Halloween Movie Review: Don't Go Back to the Island (1977)

Few people know about this ill-conceived take-off-cum-rip-off of Maurice Sendak's classic Where the Wild Things Are. I can only guess that if Mr Sendak himself ever saw it he wisely chose to ignore it rather than give it any undue publicity by suing the hell out of the producers. It's a clumsy, terribly acted slasher flick with hilariously bad monster costumes and gruesome gore effects. The plot centers on a teenage hoodlum named Max, who bullies his equally dumb friends into stealing a speedboat and motoring out to the remote island he used to visit as a kid.

There, in the manner of slasher pics, each of the teens meets a grisly end, but not before Max sets himself up as a petty tyrant over his peers. I'm sure the writer/director thought he was making a very clever allusion to Lord of the Flies, but it's as hamfisted as everything else about this movie.

Eventually, having betrayed all of his friends/subjects, Max is alone, chased by every monster on the island. Interminably chased, in a night-for-night sequence that seems to last for twenty minutes and fails to generate any tension at all. In the end, within sight of the boat Max is caught, swiftly dismembered and greedily devoured.

The director manages one of his few effective shots at the very end of his movie, as the camera pans slowly away from the gory feast and tracks back into the woods, accompanied by a voice-over that's actually rather haunting:

...the blood ran out over earth
and in and out of stones
and through the grass
and into the pile of his very own bones
where they had made a supper of him

and it was still hot.

It Came from My Hi-Fi...

My Sunday soundtrack lately has been a playlist built from the killer clips featured on Monster Movie Music 1950-1969. They're like some kind of mad scientists of stereophonic sound, digging up mostly obscure old movies, chopping together scraps of score music, dialog and sound effects and resurrecting them as digital Frankenstein monsters in the World of Tomorrow, 2009.


Forced metaphors aside, check them out. If like me you grew up watching late night monster movies and Saturday afternoon Creature Features you'll have a blast browsing their archives.

MP3: Dimension X, The Martian Chronicles (CD or Download)
Noise/improv rockers Massimo Pupillo, Chris Corsano and David Chalmin travel to the Red Planet

Ice Monsters of Vanth: EC meets Supra-Inframan

Every now and then, while flipping channels at random, browsing used CDs or plowing through my absurdly long Netflix queue, I'll stumble across a pop culture epiphany. The first time I heard Blue Oyster Cult's "Godzilla" was one. Another was when I finally caught on to Arrested Development during its final season. Moments that make me stop and wonder, "Where has this been all my life?"


This happened most recently when I discovered the Shaw Brothers' movie Supra-Inframan a few months ago. As a Hong Kong riff on Ultraman it's hardly an original concept, but it has a vivd imagination all its own.
Motorcycle chases! Skeleton warriors! Super science vs. alien magic! Witchy women in metal cone bras! A whip-cracking villainess called Princess Dragon
Mom! Fire-breathing laser-shooting Rubbersuit-monster kung fu fight scenes! It was like watching the uncounted happy hours of my youth spent watching monster movies and chop sockey flicks smashed into a single ninety minute ball of awesome.

I'm sure the main monsters from Super Inframan would fit in well with a lot of gonzo SF or science fantasy games -- Gamma World or Mutant Future, an especially wacky Rifts campaign, maybe even Robotech? But I knew from the moment I saw the movie I'd have to stat them up for the land of Vanth. It's only fitting -- I had the same kind of epiphany for Encounter Critical.

After the cut, Ice Monsters come out!

Monster	# ATT	ATT %	Dam	HP	Save	Edible	$ Value
Fire Dragon	2	54%	2-8	12-48	28%	76%	188
Iron Armorbots	3	77%	1-6/2-7/ 1-10	13-52	59%	--	120
Long-Hair Devil	1	73%	2-16	12-30	38%	84%	80
Mutant Drill	2	66%	2-12/1-20	33-60	70%	6%	160
Plant Monster	2	45%	2-8	21-40	44%	50%	190
Spider Demon	4	86%	1-6	22-60	48%	27%	210
Witch-Eye	1	25%	1-3	8-32	25%	15%	66

Appearance & Special Powers:

Fire Dragon: A tall humanoid in dragonhide armor and horned crown, Fire Dragon attacks with kung fu and breathes fire (every other round, D 2-20, range 30'). He also can use true Invisibility with 97% chances. His armor is equal to Elf Silver Chain but provides a 100% Saving Throw against fire and heat.
Iron Armorbots: A pair of black iron robodroids, each has a tall beaked helm and a spiked morning star in place of one fist. The fist and helm can be shot forth on a long chain up to 30 feet with 55% ranged attack chances and retracted the next round. The fist strikes as a standard morning star. The helm does D 1-10 and can clamp around an arm or leg on a to hit roll of 36% or less (sneak ATT). They melt when destroyed.
Long-Hair Devil: A cackling shaggy creature with long red horns and the face of its last victim staring from its wide open fanged mouth. It is a weak melee fighter (D 1-4/1-4) but shoots double laser beams from its horns for D 2-16. It explodes if immersed in boiling water.
Mutant Drill: A lumpy rock creature with a drill hand and a wrench-like claw. It burrows at its full movement rate.
Plant Monster: One of the most versatile ice demons, Plant Monster is a twisted mutant with vines growing from its head and in place of arms. It can plant itself in the ground and grow into an enormous vine with 100-400 hp and up to eight attacks for D 2-20 each. If it takes 50 hp damage in one round it will be forced to its human sized form. In this form it attacks only twice but can teletransport itself and spit flaming acid (D 5-30, once per day).
Spider Demon: A orange-red spider with three jeweled green eyes. It attacks with a whirlwind of kung fu strikes, and can spit web grenades which capture one enemy in a spherical web. Every three rounds it can also breathe flaming webs for D 2-16. Once per day it can grow into a giant form with 100-400 hp which attacks for D 6-36; large amounts of electrical damage will force Spider Demon back to its normal size.
Witch-Eye: An attractive female with platform boots and long clawed fingers. She has the powers of a level 5 Psi-Witch (ESP & LEA 14). Her Double Secret Eyes, one in the palm of each hand, give her +10% to mentally Command others. If forced into melee she strikes with an electro-stilleto (as dagger + D 1-8 spark)


SEE ALSO: Princess Dragon Mom summons the Ice Monsters (and some goobers giggle along)!
SEE ALSO: The entire movie is up on Youtube -- undubbed, with fake subtitles in Spanish -- starting here.

"...lust-mad men and lawless women in a vicious and sensuous orgy of slaughter and stupendous dance spectacles..."

Now that is an attention grabbing post title! Here's another, "Drugs, thugs and freaked-out starlets, pent up punks on a penthouse binge, daring to live, daring to love, flirting with death." Or how about, "Their god is speed and they came from beyond the stars to spawn in the sea."

All of the above and so much more "shock suspense sensation" is from Brian Joseph Davis' amazing text cut-up Voice Over [PDF]. It's a trash culture ragtag, the slogans from hundreds of B-movie posters and trailers strung together and out, turned on, turned up and turned around. It's a psychedelic day-glo trash flick rainbow, biker pics and reefer madness and rubber-suit monsters chasing sock hop dancers. It's like watching every season of Mystery Science Theater 3000 on fast forward with the sound down, or reading Joe Bob Briggs' diary by the light of a Herschell Gordon Lewis drive-in double feature.

It gets better yet! The written version's a hoot, but the spoken version? Oh My Effing Dammit! Stop reading! Go, listen! If you don't come back shaking your head, with the wild glint of surprise and laughter in your eye, well, I don't know what to say to you.

A few hundred words on 300

I saw 300 on DVD the other night. I'm not particularly a fan of the book, nor much else of Frank Miller for that matter. I certainly wasn't hoping for the movie to be a timeless classic, or even a decent historical actioner. Exactly the opposite in fact: it slots neatly into my Netflix queue between Hawk the Slayer and, oh sweet reason, Ator, the Fighting Eagle. I expected violent, I expected dumb, I expected sword-hacking, shield-bashing and streams of gore. And sure, 300's got all that. With sandals and a fringe on top.

300 is at its heart a story about valiant warriors fighting to win glory or die with honor against deadly odds. I'm a complete sap for scenes of heroism and sacrifice. Everything from Boromir redeeming himself at Parth Galen down to a damn show on Animal Planet about a chihuahua saving a little girl from a rattlesnake will choke me right up. They're tears, but they're brave tears, don't dog me. But 300 left me dry-eyed and searching for the Visine.

The movie goes to absurd lengths to separate the good Spartans not only from the decadent Persians and their faaabulous King, but from the "boy-lovers of Athens" and even the brave volunteers who fight with the Spartans. The Spartans are tumescent; all others limp. The Spartans are statuesque, sculpted, proud-blooded and erect; their foes not merely dark-skinned but grotesque, bestial, lamed. Among the Persian forces I noted orcs, Frankenstein, and a Cenobite apparently wandered off the set of a Hellraiser sequel. And between all the fighting is a lot of bellowing and brow-beating about the free men of Sparta defending freedom which, we daren't forget, isn't free.

But what of the freedom of Sparta? What of this city of free men and strong women? That's the question that movie and book alike fail to answer. The city is barely sketched, a few columns and fountains, plain stone walls. There are no scenes of everyday Spartan life, no merchants or musicians. The chief freedom afforded Spartan boys, we're shown, is the freedom to study the arts of battle and war:

"At age 7, as is customary in Sparta, [a] boy [is] taken from his mother and plunged into a world of violence, manufactured by 300 years of Spartan warrior society to create the finest soldiers the world has ever known. The agoge, as it's called, forces the boy to fight, starves him, forces him to steal... and if necessary, to kill."

Slaves unnumbered are cut down like grass, and Spartan blood is the price of each inch of the Persian advance, for this? A city whose only arts are the phalanx, the whetstone and, on the film's evidence, the ab crunch? The place hardly seems worth saving. I was unmoved, and not much entertained.

See also: Dave White takes this much less seriously.