ISLAND OF DEATH

Περιέχει λεπτομέρειες της ιστορίας (CONTAINS DETAILS OF THE STORY)

The infamous DPP Video Nasty list has many films on it that really aren't nasty. Some are genuinely artistic (Possession), some are rather fun (Contamination, The Evil Dead), some are cripplingly dull (Unhinged), a few are just stupid (Don't Go In The Park, Night Of The Bloody Apes). A few live up to the name and are truly nasty: The House On The Edge Of The Park, Last House On The Left and the original I Spit On Your Grave are all despicable films; Cannibal Holocaust is revolting for its animal cruelty but still brilliantly done. Well, add Nico Mastorakis' senseless and empty parade of atrocity, filth and depravity to that list: full marks for cramming as much foul behaviour as possible into 102 minutes, but no marks for making it remotely interesting.

The Island Of Death is the Greek island of Mykonos, where young attractive lovers Celia and Christopher turn up on what looks to be an extended holiday. But they're sociopaths: mad killers driven to dispose of all who offend their unimpeachable standards of unthinking fascistic bigotry. Homosexuals, elderly seductresses, lesbians, adulterers....all fair game to be humiliated and murdered because in Christopher's eyes these people are Evil. He even kills a goat (after having had sex with it for no adequately explored reason) and they also kill the detective who's tracked them from London. But the police net is closing in and they flee to the mountains, taking refuge with a mute shepherd who promptly rapes both of them, leaves one to die in a lime pit and shacks up with the other....

Despite more than four minutes of BBFC cuts having been restored to the film since its last submission, and despite all the rape, bestiality, pissing, voyeurism and incest (Christopher and Celia are revealed to be brother and sister), not to mention the cheerful murders of pretty much everyone our hero and heroine come into contact with, Island Of Death remains an ugly and tiresome plod through the Daily Mail checklist of taboos and obscenities. Frankly that's not enough of a reason to watch, or indeed make, a film: apparently even Mastorakis himself once described it as "a piece of shit", and who am I to argue? Ticking off another title from the nasties list isn't much reason to sit through it either, but that's what I did, and I rather wish I hadn't.

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Yawn: