Planet Film Productions returned after Devils
of Darkness with another horror film but this time they borrow a few famous
veterans of horror films from Hammer - Peter Cushing and Terence
Fisher as director. Not to mention the studio again brings in Carole Gray
to do some screaming. And she has a lot to scream about. Fisher turns out
a gem with a very small budget - $200,000 - a tight smart script, all done
very seriously with nary a light moment or comic mishap. It falls into the
genre of The Thing - people trapped by geography with something killing them.
This time not from space but manmade by science once again run amuck. I thought
this was terrific - absolutely the type of film that gives me the willies
and allows me to project myself into the situation. Cushing is of course
wonderful playing it all perfectly straight and his male co-star Edward Judd
who has done his share of genre films with First Men in the Moon, Invasion
(just recently seen) and The Vengeance of She is solid as well.
On a very isolated island off the coast of Ireland that has no phone service
and only a boat bringing supplies once a week is the home of a cancer researcher
looking for a cure. He thinks he is close. Meanwhile one of the villagers
turns up dead. Not only dead but with all his bones missing. Just skin remaining.
A mush of a face. The village doctor has no idea what could have caused this
and so goes to the mainland to get expert advice. In the form of Cushing
and Judd who are specialists. They decide to investigate and need the use
of a helicopter provided by Judd's wealthy girlfriend, Carole Gray. She of
course insists on coming along. And we are grateful she did. She gets a little
more than bargained for. On the island they discover more desiccated bodies
in the lab of the cancer researcher. Something went very wrong.
Creatures that are called silicates are everywhere and are splitting in two
every few hours - slow moving with a thick impenetrable shell and a long
snake like head protruding - and they are coming for every living thing
on the island. They even are in the trees - which seemed a bit silly - not
a lot of bone in trees. The special effects are quite primitive - these creatures
pulled on wheels and thrown on people or cows or cars and then a shot of
the desiccated body. But I love that stuff. Today they would so overdo it
with CGI. Keep it simple. They are coming for you. There is no way off the
island. People are beginning to freak out. Victims are having their bones
sucked out. You need to find a way to kill them. Before you are pulp. This
was the Golden Age of British horror with Hammer and Amicus and this is a
fine addition. Unfortunately, Planet Film made only one more film before
they went bankrupt - that film was Island of the Burning Damned, also directed
by Fisher and starring Cushing again and his good friend Christopher Lee.
