Tanya's Island (1980)

This flick would never been hunted down by the exploitation buffs if Vanity wasn't involved. The story of Vanity is really sad.Born Denise Matthews she was discovered by Prince who wanted to form a slutty band called The Hookers. They would dress like hookers. In 1982 when attending the American Music Awards Prince noticed Denise. They immediately went to the dressing room and Prince dated her and renamed the band Vanity 6 were she had the leading vocals. Nasty Girls being their signature it also became the signature of Denise now called Vanity. Her bed-hopping became notorious being shagged by Adam Ant, Billy Idol but among all Nikki Sixx from Motley Crue. Being a bit of a slut she also discovered heroin. She was seen in a few flicks, but towards the end of the eighties she was past and gone. She became depressed and a crack addict. Now and then she was seen in crap flicks or series. From 1994 she really was a drug-fiend only thinking about suicide, she even became deaf and blind. Rehab was on the way. After leaving the hospital she found out she was resurrected as a new born Christian. Nowadays she's a preacher woman and is back as Denise Matthews and doesn't want to be involved anymore with Vanity.Here in Tanya's Island we see Denise just before she was discovered by Prince. But acting wasn't her thing, she only did what she was the best, walking around naked. She walks a lot naked here and even allowed close-ups of her pubic hair. The flick itself is something strange. Tanya (Vanity) goes to a deserted island with her lover but she falls in love with a...monkey. Naturally her lover wants her back but hings aren't that easy. There is really not that much story here. On the other hand, not only Vanity attracts exploitation buffs but the director was notorious too. Alfred Sole directed 4 flicks one among them called Communion or Alice Sweet Alice (1976), a classic in the horror genre. Before that he directed the rare seen Deep Sleep (1972), a porn made in the golden age of porn. Don't think that you will see another gem like Communion, this is pure exploitation on the sleazy side with gratuitous nudity. Just one thing for the geeks, Rob Bottin and Rick Baker were involved in make-up effects. Next two flicks were The Howling (1981) and The Thing (1982) for Bottin, Baker also went to The Howling as consultant, next two flicks were The Funhouse (1981) and An American Werewolf In London (1981)Gore 0/5 Nudity 2,5/5 Effects 2/5 Story 2/5 Comedy 0/5

Depending on your point of view this movie is either an interesting Freudian exploration of the "beauty and the beast" myth, or it is a particularly pretentious example of what Robin Bougie of "Cinema Sewer" magazine hilariously dubbed the "bigfoot-rape" film. Evidence of the former would be that this was directed by Alfred Sole who directed the cult horror classic "Alice, Sweet Alice". This isn't a patch on that one,of course, but it's better than a lot of Soles other equally bizarre, post-"Alice" projects (like the off-the-wall slasher spoof "Pandemonium"). Evidence of the latter, however, would be that this movie stars D.D. Winters, a singer/actress who couldn't really sing and DEFINITELY couldn't act. She would later become Prince's protegee under the name of "Vanity" and then eventually a born-again Christian (and I'm not sure which is worse).This movie is about sexy and oft-naked woman and her husband who go off to live on an island for reasons that eluded me. The only other being on the island is a ape man/bigfoot type creature who the girl nicknames "Blue". The girl feels a strange affection, even perhaps an attraction, to the creature, which makes her husband increasingly jealous. He becomes determined to capture this monster and put it in a cage. The Freudian metaphor here is pretty obvious--the monster represents the wild, uncivilized side of the man, and he fears the woman's attraction to it and wants to repress both it and her. This intriguing idea is pretty seriously fumbled though by some truly horrid acting and a clichéd, cop-out ending usually used by filmmakers when they have totally run out of ideas.This movie greatly resembles the notorious Walerian Borozyx film "The Beast". It is also a arty, metaphoric exploration of bestiality (albeit a little less graphic than the Borozyx film). But while "The Beast" also starred a sexy but talentless actress (Sirpa Lane) as the object of the bestial affections, Borzyx had the good sense not to give her any lines. Winters has many lines in this movie and is unbelievably annoying when she's not having sex or getting naked. More importantly, however, "The Beast" had a strong ending that tied everything together, while this one . . .well, I won't spoil it--I'll just let it spoil itself. This is a potentially interesting but flawed film.

Tanya and her (surely old enough to be her father) lover Lobo live a free life on a tropical island,until Tanya meets an ape like creature Blue (which has a great for its day creature make up,from fx guru Rick Baker surely based on Jack Palances features).All is fine until Lobo gets jealous of his woman spending so much time with the beast,He captures it.Only for Tanya to release it in disgust.Leaving Lobo ("No Damned Animal Can Beat Me") to protect his camp site and partner from the angry beast.The plot comes across like Beauty and Beast crossed with the Blue Lagoon,and contains a few sex scenes which could push it into the realm of adult cinema.My fave part is seeing Lobo at the camp turn more beast like while Blue becomes human like.The ending for me is the films flaw,having the beast rape Tanya with a purely crude looking blue tint effect on the picture.I'm sure fans of traditional make-up FX will enjoy this most and maybe the beast rape will entertain exploitation fans enough to please them.I gave this one a [6 out of 10] sure it has its flaws but entertaining all the same.

Although I do not monitor which old films are scheduled to be re-released as DVD's, I occasionally see references to this, and I am often surprised at the titles that have been chosen. Many are films which I would not expect to succeed as a newly released DVD, whilst other titles contemporary with them which I would expect to be much more successful remain ignored. A case in point is Tanya's Island - I had heard a report that this was scheduled for release as a DVD early in 2005, but from my recollections of the film I thought this must have been a mistake. However a recent enquiry at one of our local stores has elicited the information that a DVD of this film is indeed expected to be in stock by the end of this month. This means that many people who see it on the shelves will consult IMDb to help them decide whether or not they want to buy a copy. My advice would be not to do so, at least until it has reached the video rental stores so they can preview it. As a film it had a number of interesting themes which held my attention during first viewing twenty years ago, but looking back on it afterwards I felt that these were not handled in any depth and were treated in a rather amateur fashion. The story is of a young girl who feels she has been mistreated by her artist boyfriend and experiences a romantic dream or reverie in which he, she and an ape are living on a very idealised island. The ape and the boyfriend compete for her attention in an extremely school-boyish manner which is comic rather than serious, but the point of the film is the psychological undertones when the man shows increasingly brutish characteristics whilst the brute begins to develop human ones. Whether one can learn anything important about female expectations, or subconscious male drives and urges, from this film would need to be addressed by someone more qualified than myself; however I would only recommend its purchase to somebody who has a serious academic interest in psychology, others may find it interesting to watch but no more.