Tweet
Released by: VCI
Released on: February 28, 2006.
Director: Rene Cardona
Cast: Wolf Ruviniskis, Mario Almada, Jose Leon Sanchez
Year: 1974
Purchase From Amazon
The Movie:
Also known as The Island Of Lonely Men (and based on the book of the same name by Jose Leon Sanchez), this film is essentially Rene Cardona's take on a prison film and the end result is a pretty mixed affair.
Erik De Castillo plays a man named Juanito who is married to a pretty young thing who winds up getting raped by a local politican (Mario Almada) with ties that go right to the top. His life destroyed, he opts for cold revenge and sets out to murder the bastard - when he does, thanks to his trusty machete, he finds himself sentenced to life in prison at a horrible island colony run by power a hungry warden, Colonel Venancio (Wolf Ruvinskis), and maniacal guards.
Once Juanito arrives at the island, the movie quickly shifts focus from his specific story to essentially just showing us how much it sucks to live on an island prison run by a power hungry warden and maniacal guards. From here we see men forced to labor under the hot sun, having their legs amputated in a crappy prison hospital, fighting with each other, fighting with the guards, and generally just being abused, periodically taking time out to conduct some sing alongs here and there.
Eventually the guys get sick of dealing with all of this and they decide to escape. One inmate suggests dressing himself as a pelican and trying to swim back the mainland, but obviously that's not the brightest idea to run with. They don't really get their groove on fast enough, however, as things start to get really nutty when Colonel Venancio is charged with the death of a prisoner. Rather than go peacefully and do his time, Venancio declares the prison island to be his own country and he frees all of the prisoners. There's a catch to their new found freedom, however, because if they try to leave he shoots them.
Mexico is none to keen on Venancio's ideas and so they send the navy in to take them down, which inspires Juanito and his buddies to take up their escape plan again and try to get out of there while they still can.
Disjointed, eratic and completely strange, The Island Of Lost Men is a mess of a film but it's certainly not uninteresting. There's enough violence, guitar strumming, singing, and crazed speeches here that the film moves along at a fairly brisk pace. Ruvinskis is pretty over the top as the insane warden and he steals the show whenever he's on screen, chewing through scenery like it's candy.
Cardona's camera does a nice job of capturing the savagrey of the island location where the film was shot, and when it can't do that some handy stock footage inserts take care of the rest. The politics aren't exactly mind blowing and we get beat over the head a few times with the film's message but the movie remains an entertaining and completely trashy look at the horrors of a totalitarian regime.
Video/Audio/Extras:
The non-anamorphic 1.85.1 widescreen transfer isn't anything to write home about but it's watchable despite some moderate print damage in a few scenes, a few odd combing effects, and heavy grain throughout. Some mild compression artifacts are also present but color reproduction isn't too bad and it's nice to see the film in widescreen, even if the presentation leaves more than a little to be desired. There are more than a few stock footage inserts in here that don't look so hot.
The Dolby Digital Mono track for the film is dubbed into English. There's constant hiss on the track and while you won't have any problems following the dialogue as it's fairly clear, the hiss does prove to be not so much distracting as just annoying. Sound effects and background music sound decent enough.
Aside from some brief text biographies for Cardona and a few of the actors, VCI has supplied promo spots or trailers for some of their other Cardona releases including The Bermuda Triangle (a newly created trailer), Cyclone (an actual trailer), Island Of Lost Souls (an actual trailer), The Killing Device, and Carlos The Terrorist (this is simply a thirty-second clip from that film's finale that gives away the ending and that is somehow in better shape than the feature presentation itself). The trailer for the feature is also included here though the title card does say The Island Of Lonely Men, leading one to wonder why VCI changed the title for this DVD.
The Final Word:
Strange, trashy and rather poorly put together on a technical leve, The Island Of Lost Souls never the less manages to be an entertaining movie. VCI's DVD could have looked and sounded better than it does, but it's watchable if nothing more.