'Island of Terror' (1966) (B-Movie Review) -- Part One
NOTE: All quoted text is from Wikipedia, a most helpful source of information.
On a remote island (Rob Petrie’s Island) off the coast of another island (Ireland/Northern Ireland) off the coast of yet another island (England/Scotland/Wales), an Irish farmer goes missing for about five minutes, long enough in movie time for his wife to alert the authorities. So the local constable with the highly generic name of John Harris looks into it and finds the farmer’s body in a cave. Dead and completely deboned. (How he knows this without an X-ray machine is … possibly due to the body’s obvious squishiness.)
No doubt anticipating a most unusual autopsy report, the constable seeks assistance from the island’s lonely lone physician, Dr. Richard Landers (played by Eddie Byrne). He hasn’t got a clue either. He’s flummoxed. So he “journeys to the mainland” (which in this case, is the biggest island) to get a second opinion (or, actually, a first) from a Big City Doctor and “noted London pathologist” Dr. Brian Stanley (played by the Doctor Peter Cushing). Dr. Stanley strikes a pose and says, “No bone?” so wistfully, you’d think it was poetry. Or some kind of incantation. Or repressed homosexual tendencies. But he has no idea what could cause the body’s condition.
Figuring that three’s the charm and maybe they need to see a specialist, there happens to be one handy. His name is Dr. David West (played by the Poor Man’s Richard Burton Edward Judd) and he’s “an expert on bones and bone diseases.” His visitors arrive just in time to avoid coitus interruptus between the suave-as-hell Dr. West and his female companion fuck buddy friend with benefits. They are merely at the gazing and cooing stage of their Swinging 60s hookup when the doctors come knocking. West’s date/casual lay is “the wealthy jetsetter Toni Merrill” (played by Carole Gray).
However, once Dr. West is advised about the Case of the Boneless Body, he manages to set his libido aside long enough to journey with the Doctor (or is it Sherlock Holmes?) and the doctor to that tiny island near the other island(s) and take a look at the corpse.
And in a demonstration of what a liberated free-spirited and sex-crazed daring young swinger Merrill is, she offers the use of her Daddy’s private helicopter to get back to the place faster, because why rely on Aer Lingus deal with Heathrow not? But it’s on the condition that she gets to come with them on a romantic subplot great adventure.
Come back next week for more!
PS: These websites are the sources of the above photos and they’re awesome!
PPS: Here’s the “official trailer”.
“Impregnable shell?” What about the part with the ax?
