Island of Death (1975)
Ta Pedhia tou dhiavolou
The lucky ones simply got their brains blown out.
Director
Nico Mastorakis

Writer
Nico Mastorakis (as Nick Mastorakis)

Producer
Nico Mastorakis producer (as Nick Mastorakis)

Cast
Robert Behling – Christopher (as Bob Belling)
Jane Lyle – Celia
Jane Ryall – Celia
Jessica Dublin – Patricia
Gerard Gonalons –
Jannice McConnell – (as Janice McConnel)
Clay Half – (as Clay Huff)
Mike Murtagh
Jeremy Rousseau –
Nikos Tsachiridis – Shepherd
John Blackman
Nico Mastorakis – Novelist

Review by Sven Soetemans

It isn’t “La Isla Bonita”, that’s for sure
Island of Death is a true ungodly video nasty coming to you straight from the best euro-exploitation period. This year 2003, the movie received a complete digital remastering and it finally got released on special edition DVD. The box showed nothing but a red background with the explicit words : “The one movie that the censors didn’t want you to see” and “sorry but we can’t display images of the film on the cover since they’re too gruesome”. A bit exaggerated of course, this movie is far from being the goriest or most shocking film I’ve ever seen. Nevertheless it’s mean-spirited, raw, brutal and pretty disturbing from time to time.

“Island of Death” doesn’t take the rules of humanity too strict and it isn’t exactly what they call “politically correct”. The movie seems to start like a lovely romantic comedy when a young couple arrives on a Greek Island. They look average but in fact they put other famous cinema couples like Bonnie & Clyde and Mickey & Mallory to shame. They brutally slaughter every person they come into contact with (mostly right after sexual intercourse which give the killings a nasty effect) and they have a few bizarre fetishes.

Island of Death doesn’t contain much humor unless you see the irony in many things. For example: the guy kills homosexuals because he thinks it’s pervert and against the will of God, while he himself has sex with a young goat! I thought that was pretty ironic, and there are lots of similar “jokes” to discover in “Island of Death”.

Even though there are a lot of horrible scenes, the movie itself is pretty light and not at all difficult too watch. Excellent stuff for exploitation fans. The leading actress (Jane Ryall) is a beauty but she never played in movies again.