Color, 1980, 114 mins. 31 secs.
Directed by Michael Ritchie
Starring Michael Caine, David Warner, Angela Punch McGregor, Jeffrey Frank, Frank Middlemass, Don Henderson, Dudley Sutton, Colin Jeavons, Zakes Mokae
Treasured Films (Blu-ray) (UK RB HD), Scream Factory (Blu-ray) (US RA HD), Koch Media (Blu-ray & DVD) (Germany RB/R2 HD/PAL), Umbrella (Blu-ray) (Australia R0 HD), Universal (DVD-R) (US R0 NTSC) / WS (2.35:1) (16:9)
The big-screen careers of director Michael Ritchie and novelist Peter Benchley both took a significant hit in 1980 with the release of this violent Universal adventure film, which most audiences expected to be a horror film. Still best known for writing Jaws (also produced by this film's Richard Zanuck and David Brown), Benchley was still a hot property at the time despite the fact that the second film based on his work, 1978's The Deep, was also a nautical adventure film without a single killer shark in sight. Benchley himself adapted his novel The Island in record time after it was released in 1979, with Ritchie seeming an odd choice at first glance give that his most popular films at that point were Downhill Racer, Semi-Tough, The Candidate, and The Bad News Bears (with Smile a strong critical cult favorite). Then again he also directed the perverse and gruesome Prime Cut, which feels very akin to the wry savagery on display here. Critics and audiences turned their backs on the very expensive production, writing it off as another disaster for star Michael Caine after the recent Beyond the Poseidon Adventure and The Swarm (though he had the same year's Dressed to Kill as compensation). Taken on its own terms though, The Island is highly entertaining and fascinatingly weird complete with an idiosyncratic Ennio Morricone score, the most random martial arts moment this side of Pieces, and a slew of other odd elements that make this a fascinating experience if you're in the right mood. Both Caine and Ritchie rebounded to varying degrees after this, with The Island now residing in the roster of once-despised but now reassessed 1980 movies like Heaven's Gate, Cruising, Popeye, and Xanadu. What a crazy year that was.
Someone is responsible for a slew of disappearing ships in the Caribbean, and as we see in the gory opening scene, few of the crew members have any chance of making it out alive. Now living in New York City, transplanted British journalist Blair Maynard (Caine) has just gotten divorced and is having a bumpy time with his young son, Justin (Frank). Under the pretense of arranging a trip to Disney World, Blair takes Justin on a trip past Florida towards the Bermuda Triangle to investigate the disappearing ships, only for them to fall afoul of a colony of pirates who, through isolation and inbreeding, have remained culturally stuck in time for at least two centuries. Their leader, Lau (Warner), manages to brainwash Justin to their cause in record time and train him as a potential heir, while Blair becomes more desperate to escape as more grisly ship raids are executed.
Feeling very much like a boys' adventure story gone very, very wrong, The Island is a visually gorgeous film thanks to inventive Panavision cinematography by the great Henri Decaë (Le Samouraï, Purple Noon), who had just shot Ritchie's homage to the French New Wave, An Almost Perfect Affair. Along with a very committed Warner, the cast is peppered with colorful supporting bits like Ken Russell regular Dudley Sutton (The Devils) and still-busy Australian actress Angela Punch McGregor, who had just earned acclaim for Newsfront and The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith and would follow this up with The Survivor. Given how much was at stake with this film as a pricey potential summer blockbuster, it's a real challenge to figure out who the intended mass audience for this film was given that it's a very hard R-rated production with a graphic face splitting and abdomen gashing in the opening scene alone. Then there's the last 15 minutes, an outrageous spectacle that points the way to where '80s action movies would be heading by the middle of the decade with actors like Sylvester Stallone.
Widely available back in the day on VHS, The Island has been treated with a lot less love since then in the U.S. with a DVD-R release as part of the Universal Vault Series and a 2012 Blu-ray from Scream Factory issued early on in the company's existence as a two-disc Blu-ray and DVD combo pack with only the trailer as a bonus. The transfer looked great though, and that source has been used for the far more elaborate 2024 U.K. Blu-ray from Treasured Films with an option of DTS-HD 5.1 or 2.0 English options (the latter reflecting the original, effective Dolby Stereo mix) with optional English SDH subtitles. A new commentary by Kim Newman and Barry Forshaw does a fine job of balancing out the film's various strange elements and placing it in context with Ritchie's prior, mostly personal films and the later commercial movies he had in the '80s (Fletch, etc.). They also dive into the source novel, Benchley's popularity and status as a writer, the "whiny little git" child performance, comparisons to genre fare like The Hills Have Eyes, the various British character actors, and plenty more. In "Pirate Queen" (20m43s), McGregor talks about playing her role covered in mud, the decision to avoid American accents among the pirates, and the logistics of having AA meetings on location. "No Child Is an Island: Shadow Men, Communal Bloodlust, the 1970s Hollywood Alter-Ego and MIchael Ritchie's The Island"(44m31s) is a dense video essay from Howard S. Berger and Kevin Marr, a.k.a. The Flying Maciste Brothers, analyzing how the film grew out of Ritchie's recurring satires of American society and indulged in a sense of satire that dovetailed with Benchley's novel to form a study of how families both natural and fabricated are defined by their surroundings. Another video essay, "Peter Benchley on Screen" (21m1s) by John Harrison, covers the author's background including his work for Lydon Johnson during Vietnam and how his blockbuster books that seemed to be in every home in the U.S. translated to the big screen to very different audience reactions. Finally, "Ennio Morricone: A World Unto Itself" (42m23s) is a video essay by Eugenio Ercolani covering the maestro's background, his breakthrough achievements in Italy including his Sergio Leone cycle, and particularly his work in the U.S. including his work for directors like Samuel Fuller, Quentin Tarantino, and Oliver Stone. Also included are the theatrical trailer and a 7m57s gallery, while the disc packaging comes with an insert booklet featuring art by Graham Humphreys and essays by Forshaw and Darrell Buxton.
Reviewed on October 15, 2024