ThiefHott Too much of everything

SmugKitZine Tied for the best movie I have ever seen

Stoutor It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

Delight Yes, absolutely, there is fun to be had, as well as many, many things to go boom, all amid an atmospheric urban jungle.

TheLittleSongbird Three things do bring The Island Monster up a few notches, the title sequence music, the very well-trained dog and the picturesque locations. And The Island Monster while one of Boris Karloff's worst films is at least better than the Mexican films he made towards the end of his career, then again pretty much anything is better than those. But sadly even Karloff can't save it, he does try to bring some menace and dignity to his role but the film pretty much wastes him, he's not very well used and he doesn't even use his own distinctive voice. The rest of the acting is not much better, there is a lack of involvement and it is an acting style that belongs to another type of film really. The dubbing is atrocious, just as bad as the dubbing for films riffed on MST3K, it is true that the kidnapped girl sounds much older than she is and it's jarring. The photography is not particularly fluid and never does anything interesting. While the titles sequence music is great, the music is far too sparsely used and ponderous to make an impression generally. The dialogue is terrible throughout, made even less believable by how it's delivered, while the horror elements are very diluted(to the extent actually that there's hardly any), making the story incredibly plodding and non-eventful most of the time. Nothing suspenseful or exciting to be seen here. The characters are underwritten, poorly explored and unimaginative. So overall, a mostly dire film, there are a few redeeming elements but it is one rare occurrence where Karloff is not one of them but through no fault of his own. 3/10 Bethany Cox

Dukey Flyswatter The first time I saw this I was a kid and it took me several minutes before the outrage settled in that I was listening to a dubbed in Karloff impersonator because the American distributor was too cheap to hire the old boy back for a proper dubbing by the time this hit the States some four years later. Although Karloff's movie work during the fifties was sparse and mostly lacking in real quality he was very much in demand having been rediscovered by whole new generation who were watching his thirties and forties films on T.V.'s syndicated Shock Theater". Karloff was also doing books,radio programs,Quiz shows,Broadway,revivals of Arsenic and Old Lace,albums full of fairy tales and several great TV dramas including Joseph COnrad's Heart Of Darkness for Playhouse 90. So if a stinker like this came along it probably had something good in it for him like a decent pay and a vacation as others pointed out but even though the market Karloff's style of horror was down at the time he was hardly unwanted or wanting for cash. A few years later Corman would hire him and he would work steady until the day he died. He even sang the Peppermint Twist on a Halloween segment of the sixties rock show Shindig. But what of Island Monster? Well it looks nice and seedy and the Femme Fetale is pretty juicy but the script is talky and nothing really happens in the way of real action. It just sort of plods along like ketchup in December waiting drop on a rancid fry.Karloff still escapes with dignity intact but the star of the show is the trained dog who is there to remind you that you can go along way by being cutesy pootsey.

JoeKarlosi If you've never had the displeasure of seeing this Italian ISLAND MONSTER (also known as LE MONSTRE DE LA ILE) let me assure you it's easily Boris Karloff's worst film, hands down (I'm not counting the Karloff-narrated MONDO BOLARDO). This is so bad it makes VOODOO ISLAND and his last Jack Hill Mexican "cameo" pictures look good. Not at all a horror film, Karloff plays a seemingly good-natured old soul who's really involved in drug smuggling and all sorts of other underhanded activities on a secret island location. One of these involves him kidnapping the little daughter of an investigator who's been sent from Naples to monitor his movements.The film makes little sense, but as lousy as it is there's still something oddly fascinating about watching Boris in such a production, amidst the picturesque setting. Style is non-existent with the exception of one fleeting moment where Karloff interrogates the crying child in darkness. The English dubbing is abysmal yet it provides unintended laughs as we hear some guy doing a really bad Karloff impression while an obviously adult woman provides the silly whines and whimpers of the frightened little girl who's been taken hostage. That's funny stuff, and prime fodder for all you MST3K nuts out there. * out of ****

mord39 MORD39 RATING: 0 out of ****I caught this foreign dud as a kid on television, under the alternate title of THE ISLAND MONSTER. It is without a doubt the lowest ebb of Karloff's career.Those expecting a horror film will be dumbfounded, as this bomb is about a criminal dealing with drug smuggling (as far as I can tell) and kidnapping a little girl. I've seen my share of badly dubbed movies, from the Godzilla features to the European horror imports...but this one wins the award for all-time lousiest dubbing in a foreign film. Karloff didn't dub his own character, but the guy who did sounds like he's doing a cheap Boris impression! The voice of the distressed little girl must have been dubbed by a woman in her thirties or forties...it's a riot!!!I guess if you want to laugh at the terrible English version, you can get a giggle or two out of this. It's not an easy film to find, but rest assured that if you never see it you shouldn't lose too much sleep; it's so atrocious that it makes the last bunch of Mexican features that Boris and Jack Hill worked on look like classics.