I Escaped from Devil's Island (1973)

Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

Am I Missing Something?

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

Up until when the 4 prisoners escape and end up in another island, the movie is tolerable enough, although at the rather heavy price of forgiving quite a number of flaws in both the story as well as the movie making style ...but when they reach the leper colony and then Jim Brown 'wins' that village woman after he kills her husband in self-defense and the movie starts copying the famous (mostly fake stories) book and its movie Papillon almost frame by frame, i just quit watching it seriously and started checking my emails and Facebook account and doing other stuff ... (and i wouldn't have given it more than 3/10 * anyway! actually, even the movie Papillon itself isn't much of a thing really compared to its book but it does beat this one surely, which was screened about a month after the original reportedly ... such a rip off indeed!)all n all, if people want to make porn but they're not sure if it will sell as much as a big screen adventure movie mixed with some low grade nude scenes and cheap sex, take my advice: quit doing both if you're as untalented as the one who made this movie and think of more secure daytime job or something! (how 'bout an associate position in one of Amazon's warehouses?)

Superstar athlete Jim Brown plays Le Bras, one of many inmates at the notorious prison fortress Devil's Island in French Guiana in the early 20th century. He butts heads with pacifistic convict Davert (Christopher George) while also trying to deal with nasty and sadistic guards. When he gets the chance to make a break for it, he takes it, along with fellow prisoners Jo-Jo (Richard Ely), Dazzas (James Luisi), and a reluctant Davert. The four men make it to the mainland, with prison personnel, led by Major Marteau (Paul Richards), in hot pursuit.From then on, things get rather episodic as Le Bras and his comrades encounter lepers and Indians (not to mention a shark), and when they make it to a colourful community, Le Bras decides that he rather likes it there.Directed by veteran filmmaker William Witney for the Corman brothers, Roger and Gene, and filmed in Mexico, "I Escaped from Devil's Island" is passable entertainment. It's not strong on story; in fact, this story starts to get more incoherent as the movie goes on, but in terms of delivering exploitation, it does its job. There's gore aplenty as well as the requisite female nudity. There's some socio-political subtext, but it never gets in the way of the admittedly lurid thrills. The photography, by Rosalio Solano, is just gorgeous, and Les Baxter composes a flavourful and fun music score. The acting is decent from our principals; Brown is commanding as usual, he and George act well together, and Richards and especially Richard Rust make for a very effective pair of thoroughly disagreeable villains.Overall this is pretty easy to forget but it kills time in an entertaining enough manner.Six out of 10.

I Escaped from Devil's Island (1973)** (out of 4)This exploitation film from Roger and Gene Corman beat PAPILLON to theaters by a month and features Jim Brown and Christopher George playing prisoners on Devils Island who plan an escape to get away from the sadistic guards. They duo end up on an island with many beautiful women but soon enough the prison guards come calling. I ESCAPED FROM DEVIL'S ISLAND is somewhat entertaining for the fifty-minutes or so but once we're out of the prison things really slow down and the second half of the film is a major chore to sit through. Veteran director William Witney does a pretty good job at making this low-budget film look like it had higher production values than you know it had. The first portion of the film inside the prison features all sorts of silly violence dealing with the prisoners being beaten, thrown in the hot box and various other items that we've seen in countless prison movies. This remains somewhat fun as both Brown and George are such enjoyable actors that you can get caught up with them and this helps the film move a little bit. Fans of the two actors will probably want to sit through this even though the end result isn't as good as you're going to hope. Brown has no problems playing the tough guy and there's plenty of action built around him. George plays a political prisoner who is against violence and the two actors really work well together and build up some nice chemistry. The problem in the second half of the film is simply the fact that nothing entertaining happens. We see the men fight, argue, fight some more and it just grows tiresome after a while. The exploitation level really needed to be pumped up in the second half as did the energy because the film pretty much just runs out of gas.

I saw this at 1 am Saturday on this TV out of Indianapolis and couldn't tape, tiVO or DVD it, so I stayed up to watch.I liked the rough, LOW budget Corman style of this movie without the "composition and mannered shots" of the big budget Papillon with McQueen and Hoffman.You could feel the roughness, smell, and atmosphere of being in prison in the middle of nowhere. The pig skinning was very realistic as was the language and full nudity.This is not Camp Granada.James Luisi goes on to become the constipated Lt. Doug Chapman in Rockford Files and Christopher George becomes an action cop on Hawaii five-O.James Brown is the lead, but absent in the top of credits on IMDb, and Corman utilizes this low budget action star who was in many low budget films to interesting effect.The guards, the brutality, the hopelessness... are all there in the French prison.It almost feels like a documentary through the kinetic energy and cutting of the movie.I really like Corman's attitude of "get 'er done" way before it became a catch phrase.Enjoy.