- Directed by John Florea
- Written by Richard Carlson
- Starring
- Richard Greene
- Sheila Welles
- Irene Tsu
- Mart Hulswit
- Jose De Vega
- Produced by Ivan Tors
If you plumb among the depths of underappreciated cinema as I frequently do, you sometimes lose sight of some truisms which the average moviewatcher accepts for good reason without criticism. One such axiomatic statement is this: If a movie is commercially unavailable and almost forgotten, there’s usually a good reason for it.
In this case, Island of the Lost manages to be among the weakest and dullest entries in the “lost world” subgenre, which is itself not known for its overabundance of impressive movies. Lying somewhere between episodes of Gilligan’s Island and Flipper and one of the cheaper versions of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World, it tries to tread the line of family-friendliness in a field often focused on exploitation, and instead turns out a movie which no one would honestly want to see, regardless of age.
According to the map that begins the movie, the titular island is one of a string somewhere due east of New Zealand, each of which is at least as a large as New Zealand’s northern island, and dwarfing the nearby Philippines. Given its location, the establishing shot of the seashore complete with a human skull can only serve to peg this as an ill-advised nod to King Kong’s Skull Island. To the shore comes a Polynesian outrigger canoe, and a half-dozen men drop off one young man (Jose De Vega) while chanting, then leave him alone.
Well, not quite alone. In addition to the occasional human skull, the young man is also accompanied by — saber-toothed wolves! (Or, if you prefer, German Shepherds trained to wear ungainly dentures.) He fights them with a bone (though it seems to me that it’s the bone the wolves are after more than the man), and escapes by diving from a cliff that wasn’t there a moment ago. (He also spends a bit of time gazing at stock footage of a volcanic lava pit, mainly to establish the fact that, like every other lost island EVER, this one’s actively volcanic. Check.)
Meanwhile, way over in Hawaii, anthropologist Josh McRae (Richard Greene, star of the old Adventures of Robin Hood TV show) is about to set sail with his family on an extended vacation/scientific expedition. His research into bird migrations leads him to believe that there’s uncharted land somewhere east of New Zealand, and he wants to find it. Accompanying him is his oldest daughter Sharon (Sheila Wells), his teen son Stu (Luke Halpin from the ’60s Flipper series, oddly enough), his preteen daughter Liz (Robin Matson), and grown Hawaiian-orphan-turned-student Judy (Irene Tsu), whose necessity to the plot will become apparent at some point in the future. And let’s not forget Drip, the family’s pet seal. I ask you not to forget him, because everyone else does; when he’s not exhibiting the odd bit of “tension-releasing” humor by balancing something on his nose and ork-orking, he finds himself left behind and has to flop along behind his bipedal masters on land, cursing the day his terrestrial ancestor ever decided to go swimming again just this once.
“You’re a lot prettier than plankton.” Actual line of dialogue.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. The last-minute addition to the expedition is Gabe Larsen (Mart Hulswit), an anthropology graduate student (and football player) recommended by one of Dr. McRae’s colleagues. Given that he and Sharon are both blond, you can assume that they will instantly gravitate toward each other, and no one will even suggest that he and Polynesian Judy should even think about linking up. (Speaking of such things, we never do find out the whereabouts of the assumed Mrs. McRae, but she must be a blonde herself, because all three children of the dark-haired Dr. McRae could be Aryan Youth poster children.)
Their trip out to the south Pacific is uneventful, but that doesn’t prevent the filmmakers from filling the time with seal antics, lukewarm romance between Sharon and Gabe, and stock footage of exotic fish seen as the boat’s occupants go SCUBA diving to alleviate their (not our) boredom. Of the proffered distractions, the seal is the most engaging. And what part of the Pacific are we sailing over, if the ocean floor is so conveniently close all the time?
Eventually Dr. McRae figures out why the islands he seeks have remained hidden; as he nears the area on his map, the compass starts spinning wildly. Why, this must be why ships have steered clear of the area! (And why they’ve never mentioned the weird Compass Fu that goes on there! No, wait, it doesn’t explain that…)
I think it was meant to be a clownigator, but no one was willing to attach the red nose.
They catch sight of an island, anchor for the night, subject the audience to an excruciating hula/frug dance combo on deck, and in the morning approach the island in their wee landing boat, all under the watchful eye of the lone young man (whose name, we eventually find out, is Tapuna, a fact that is introduced without fanfare as if we already knew it anyway.) I should like to recap here: We’re landing on a huge unexplored island, with children in tow. Yet Dr. McRae doesn’t ever think to bring along anything so unscientific as a weapon, nor even to keep his youngest daughter from running off to discover the local fauna on her own. Remember how I was wondering what ever happened to Mrs. McRae? Perhaps she was an earlier victim of her husband’s unrepentant negligence.
I don’t know why McRae expresses so much amazement when he sees the stock lava footage and declares with excitement that these must be volcanic island; I mean, they just sailed out from Hawaii, right? Had no one ever mentioned Krakatoa to him? This is why you don’t want an anthropologist talking geology.
Meanwhile, we meet a classic denizen of all lost-world sagas: A reptile with stuff stuck on it! In this case, it’s an alligator with a collar around its neck and a fin on its back. It’s also venomous, and bites the incautious Tapuna on his way through the jungle. He’s lying there in toxic agony when Liz, the adolescent daughter, comes traipsing through the woods alone; she runs and brings back Judy, and thanks to the fact that Tapuna speaks something that sounds like a dialect of ancient Tahitian, which Judy of course understands, she can treat him with some convenient panacea berries. Given what we’ve already learned about the genotype model of romance used in this movie, it will come as no surprise that thoroughly American Judy and Stone Age Tapuna will get the hots for each other, based on nothing but matching skin and hair color.
Rhinocerostriches! (Yes, I am damned proud of myself.)
But that’s still in the future; once cured, Tapuna disappears into the jungle. Any exposition to come on what exactly he’s doing there comes via Sharon, who goes scuba diving yet again (that girls has permanently raisined toes, I tell you), and discovers a shoreline grotto with etchings in the walls that conveniently spell out the purpose of the islands to the locals: They drop their young men of high birth off to face the perils of the island for a set period of time, then come back to fetch them with accolades. Perils like the saber-toothed wolves, or the finny alligators, or the killer ostriches.
That’s right. Ostriches. Killer ostriches, even. Gotta admit, I’ve never seen them in one of these movies before. Mind you, they should seem a bit familiar, in that they too have had rubbery bits stuck to them — specifically, horny attachments cresting their beaks, and a fin down their backs. (Again with the fins. Frankly, I’m now disappointed that the wolves don’t have them.) McRae and the young men observe them hunting a wild pig, until the ostriches decide that doughy anthropologists are better fare. I’m guessing that, when he gets back and writes a report of the whole expedition, he’ll probably leave out the part where he and two strapping youths got treed by a bunch of ostriches until the wolves ran them off.
By rights, at least of one of the party should have died from extreme incompetence by now, but against all odds they manage to re-congregate on the boat and put together what they know about Tapuna, the cave paintings, and the wacky-ass zoology of the place. From the narrative of the cave drawings and the fact that Tapuna didn’t stick around for tea, McRae deduces (he’s a trained anthropologist, you know) that they may have broken a serious taboo by showing up in the middle of Tapuna’s manhood test and saving him from certain death. He then instructs that they’ll all have to be “even more careful,” a statement that really leaves me wondering at his standard of comparison.
Wait, sorry. This is a picture of me and my family looking for the remote.
Alas, their newfound philosophy of circumspection does them no good, for a war canoe comes back, and the half-dozen warriors aren’t that happy with the interlopers. Not only that, but a typhoon blows in right at that moment! We’re conducting a remote marine expedition in typhoon season? Sounds like McRae needs to consult a meteorologist for his next project, right after a geologist. But hey, at least he’s not one of those “scientist of everything” types.
The good news is that the multitudinous stock footage waves of the typhoon get rid of the hostile party. The bad news is that it sinks the boat. Oops! McRae gamely leads them in all those survival skills in which anthropologists are well-versed. First they make a fire to fend off the saber-toothed dogs. (Why do they make it the hard way, with a bow, instead of simply taking advantage of the volcanism? Because it’s hard to step into stock footage to light a torch.) Next, over the course of maybe two days, they construct a shelter. Not just a dugout or a lean-to, though; this is an impressive Gilligan’s Island style edifice with framed-in walls and a floor two feet off the ground and a veranda rail and everything. Teen son Stu even has time to craft a bamboo xylophone for their firelight celebration, because it’s been too long since we saw anyone dancing the watusi.
Tapuna, though, is royally peeved, both because of the dance and because their presence ruined his manhood rite, and when some more guys come back to get him, they’ll probably kill McRae & Co., and possibly Tapuna too. At least, that’s apparently what he communicated using nothing but hand gestures. My interpretation sounded more like, “Stop playing that godawful music and eat more fiber,” but I don’t have the same level of anthropological expertise. Not to worry, though, as McRae was already planning to move onto his next project: A boat. Big enough to carry all of them, plus enough supplies to last back to civilization, seaworthy enough to cross most of the Pacific, complete with a rudder and a working sail, in the next two days. Talk about your American can-do spirit! (“Dad, why did we just bust our humps building this beach bungalow if we’re only going to stay in it for thirty-six hours?” “Shut up.”)
“It’s okay, kids! This is how natural selection is supposed to work!”
And there’s more stuff about building the boat, and treating Tapuna like a hostile (spreading international goodwill wherever they go, like all Americans), and the “suspenseful” approach of the war canoe… but I’ll admit it. I was asleep with my eyes open by this point, waiting for those brief moments of seal-infused comedy that were the high points of the entire venture. Especially if they involved coconuts. There’s only so much “excitement” one can stand, watching white folks build stuff out of bamboo and reeds while tired tiki-flavored music plays in the background.
Some Notable Totables:
- body count: 1 wild pig and 1 tarantula
- breasts: 0
- explosions: 0
- ominous thunderstorms: 1
- actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 1
- Irene Tsu (Judy) played Harry Kim’s mother in a couple of episodes of Voyager
