Island of the Lost (1967)

I finally found it. I saw this as a kid. That was back when I would watch any movie until 4 in the morning, I like movies that much. This was the only movie that I saw back then that made me regret watching it. I remember telling my older brother "The best character is the sailboat. And they only show it a little at the beginning, but at least it does make a re-appearance as wreckage at the end." The whole thing is bizarre and it had to be one of those situations where the producer wanted to go to Bahama on vacation so he took a camera and some pals and then tried to piece together what they shot after they got back stateside and sobered up.The makeup on the ostriches is laughable, and the phony fangs on the dogs are as cheezy as the plastic skeletons. In between the bad acting, ludicrous score and ridiculous plot, its like National Geographic nature film, with pointless underwater shots that add nothing to the story. Hey, if you rent that underwater camera, you better use it.The dogs attacking the turtle was the only authentic thing in the whole movie, and it would get them arrested in the US if they staged it here, pity the ASPCA was not on set to prevent it.OK, fun time, lets do the rewrite. Loose the dogs and ostriches. Let the wild man be doing the king test sure, but lets have him kidnap the 11-year-old girl, to take a wife. Savages. So then the rest of the idiots try to save her, all egged on by the British guy. They fail, but it turns out the British guy is a pedophile, so the savage is really a hero, and he really just wanted the girl as a slave, since who wants to marry a kid, they are too little, too little. They all make the British guy walk the plank, the little girls enjoys being a slave, the other 4 all hook up, and a happy happy ending.

In hindsight, I am not sure why I watched this movie. After all, it really has nothing going for it. In fact, it's such a cheap film that I wonder why it ever went to DVD.The film stars Richard Greene as a really, really stupid professor. He decides to pack off his kids and head on an ocean voyage of discovery. So, he packs off his two girls (one very young), a friend, a college student and a sea lion (yes, a sea lion) and heads on a very long trip in his sailboat. Now I am NOT against boats and family adventures, but this guy seemed a bit flighty to put everyone at risk like this.Since the film is called "Island of the Lost", it isn't surprising that sooner or later the group will land on an uncharted island and have lots of freaky adventures. The island, it turns out, is full of supposedly extinct animals. This actually means that the filmmakers took animals such as gators and birds and 'embellished them'--sticking cardboard pieces on them here and there to make them look primordial. Well, at least that was the intention. It just came off as very cheap and silly.In addition to the silly animals, the island features volcanoes and savage natives--or at least some of them are savage...kind of. In fact, none of the stuff they encounter seems that interesting and mostly it's just Greene saying things like "...wow...there's a archaeotperixis coelocanthis..." or "...look out...they look like head hunters..."---and delivering the lines like he's delivering a lecture to a group of coeds. The acting isn't 100% terrible, though it isn't good--and this pretty much can be said about everything--the direction, camera-work and overall production. The bottom line is that it's bad but not bad enough to be funny....just dull and silly.

As of May 2011, this film is available on Netflix. Great scenery.Jose De Vega is also in this film. This was made six years after he played a Hawaiian buddy of Elvis in Blue Hawaii. But he was Filipino and Colombian. So he played various ethnic rolls on television and also in the movies. Lots of beautiful tropical scenery. But I keep remembering this was filmed in the area of West Palm Beach, FL. I am not sure why I ordered this DVD. It could have been because of Ivan Tors. He was the producer of Flipper. So all of the underwater scenes and "trained seal" scenes might have a familiar look about them. Only this time, there is a seal instead of Flipper. Luke Halpin from Flipper is also a son in this flick. Not much of a part, though.

Richard Greene is certainly a man who believes in family togetherness. He's an anthropologist who believes that somewhere in the vast Pacific there is a chain of undiscovered islands. Remember this is 1967 and by that time we and the Russians have had some men who've circled the globe and I'd think that from their vantage point they might have seen something that had hitherto been undiscovered. Anyway he packs his family which consists of his two daughters, a son, and two research assistants and goes off to the South Seas. At this point this actually does sound like Sterling Hayden who chucked his movie career for just such a venture.When they get to the South Seas, they get themselves caught in the Pacific equivalent of the Bermuda Triangle. A lot of unexplained magnetic activity causes their compass to go haywire and Greene and the family are stranded on the Island of the Lost.This is not any kind of island Gilligan would have found hospitable. Greene finds all kinds of strange exotic creatures, killer ostriches, saber tooth dogs and miniature prehistoric Dimetrodons. The family has to battle all of them and some hostile natives. There last encounter with unfriendly creatures however is when Greene and assistant Mart Hulswit go diving and meet some unfriendly garden variety sharks.I'm still trying to figure why this maroon would take his family on such a dangerous trip, one that in fact turned out to be as dangerous as it was. But Island of the Lost isn't that good a film to be worried about it.The film was produced by Ivan Tors and Ricou Browning, the same folks that brought us Flipper, that ever trusty friend in the sea. Which is why teen idol Luke Halpin was in this film as Greene's son. Luke's big moment is rocking out on a keyboard made of balsa and creating a truly eerie musical sound. What's sad is that Luke Halpin once Flipper had run its course on television and films was just another ex-teenage idol. It's hard to believe that this was the only film offer around. Or maybe Halpin had a sincere case of loyalty to Ivan Tors who certainly had been good to him and his career so far. In any event like so many who sink below the radar once their series is canceled, it happened to Halpin. This film sure didn't keep him visible.Island of the Lost is kind of laughable today, the special effects at which Tors was acclaimed a master back in the day are pretty lame. It's also hard to believe that television's Robin Hood, Richard Greene, had also sunk so low.This one is bad news folks, skip the three hour tour to this Pacific paradise.