‘Island of Terror’ (1966) (B-Movie Review) — Part Two

Picking up from where we left off last week, here's Part Two!

Once our plucky trio of doctors and one jetsetting babe arrive on Rob Petrie Island, the helicopter they rode in on just leaves them there. Being that Mr. Merrill wants his helicopter back and Toni never asked for permission to use it, she ends up being grounded (no pun intended)! And now that they’re stranded on the island, they should thank their lucky stars that this isn’t the island where Wicker Man took place. Nevertheless, if you had to choose between an island ruled by a crazy cult leader who might burn you alive or an island overrun with bone-sucking silicon creatures, I’ll admit it’s a toss up, really.

In any case, they are forced to do something, because that’s the way plots work. Someone has to do something, no matter how pointless.

Then, Doctors Stanley and West learn of a group of oncology researchers led by Dr. Lawrence Phillips with a lab in a local castle. Despite the hope that we could see at least one more doctor added to the mix, a visit to the lab reveals a lot of dead bodies. Or, as Wikipedia put it, “he and his colleagues are just as dead (and boneless) as Bellows” (that’s the Irish farmer who started the whole business, as opposed to Dr. Bellows, yet another doctor from a completely different TV show).

Sherlock Stanley and Company reason that whatever is going around filleting people started off in the castle lab. Why? Well, you know what these scientists are like. Always coming up with crazy shit that ends up killing them in the end. So the Three Musketeers Doctors nab Phillips’ notes and take them back for closer study. From them, they are able to learn that Phillips, in his quest to cure cancer, may have developed a new lifeform from the silicon atom.

While they’re occupied with this business, the constable with the ordinary name goes to the castle to tell them about the Case of the Dead Boneless Horse, but when he wanders like an idiot into the “test animals room,” a tentacle reaches toward him through an open window and wraps itself round his leg. Let the bone-sucking begin! The creature then makes this thoroughly gross sucking noise as it’s removing the bone from the meat body. Or perhaps not so much sucking as slurping. Or suck-slurping. The way your Uncle Bo might suck-slurp all the meat from a rack of grilled ribs.

The creatures (now known as “silicates”) kill by injecting their meal victims with an enzyme (it’s always an enzyme, innit?) that dissolves their bones, which pretty much does them in.

*****

There's more to come, of course. Dr. West, aka the Poor Man's Richard Burton, will return and be tasked with making sure Merrill the Jetsetter doesn't get sucked boneless. But she will get to do a lot of screaming.

So stay tuned for that exciting bit of business.

With all due respect, no Hammer picture or Ed Wood movie could ever pass these guidelines.