or television broadcast. Has anyone ever seen this footage? Anyone who saw this film at a drive-in in the summer of 1981 remember this?

Lt. Claude (Claudio Cassinelli) and several prisoners from his sunken ship wash ashore on an island owned by Edmond Rackham (Richard Johnson). Following a few random prisoner deaths, Rackham takes in Claude and his two remaining prisoners. Luckily for everyone, Barbara Bach just happens to be on the island too! Unluckily, there are some crazy fishmen who like to kill people.This Italian produced exploiter seems to have it all - a touch of CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON mixed with DR. MOREAU with a dash of WHITE ZOMBIE voodoo and Atlantis stuff. Despite some wonky looking fishmen costumes, the film does benefit from some beautiful location photography and a nice twist about halfway through. All of the actors are good and Joseph Cotton even pops up as a old biologist. Director Sergio Martino handles himself well enough as there is action ever 10 minutes or so. That can't be said for his belated follow-up THE FISHMEN AND THEIR QUEEN (1995), easily one of the wackiest and most off-base sequels since HIGHLANDER II.