Flinthart’s review: I got curious about The Island of the Fishmen because it was made as late as 1979 or so, and it appears to star none other than Barbara Bach — one time Bond Girl, and possibly better known as Missus Ringo Starr… oh, I’m sorry, it’s “Lady Starkey,” isn’t it? She was pretty much at her peak as an actor at this point, so you’d figure she’d be playing in something decent, except I guess Hollywood had worked out that what she was best at was basically just… looking good. For limited periods.

Another interesting fact: This movie was directed by noted Giallo dude Sergio Martino. The Giallo (Italian for ‘yellow’) movement was by and large a mix of murder-mystery and horror-thriller movies, but it was noted for pushing the boundaries of cinematic style, and incorporating all kinds of slasher-sexplo stuff. The best of Giallo stuff is transgressive, challenging, and even shocking…

…but Island of the Fishmen isn’t the best.

It’s not even Giallo. It’s a damned weird thing, really. At a time when Italian cinema was challenging the world with things like Suspiria, Island of the Fishmen is a true B-movie flashback.

The story is a cobbled-together mess of HG Wells and Jules Verne with a little voodoo thrown in for local colour. A prison ship has gone down in the Caribbean, and the few survivors drift on a small boat: a handful of prisoners, and our hero, Claude, a doctor (and apparently a lieutenant) played by Italian genre-movie stalwart Claudio Cassinelli. Mind you, the film industry being what it is, star billing goes to an English actor by the name of Richard Johnson.

(Yeah. That threw me. Richard = Dick. Johnson = Dick. Was there really an actor named Dick Dick? A quick check via Google and Wikipedia, and yes. Yes there was. The poor bastard.)

Our survivors’ boat gets trashed by suspicious-looking finned things only four minutes into the film. You’d think that would be a good sign, hitting the action that early… but it’s not. It’s just a way of getting our leading guy onto the main set. Separated, our hero washes up on shore and we go through the usual routine of survivors finding each other and dying in various ways to demonstrate the island’s dangers. (Why would you drink boiling mud-water? Seriously! At least Doc is smart enough to learn from the corpse of the guy before him.

Pretty soon the remaining survivors are threatening to kill Doc Claude for no discernible reason before one of them charges off to go hunting with a knife and gets disassembled by a clawed, webbed hand that rises from the mud. Cue screaming. Luckily, Doc Claude has super-hearing and can track the source of the screams through the more-than-man-height reeds, but it’s too late. We’re winnowing down the survivors here. Better introduce some more characters soon!

Meanwhile, an encounter with a pit-trap full of spikes cuts the survivors down to three, and establishes Peter as a bad dude while Jose has a sense of decency. Right. Characteristion. Good stuff. Soon they’re discovering an empty Islander graveyard with voodoo signs — and then Barbara Bach rocks up on a horse, shoots a snake, and tells them definitely do not follow her back to the villa where she lives.

They do.

The crumbly old villa is owned and operated by our boy Dick Dick, playing ‘Edmund Rackham’ as the consummate silky English villain. Oh, that purring accent!

Let’s cut an unnecessarily long story short: the island is riddled with caves. (And the volcano.) According to Rackham, it’s the peak of a sunken continent and from inside a sort of diving bell, he shows Doc Claude the lost city of Atlantis which is full of treasure. And Rackham has brought Mad Professor Ernest Marvin (Joseph Cotten) to addict the Fish-Men of Atlantis a ‘potion’ so that he can exploit their labour, getting them to bring all their gold to the surface.

And of course the mad scientist has a beautiful young daughter (don’t they all?) Amanda (yeah that’s Barbara Bach) and she’s smitten with Doc but Edmund the Cad wants her and Voodoo Maid Shakrira (Beryl Cunningham) is jealous because she wants Edmund and it’s all a mess, really. Worse: Mad Prof Marvin hasn’t actually been drugging Fish-Men in what would have been at least a passible commentary on colonial-era native exploitation. Oh no. He’s gone the Full Moreau, using his Mad Science to turn hapless natives into Fish-Men that he can drug and exploit… so yeah, the commentary is probably still valid, especially as the now natives/Fish-Men are being forced to hand over their cultural heritage to the evil Englishman. Also, Marvin is dying and if he dies Rackham can’t control the Fish-Men, so he offers Doc Claude a share of the Atlantean gold to keep the prof alive for however long it takes…

Or something.

Look, I wanted to care. I really did. But the movie is astonishingly tedious and by-the-numbers. The Fish-Men are guys in rubber suits of course — but a full quarter-century AFTER Creature From The Black Lagoon, they still look like lightly smashed s**t, except in colour…. and tragically, that’s about the best the film can offer. The rest is mostly stock footage of volcanoes and some weirdly shot underwater stuff.

So, yeah. Doc strings Rackham along, keeping Prof Marvin alive until he discovers poor Jose is being converted to a Fish-Man. That’s it for Doc, and he’s about to get biblical when Rackham bursts in and shoots the professor that he’s desperately been trying to keep alive. For… reasons, yeah. Rackham and his trusty silent native enforcers stuff Doc into a deathtrap water tank, then take off as the volcano gets tired of the whole tragic story and tries to save us all. Rackham wants Amanda, though, and that’s too much for Shakira so Rackham shoots Shakira and every other female on the island (except Amanda), and still his trusty native enforcers don’t say a word. Maybe they… uhhh… don’t feel the need for female company?

Well. The Fish-Men revolt as the lava rains down. Dying Shakira frees Doc Claude from the death-tank at the last instant. Doc Claude fights Rackham as he escapes with Amanda from the Fish-Men. Then as Doc Claude and Amanda try to escape on the boat with the treasure, Doc has to fight Rackham again because he didn’t do it right the first time, and Rackham goes overboard to the Fish-Men. Oh, the humanity! Anyway: cue more volcano, boat-smashing, and Doc and Amanda drifting away on a raft…

Blah blah blah. It’s a 1979 movie with a 1950s storyline smushed together from the works of 19th century writers, lazily filmed by a director who absolutely could not be bothered to bring even his B-game. The only thing worth watching is Dick Johnson’s sneering, fleering caricature of an Evil Englishman — possibly the inspiration for almost every major role Alan Rickman ever played.

You can find this film free on Dailymotion. But I wouldn’t bother. It’s crap, but it’s not even entertainingly cheesy crap. I give it 2 out of 7 stock-footage lava explosions…

Intermission!

• The Fishmen make ‘Anguirus’ noises from Godzilla. I wonder if they’re related.
• Why would you drink boiling mud-water?
• Oooh! It’s an active volcano! BINGO!
• We’re down to two survivors now… Oh, he’s not dead. Doc gives him a good punching, and all is forgiven.
• Don’t touch those leaves! They’re voodoo!
• Do all Italian guns produce that curious, high-pitched ricochet-sound? Like you hear in every spaghetti western? Amanda’s rifle certainly does.
• Shakira creeps up on Barbara… to take care of her every need. Ah, if only it WAS that sort of movie.
• You have put the curse of death on us!
• Oooh! BB in the bath! But no, we have Modesty Bubbles.
• Oooh! Shakira comes from Haiti.
• I don’t hate my fellow men. I resent them imposing laws. Here on this island I am the master!
• And.. cue drums and a chicken and Shakira. Is the chicken doomed? Ha! Is the Pope a Catholic?
• She sees death! Lots of chicken blood, but all the priestess can see is death. Huh.
• Oooh. Here’s Babs, outdoors with her horse on a moonlit night. I see an assignation with Lt Doc Claa! Silky white (horse) buttocks in the moonlight…
• Q: Nude bathing time? A: No. And even the filmy white see-through unit is annoyingly modest.
• I am the law!
• Did Dick Johnson ever play Saddam Hussein? There’s a resemblance.
• Oof. I don’t envy the guy in that rubber fish-suit belly-flopping face-first into that filthy, muddy ditch.
• Ok. I’m calling him Doc Clawed after that.
• Sigh. Nothing says ‘Mad Scientist’ like a room full of weird glassware and coloured water.
• Gosh, that Rackham sure is evil.
• Doc still has his superpowers. Takes him all of ten seconds to uncover the hidden switch to the secret door that the daughter hasn’t found in fifteen years…
• Oops. Poor Jose.
• Ok… why has Rackham stuffed Dead Prof into the diving bell for the fish-men to see?
• Oooh! The Fish-Men are revolting!
• Woo! The Sun god has risen! Oooh! Prophecy!
• Boom! Volcano! Boom! Lava!