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Saturday, April 10, 2010

Mystery On Monster Island (aka Misterio En La Isla De Los Monstruos) (1981)

A young man (Ian Sera) is shipwrecked on a desert island along with his tutor (David Hatton) populated with plastic monsters right out of a Japanese sci-fi flick (they lumber about with unmovable jaws, perpetually open mouthed), cannibals and buried gold. Very loosely based on the Jules Verne novel GODFREY MORGAN: A CALIFORNIAN MYSTERY and directed by J. Piquer Simon. This cheesy action/adventure co-production of Spain and the U.S.A. is a tacky mixture of MYSTERIOUS ISLAND and SWISS FAMILY ROBINSON. Terence Stamp as a gold seeking pirate and Peter Cushing as Sera's uncle provide some name value though their roles are quite brief. Naturally, they find a black native (Gasphar Ipua) who happily becomes their servant and a shipwrecked French babe (Blanca Estrada) turns up too. Hatton is particularly annoying, constantly shrieking in terror with his high pitched screams (he seems the movie equivalent of Jonathan Harris's Dr. Smith in the LOST IN SPACE TV series). The lush island setting, it was filmed in the Canary Islands and Puerto Rico, is quite lovely. The far fetched "twist" ending is pretty ridiculous but does explain the Toho monsters. Clearly designed with the Saturday matinee kiddie crowd in mind.

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