Review – Island of Terror

Terrence Fisher directs yet another British sixties-era all-plot horror movie. Scientists working on a cure for cancer instead breed silicon-based monsters that look like mud pies with tentacles and have the nasty habit of grabbing people and animals and dissolving their bones. Thank goodness the lab was on a small island where a handful of villagers are the only folks immediately in harm’s way. Bad luck for them, though. Like many other movies from this era, if anything else in the picture measured up to the quality of the concept, it would have been a damn fine production. As it was, however, the monsters are too silly, the pace too uneven and the dialogue too terrible to support the story. Even Peter Cushing, normally quite the asset, appears to be phoning it in. I’d be first in line to see it if this ever got remade with better production values, but the original is at best vaguely entertaining. Mildly amusing