Unknown Island
Spectacular! Living monsters of pre-history! Alive before your eyes - in a hidden island in the pacific!
Year of Release: 1948
Genre: Adventure/Fantasy
Rated: Approved
Running Time: 72 minutes (1:12)
Director: Jack Bernhard
Cast:
Virginia Grey ... Carole Lane
Phillip Reed ... Ted Osborne
Richard Denning ... John Fairbanks
Barton MacLane ... Capt. Tarnowski
Dick Wessel ... Sanderson - 1st Mate
Dan White ... Edwards - Crewman Edwards
Phil Nazir ... Golab - Crewman
Ray Corrigan ... Gorilla (uncredited)
Summary:
Ted Osborne is the obsessed photographer determined to visually capture the anachronistic creatures... at any cost. Also along for the ride are Osborne's beautiful fiancee, Carole Lane, the disreputable Captain Tarnowski, and John Fairbanks, a handsome ex-Marine haunted by an earlier horrific experience with the ancient animals. Soon desperate to escape, they struggle for their lives in fantastic encounters with the prehistoric monsters.
Review:
Unknown Island, remindin' us that goin' into the belly of the beast is perilous; particularly when it's 120 degrees inside and poorly ventilated.
And speakin' of the meat sweats, I wanna start off by apologizin' for the little misunderstandin' I had with the management of Rin Tin Minh's Crossbar Hotel for Wayward House Pets and Fine Vietnamese Cuisine and state for the record that any supposed connection between the two arms of this business venture is the result of vicious rumors and baseless conspiratorial thinking.
I see now that I was taken in by the sensationalism of this local legend, and as a condition of my plea agreement, I would like to assure all the fine citizens of Chickawalka County that there is no truth to the implication that Shanghai Muttley's canine confiscation operation is a front set up to supply the adjoining dining establishment with cooking materials. It is also my duty, as an impartial observer, to inform everyone who placed a bet with Billy Hilliard at the Gutter Bowl regarding this matter on the evening of February 21st that he expects payment within three days of this month's welfare checks.
In retrospect, it was a stupid position to take since anyone who's ever eaten at Minh's knows that whatever they put in that stuff is at least two steps below dog on the ole food chain, but I got swept up in the debate while fetchin' a bowl of Five Alarm Flatch-in-the-Pants for Roxanne Bigelow while she was bowlin' against The Ball Busters that night. Far's I'm concerned Roxanne can tell Cleave she's got a headache from here on out, 'cause none of this woulda happened if she hadn't insisted on a serving of that deforestation agent instead of just gettin' a basket of onion rings like a normal human being.
For my part, I guess I coulda been a little more sympathetic to certain alley patrons nursin' a lifetime of lead pipe exposure, but I was already kinda hacked off about some highly questionable hit detection followin' a game of Asteroids earlier in the night, and if you'd seen how egregious it was you'd agree that I acted with as much restraint as could be expected under the circumstances.
"I spoze we'll all have you to thank for blowin' up the can here'n an hour or so," Scooter Schatz smirked.
"The chili's for Roxanne. But if you wanna thank me in advance for blowin' somethin' up, Sherri paid me $5 to write 'er cell number on the stall in there so you may wanna take cover when 'er purse starts buzzin'," I retorted.
That little stunt nearly cost me $3, 'cause had Billy Hilliard not shown up to collect a pitcher of Pole Cat I'da had no choice but to utilize Roxanne's chili for self-defense purposes. Although that prolly woulda been preferable given what went down later on.
"You wanna say that to my face, bitch?!" Scooter growled.
"I don't see how there's any other option considerin' all previous space occupied by your ass has been deemed unfit for human habitation for the next 100 years," I shot back.
Thankfully Billy caught the incoming punch and twisted Scooter's arm behind his back (without spillin' his beer, no less), only once that happened a crowd started to form and so Billy hadda set his pitcher down and mediate the dispute before things got ugly.
"Viowenf ih nah vuh anfow," Billy scolded, increasing the torque on Scooter's wrist as he tried to free himself.
"He called my wife a skank!" Scooter whined.
"I'v fif twue?" Billy asked, frowning in my direction.
"I said nothing of the sort, and what's more, I fully support Sherri's sex-positive attitude. Besides, he was slanderin' the chili," I explained.
There was an audible gasp throughout the alley following this revelation and you coulda heard a pin drop if not for the fact that everyone'd stopped bowlin' to see where all this was leadin'.
"Yessir, lumped it right in with the fillet of Fido they serve at Rin Tin Minh's," I elaborated.
Now, I know a lot of us kid about the colostomizing effects of the Gutter Bowl chili, but makin' disparaging remarks without peppering them with affection is tantamount to heresy, and had I not gotten so specific in my condemnation Scooter prolly woulda been drummed outta the Gutter Bowl for life. Unfortunately, he saw an opening and took it.
"Shows what you know - Shanghai couldn't catch crabs from a $10 hooker," Scooter scoffed.
This assessment elicited both laughs and growls from the crowd that could be broken down among lines of pet ownership or the lack thereof and followin' this Scooter managed not only to shift the focal point of the discussion but to go on the offensive.
"Make up your mind, Scooter - not one minute ago you were all bent outta shape about aspersions bein' cast upon Sherri's character and here you go draggin' 'er back into this. I've got better things to do than debate the true identity of man's best friend with you all night," I deflected, hopin' to reframe the central issue.
"Where the hell's my chili?!" Roxanne barked, temporarily breakin' the tension.
"Not now, Roxy, we're awash in controversy!" I hollered back toward the lanes.
"There ain't no controversy. The stories about Rin Tin Minh's are old wives' tales," Leonard Rankleton declared.
"They hell they are - my Goober disappeared not two blocks from that place four years back and I know damn well them Commies made chow mein out of 'im!" Buck McGurk insisted.
"Chow mein is Chinese, you twat," Dusty Funk corrected.
"What've you got to say, Hilliard? Whose side're you on?" Scooter demanded.
Billy stared thoughtfully at the fly strip over the grill for half a minute or so before comin' to a conclusion.
"Yeow wife'f a fwut, an mah fwien'v a dumbaff."
Needless to say, everyone suspicious of Minh's procurement process took offense to this position and so, long story short *somebody* hadda go sneak into the kitchen at Minh's to seek out evidence of Shar Pei souffle to settle the argument.
It wasn't until later that I came to learn that what most folks understand to be takin' reasonable action to settle a bet is considered breaking and entering among the members of law enforcement, and I was subsequently instructed to refer to the incident as such in any conversations that might occur following my release.
I got a pretty good look at the kitchen before Lieutenant Duggen responded to the silent alarm and politely requested I lay face down on the floor with both arms behind my back, and while I wouldn't say it was worth two months of takin' a dump in the company of a guy named Twitch who believes Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still alive and drivin' a cab in East Rutherford, New Jersey, I am pleased to have played a small role in bustin' this myth.
I just hope I didn't miss anything important while I was in the pokey. I spoze once we're done here I'll hafta go make some calls and find out if there's a kit I can install on the Topaz to get 'er flyin' or whether that's still "under development," 'cause if there's one thing I can't stand it's lookin' like an anachronism.
There really ain't much else to tell - the Ladies Sadie took Shankles in full time as part of their possum breedin' operation durin' my absence and Billy brought Apollo to stay at his bachelor pad while I was repayin' my debt. I think the thing I missed most (aside from gettin' to wear my own underpants) was havin' those two freeloaders passin' out in front of the TV and slobberin' on my leg after a bag fulla Grime Time leftovers, so that's about all I did my first night home and the first movie we settled on was this flick called Unknown Island about a buncha guys stumblin' around in Tyrannosaurus Rex costumes 75 years before you could get internet famous doin' it.
I'm afraid we're talkin' the dark days of dinosaur flicks between The Lost World in '25 and the great Hammer renaissance of the '60s and '70s, but for my money I think I still prefer this to somethin' like One Million B.C. where they hot-glued fins on alligators and called 'em dinosaurs 'cause I have a moral objection to illegal croc-fightin' rings. Anyhow, in spite of its Harryhausen-deficient status, I'm gonna take a shot at rekindlin' a little interest in this prehistoric picture with a few Triassic tidbits guaranteed to make you sit up and take notice, or at least sit up and take a hard look at the husk of what was once your life.
First, unknown islands only retain that distinction when you ignore the stories and attempted murders of local ship crews desperate to avoid venturin' there at any cost. Second, circle of life or not - National Geographic is never gonna air your footage of tyrannical lizards devouring human prey. And third, burnin' down the Lost World with a carelessly thrown cigarette may cast some doubt on the first world's stewardship of the planet.
The movie begins in a Singaporean speakeasy where Desi Arnaz's Caucasian equivalent (Ted) and his meal ticket (Carole) have gone to find a boat that'll take 'em to an uncharted island where Ted claims to've seen the entire menu from the Bedrock Bowl-O-Rama lumberin' around not realizin' it's supposed to be extinct, and they eventually convince a dealer of exotic claps (Tarnowski) and his first mate (Sanderson) to take 'em on dinosafari. Unfortunately, a coupla days after they shove off the native crew realize where they're goin' and start stabbin' swabbies until the mutiny gets quashed by Tarnowski and Sanderson who beat the traitors into submission with wooden spoons like irate grandmothers. A few more days pass and the group manage to locate the island with the help of a guide recently recovered from the effects of Post Triassic Stress Disorder sustained while shipwrecked on the island (Fairbanks), and he explains that they'll hafta head inland to find their quarry since the animals typically steer clear of the coast to avoid Christian missionaries. Then the great white dopes go stompin' through the jungle takin' pictures of sunbathin' brontosauri like obnoxious tourists until they find a good place to make camp, only when one of the natives goes to fetch some water he gets ambushed by a herd of Tyrannosaurus Drecks and Tarnowski hasta mercy kill one of his crewmen so his upper half won't live to see his lower half become reptile refuse.
That's alright though 'cause Ted is able to immortalize the man on film with some excellent footage of the monsters playin' with their food, but then Ted gets P.O.'d when he catches the Captain tryna go down with the chick and relations really become strained when Tarnowski refuses to take Ted back to the boat because he wants to grab a saurian souvenier to show the rubes back home. Several members of the party try explaining the logistical issues involved in capturing and transporting a six-ton Cuisinart but it's too late 'cause by this point Tarnowski's got the kinda jungle fever that can't be treated with a Pam Grier movie marathon, and when Sanderson tries takin' the captain's gun the natives boatjack the management and Tarnowski hasta fire on 'em for insubordination until they get crushed between a rock and a wet place. Then Tarnowski accidentally burns down the camp with an unlucky strike and hasta feed a coupla pineapples to a blunder lizard to protect Carole's cantaloupes while everyone else is lashin' wood down by the shoreline, and next thing ya know Tarnowski starts takin' liberties with Carole's jigglies and offerin' to take 'er back to the boat provided she's willin' to ride in a strange dinghy he found washed up on the beach. I don't wanna spoil the endin' so this's where I take my leave, but if you thought King Kong vs. Godzilla was ridiculous you're gonna wanna stick around for the big climax when Crash Corrigan zips 'imself into his gorilla costume and dukes it out with the Bogusaurus Rex.
Alrighty, well, I guess they figured as long as the attempt to capture a prehistoric specimen to put on exhibit for monetary gain happens organically it constitutes plausible deniability and draws a reasonable distinction between the flick and King Kong. That's not the only figurin' that turned out to be suspect, but I think a little slack is in order given that this was only the third feature-length dinosaur flick committed to film (following The Lost World in 1925 and One Million B.C. in 1940) and the first to be shot in color. The color film turned out to be a double-edged sword in the sense that it was pretty enticing for an audience to see such a fantastic premise as the discovery of surviving dinosaurs... right up to the point where they actually got to see the dinosaurs in all their, uh, glory. I don't wanna dogpile on the effects crew any more than is necessary, but in 1948 they just weren't in a position to create the kind of creatures that could live up to the flick's hype, and I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that the dinosaurs are vastly inferior to Willis O'Brien's stop-motion effects from the silent Lost World some 23 years earlier. It's really not all that different from where we are now, with computer-generated effects that still can't touch their practical equivalents from the late '90s, though in fairness to modern CGI artists, I think we've long since discarded any pretense that special effects are meant to depict an object or movement that is visually consistent with reality and accepted that most people prefer it that way.
Unfortunately, the tragedies of Unknown Island are not limited to the construction of its prehistoric beasts, as one of the actors succumbed to heat exhaustion inside a Tyrannosaurus costume and later died as a result. Examining the vegetation (or lack thereof) makes clear the dangers involved in filming under such harsh conditions within the confines of a bulky costume, and to add insult to injury, the editor saw fit to leave the footage of the actor collapsing in the finished cut of the film - visible at around the 45-minute mark. I suppose these things happen sometimes, but given how much footage of men stomping around in rubber suits was available it's easy to look upon such a decision as callous at best and vindictive at worst. I always wonder whether I oughta mention this kinda thing considering the implications it may have on whether or not a person chooses to see the movie after they've been made aware of it, but it feels like the right thing to do even when an accident was the result of negligence rather than malice. For sheer malice Unknown Island barely even registers on the Sado-meter; you've gotta work your way up towards somethin' like The Adventures of Milo & Otis to really get its needle swingin', and if you don't know what I'm referring to concerning that movie just disregard that comment and forget I ever mentioned it. At least in Cannibal Holocaust *those* animals woulda been killed for food anyway.
That last part got away from me a little bit. I apologize for bringin' somethin' as dark as Milo & Otis into a discussion about a harmless man-eatin' dinosaur flick. I promise to be less grim as we dissect this early foray into the primordial ooze of independent filmmakin', so let's toss this thing on the proverbial grill and see if we're dealin' with a slab of primordial rib or a wad of greasy, saurian sausage.
The plot is essentially a rehash of The Lost World and King Kong if neither expedition had succeeded in bringing their trophies back to civilization and probably came off as a pale imitation even by audiences of the period. There's nothing fundamentally wrong with the story, which is equal parts wild animal safari and love rectangle (if you're counting the non-consensual relationship), and although one could ascribe the late-breaking, hair-brained plot to capture a creature to shoddy writing I'm inclined to give it a pass on the basis that said scheme was hatched after the Captain's judgment had become impaired by the "jungle fever." It's really no different than the time you decided to steal a coupla shoppin' carts and race 'em down the steepest hill in town at 2 in the AM after your 11th beer at a bonfire - profoundly stupid, yes, but perfectly reasonable while independent of your senses. Furthermore, the film moves along at a steady clip and has the sense not to tack on a lot of padding to stretch it out to a "respectable" runtime, so aside from makin' an accidental snuff film, everything seems to be in order thus far.
The acting greatly exceeds the wildest expectations of anyone seeing the film after first glimpsing stills of its monsters and includes excellent performances by Barton MacLane as the oily Captain Tarnowski, and Virginia Grey as the headstrong Carole who manages to think on her feet for a good three-quarters of the flick before finally swooning following a close encounter of the absurd kind. The handsome, baby-faced Richard Denning, solid acting aside, is a questionable casting selection for the moderately cracked, alcoholic survivor of monster island, but ultimately a logical choice when considering the result of the aforementioned love triangle and the conventions of the time being what they were - by which I mean, the moment Denning enters the picture you know there's no way Grey is leavin' with the guy who brought her to the dance even before her beau succumbs to douchebaggery. Still, there are no weak performances to be found, and although the Singaporean dive bar has a statistically improbable number of Westerners in it, a surprising number of the ship's crew is made up of Asian actors, which is pretty unusual for a film of this era.
The special effects are... ho boy... well, you remember arts and crafts class in 2nd Grade? I'm firmly convinced that if these guys'd had another $50, $60 they coulda given Mrs. Finkelstein's homeroom a run for their money. These monsters're actually kinda topical though, 'cause they look an awful lot like those T-Rex costumes the influencers wear when they go runnin' around the town square on TikTok and end up gettin' punched out by some real grumpy fast food employee who's about two days away from turnin' psycho like Michael Douglas in Falling Down. There's also a Dimetradon that appears to have all of its legs lashed together with string that causes each side to move together in an unnatural motion, and two scenes of miniature brontosaurus controlled by strings that look better than anything else in the flick by a wide margin. They also make frequent use of rear projection that varies in effectiveness from abysmal (the rolling ocean in the background of the perfectly stationary ship set) to passable (dinosaurs sharing scenes with humans to increase their size), though the main event hasta be the film's climax where Crash Corrigan climbs into his signature ape costume and grapples with one of the tyrannical king lizards. Still, the ding to the production value scoring is well worth it for the boost to the overall entertainment value; these folks really shoulda been ashamed of themselves for puttin' this stuff on the big screen, but thank goodness they weren't or we'da been in for a real slog.
Say what you will about cheesy sets on sound stages, but I've always been of the opinion that they get a lot of unnecessary flack. It's true that black and white photography often does a better job of hiding their inadequacies, but their uniform design and lack of individuality really doesn't take anything away from the film's atmosphere, and the shoreline where the crew make landfall is pretty charming in a Gilligan's Island kinda way. Additionally, the ship and night club sets are pleasantly authentic, with the only problematic area being the exteriors filmed on Ray Corrigan's Ranch in Simi Valley, California, as these arid, sun-bleached patches of earth are decidedly incongruent with the lush jungle sets seen earlier in the flick. Due to budgetary considerations it's almost certain that all the sets used in the film had been previously constructed for use on other projects, but they give the flick an air of legitimacy that it sorely needs after a few minutes of watchin' stunt men stumble around blindly in inhospitable terrain and the movie is better for their inclusion.
The soundtrack is, as was the style at the time, versatile, indistinct, and seemingly composed strictly on the basis that a musical score was expected by the year 1948. Composed primarily of horn and woodwind pieces, the music is entirely unincredible, yet perfectly adequate and milquetoast enough that it never clashes with the visuals. It's probably fair to say that, by the standards of 1948, Raoul Kraushaar's score seems to be ever-so-slightly more in tune with the film's tone, as there are a few moments that seem to have a bit more resonance than would be expected by random chance - specifically, the sorrowful string section that plays as the group discover the remains of their charred camp, and the uplifting piece that accompanies the sequences set on the deck of the ship. Kraushaar would go on to have a lengthy career, making contributions to dozens of Westerns before shifting to television where he would compose the music for many popular series including Lassie, Mr. Ed, and Death Valley Days.
Overall, Unknown Island suffers greatly due to its abysmal special effects, and this is unfortunate given its competency in every other respect. That said, the entertainment value is still relatively high, and although it will never warrant inclusion among the great stop-motion dinosaur flicks of the '60s and '70s (or even the horrendously fumbled classic, Dinosaurus!), it's still very watchable for fans of prehistoric monster movies. Totally worth checking out once you've worked your way through the staples of the subgenre such as One Million Years B.C., When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth, The Valley of Gwangi, Caveman, and Planet of Dinosaurs. Consider giving it a shot once you reach the bottom of the barrel.
Rating: 50%