Isle of the Damned (2008 Video) User Reviews

Um... wut?

[Corpus_Vile · 2/10 · 4 October 2010]

A bunch of explorers looking for the lost treasure of Marco Polo end up on a cannibal infested island, where they suffer a host of indignities, from castration to getting eaten to male rape. They are then rescued by the mysterious Alexis Kincaid and his mute ex Yakuza henchman. Mucho gurning and crappy performances ensues. That's about it. It's a parody of cannibal exploitation flicks, although I had no idea prior to viewing it, as it was a blind watch. So, what can I say about this parody flick? Well, it sucks, for a start. One or two mildly amusing individual scenes aside, it's pretty unfunny. And boring.

I have no problem with parodies. If they're done right, such as Black Dynamite, they can be hilariously awesome, but when done not so right, such as here, they become brain numbingly boring, as they outlive their charm and novelty value within 15 minutes or so, leaving you with about another 70 to sit through.

In terms of nasty content, we get everything from the aforementioned castrating and male rape, as well as fetus munching and spears up da butt, and it still manages to suck. Reason being, the execution of said scenes is abysmally shoddy. What's more, all the cast sport wigs and fake moustaches, that makes them look like The Beastie Boys in that Sabotage video. The deliberately bad dubbing elicits a chuckle especially where they have what's supposed to be a black dude's voice dubbing a white guy's, but apart from that, it's pretty crap.

Troma fans might find something to like here, as it's undeniably similar in style, but I was personally bored to tears watching it, and I'm actually a fan of trashy cinema saying this.

Italian cannibal film spoof

[Leofwine_draca · 1/10 · 9 July 2018]

ISLE OF THE DAMNED is an embarrassingly broad and cheesy spoof of the Italian cannibal film, in particular Deodato's notorious CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST. A bunch of mugging actors head off on an excursion into the jungle, where they encounter some depraved natives with obvious outcomes. The lines are shouted, the fake facial hair is ridiculous, the acting worse than you see in a school play. It's a film sunk by overwhelming stupidity and bad taste, which is a pity as the genre is worthy of spoofery, albeit in more intelligent hands.

Slick City guys meet hungry hungry cannibal tribesmen

[doctorschlock · 7/10 · 23 October 2008]

I attended a special screening of this film via snail mail invitation. We were picked up by a strange white box truck that looked like a refurbished ice-cream truck. You could still smell the children. We were blind-folded and driven what seemed like hours. We ended up behind a McDonalds. Our blindfolds were taken off and there was a white sheet hung on a dumpster. There were 13 chairs. I sat on one of them and watched 'Isle of the Damned'. The host handed us what I hope was roast beef.

What followed next was every man's nightmare. Some guys are in the woods and they hear screams. It's too late to run. It's the cannibals. A family on a family outing becomes the lunch for the sadistic cannibals. Some cool city folk arrive and try to rescue one of the ladies. What happens next is too horrible to describe. Some of the roast beef came back up into my mouth , I chewed it up some more and swallowed it. There was a lot of running through the woods. Men with bushy mustaches and guns. Cannibal folks with bow and arrows. Lots of screaming. After the movie I took the bus home and wrote this.

Feels like the real thing

[CobraMist · 8/10 · 9 October 2010]

Isle of the Damned is about a group of treasure hunters going to an island filled with dangerous cannibals. It is a parody of Italian horror films from the late 70's and early 80's, specifically cannibal exploitation films. The film draws most of its inspiration from Cannibal Holocaust and even introduces itself as "found footage" from a controversial Italian director.

Isle of the Damned has tons of references and inside jokes for cannibal film fans. From punitive impalements to ritualized rape, this movie is filled with scenes that feel straight from an Italian cannibal flick. Adding to the retro/Italian feel is the entirely dubbed dialog, film grain, 70's mustaches, bizarre cinematography, Moog made music, and "authentic" (as well as frequently used) gore effects made without the use of CGI.The characters are interesting enough and consist of a bad-ass kung-fu expert, an ex-Yakuza hit-man, an eccentric anthropologist, a closeted-gay man child, a selfish treasure hunter, and a mute rape victim.

Now the film is incredibly low budget with the actors having fake mustaches, plastic guns, and a set location that is obviously the woods near someone's house. The dialog is cheesy and the plot is easy to predict. Despite all of this I really liked it. It felt like a modern cannibal film all around, much like Mattei's Land of Death (2003) or Cannibal World (2003). I'd recommend this to any fan of the old Italian cannibal films who can't get enough cannibal goodness.