Directed by Nicholas Beardsley (Ted Nicolaou)
Starring Linda Blair, Anthony Steffen, Ajita Wilson
Release Date: September 1985
79 Minutes/Color
Much of the sexploitation genre is an exercise in endurance. However “Savage Island” is an exercise in cinematic Schizophrenia. Not content to simply buy, re-cut and re-title one trashy European women-in-prison dirge, the producers of SAVAGE ISLAND plunder two films, bookending it with cheesy footage of a gun-totin’ Linda Blair to round out the package. If it sounds like a mess, it is.
Having escaped a life of degredation and torture on an uncharted prison island, a young woman named Daly heads for the city with one thing on her mind: revenge. Holding her former captor at gunpoint, she regails the audience with a sordid tale of sex, jewels, death, and finally, revolution.
The film is pieced together from two films shot back-to-back (with the same cast, sets and basic plot) by Edoardo Mulargia. The two films (ESCAPE FROM HELL and ORINOCO: PRISON OF SEX) are standard, if quite entertaining, sleaze pictures starring Ajita Wilson, obscure starlet Cristina Lai, Italian action star Anthony Steffen and the continually sneering baddie Serafino Profumo.
If you think that mixing two films together would create plot holes, climb into your truck because you could drive it right through. The credits manage to get the character names wrong of nearly everyone in the cast, scenes taking place at night are suddenly in broad daylight, clothing magically disappears, one actor seems to be playing a guard AND a freedom fighter, and dead characters reappear to be slaughtered a second time. Add to this mêlée Linda Blair putting on her trademarked “I’m a badass” pout, and you’re definitely in for a good time.
SAVAGE ISLAND is a complete disaster, but it’s a fun one.
-Johnny Stanwyck
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