The Island Monster — The Island Monster( DVD)
The Island Monster is a mid-1950s Italian crime drama, which finds a prim, proper, and pencilled-moustached agent going uncover to break an island drug smuggling ring. Though it’s most notable for featuring none other than horror star Boris Karloff- though he is somewhat absent for the first quarter of the film. Here from the folks at Cheezy Moives- is a region-free & bare-bones DVD release of the picture.
The Island Monster (Il mostro dell'isola ) was made & released in Italy in 1954- going on to get badly re-dubbed in 1957 for the US market- which is unfortunately what we have here. It was directed by Rome-born Roberto Bianchi Montero- who had an impressive sixty-three credits to his, many of these done for the Italian market, with no releases outside of the country. Of his films that did get released out of Italy we have a few Spaghetti Westerns like Two Faces of the Dollar(1967) & Here's Django... Pay or Die!(1971). A giallo So Sweet, So Dead(1972), and a sex comedy Caligula's Hot Nights(1977).
The film opens with government narcotics agent Mario Andreani (Renato Vicario) being sent off to an Italian island to investigate a drug smuggling ring. At the busy port seeing him off is his rather fussy & overbearing wife, their six or so-year-old daughter, and their dog. He sets down on the island, and fairly soon he meets up with local nightclub singer Gloria D'Auro(Franca Marz) who is believed to be connected with the ring.
When we fully get introduced to Karloff, around half an hour in, he’s playing Don Gaetanoi- a seemingly well-liked ageing man who runs a children’s home. Though it’s an act, and it’s all been used to cover up the drug ring- which he is the kingpin in the ring.
Around the midway point, Mario’s wife & daughter turn up on the island to check in on him, and here we get a key plot point/ pull- as his daughter is kidnapped. So will the moustached agent figure out who is behind the ring, and will he manage to get his daughter back?.
The acting here is very mixed- and of course, this isn’t helped at all by the flat & bad dubbing. Vicario as a lead is very vapid & rather bland. Marz is one the better actors here as the local singer/ femme fatale. Karloff is not bad, with a few effective scenes- but he was seemingly also dubbed- and the person who did it has a slight speech impediment!. The most annoying/ trying character actor here is the little girl- who gets overdubbed by a woman doing a bad little girl voice. I guess the most impressive actor here is the Andreani’s Dog- as he manages to track down the bad guys- by hiding, sea swimming & boat jumping.
To be completely honest The Island Monster is not very good at all. There’s too much blandly delivered dialogue, the lead man is very flat, and the should-be more exciting/ moody noir elements are underplayed. And of course, this is all made worse by the 1957 dub- which I think stands as one of a prime example of lazy/no-effort dubbing.
The print is not great either- looking like a VHS TV recording of the film- where we get both print damage & darts of video fuzz. As with all Cheezy Movies releases we just get a few trailers, and nothing else.
On the surface/ with the plot premise The Island Monster looked promising- and I thought I was going to get a decent noir featuring Mr Karloff. But in reality, it’s bland/ badly put-together police drama. For Karloff completists only really, and even then I feel they'll also be underwhelmed.