Mad Doctor of Blood Island (1969)

Slow pace in the most part of the movie.

Plot so thin, it passes unnoticed.

i know i wasted 90 mins of my life.

Crappy film

In the arresting opening, a naked girl is killed by a slimy monster. We cut forward to a ship visiting a remote island whose passengers include a man looking for his mother and a girl, Sheila, searching for her father. A young doctor, the hero Bill, is also on board. Once on the island, they meet a doctor who is looking for his lost patient. However soon one night Sheila is disturbed by a deformed man outside. One afternoon she is attacked by the creature in the woods, a native impales it on a pole but it turns and kills him. A corpse is discovered with "chlorophyll poisoning", and meanwhile a young native girl and her lover are brutally murdered, their organs strewn over the grassy ground...Eddie Romero's tacky but cheerful Philippines-filmed horror feature is a typical feature about a monster on the loose which makes good use of the jungle locations but ultimately fails as a film due to atrocious camera-work and a tiny budget which isn't exactly put to good use. Some flashes of inspiration occur but these are few and far between the long moments of boredom which fill out the film. Most of the time people walk around a lot (this is called padding, and it happens very often in this film). I would say that there are probably 9 minutes of boredom to every minute of action in this film, which isn't very good when you think about it, and only the ending offers any real excitement. The tacky nature of the film is certainly attractive, and brings images of a time where horror was a lot more fun and cheap and entertaining in nature than it is in these days, where the latest horror films are blockbusters and the independent features seem to be trying to outdo each other in terms of grossness and gore.The acting in the film is all below standard, with former teenage star John Ashley (HOW TO MAKE A MONSTER) as the bland hero doctor who doesn't actually do much, and Angela Pettyjohn displaying no acting talents whatsoever (and, sure enough, she later went into the porn business, which is obviously where her real interest lay). With a cast of dull characters, you may wonder what this film does have to offer to the horror fan.On the plus side there is some (brief) gore, with a decapitation with lots of blood and some internal organs being ripped out. There is also an unconvincing monster on the loose which is absolutely hilarious, it runs around and just sort of thumps people to death. As a marketing ploy audience members were given vials of green blood which was supposed to be used as an aphrodisiac, and I'm sure this was very popular with the teenage drive-in crowd. However some moments of the film are embarrassingly amateur and don't work at all, like the camera zooming in and out whenever the monster is around. Instead of being wacky and psychedelic, it's just distracting and stupid. The title is one of the more fetching aspects of this '60s slice of exploitation, which, while not necessarily totally bad, is just too clichéd, slapdash and silly to be a good film. It's worth a look if you're into this sort of thing though, just because it's different.

A native woman is chased through the jungle on Blood Island by a mutant green monster, the result of a failed experiment. When it catches her, it kills her. Three people are sailing toward Blood Island. Sheila Willard (Angelique Pettyjohn) is looking for her father who lives on the island. Carlos Lopez (Ronaldo Valdez) who was born on the island and is returning to see his mother after hearing of his father's death. And finally the hero, Dr. Bill Foster (John Ashley) who has been sent from the mainland to investigate an incident that happened on this very same boat where a man was rescued from the sea and killed a member of the crew, and when shot had green blood. Upon arrival they are greeted by the Chief, Ramu (Alfonso Carvajal) and his people. Sheila finds her father (Tony Edmunds) who is a drunk, Carlos finds his old friend Marla (Alicia Alonzo) and his mother (Tita Munoz) at her mansion but she doesn't want to leave as all she has left is memories and also claims there is nothing for her on the mainland. Staying at the mansion with her is the crazy scientist Dr. Lorca (Ronaldo Remy) and his henchman Razak (Bruno Punzalan). Soon after arriving Sheila is attacked by a green monster, a native tries to help her only for the monster to kill him instead, Sheila sees her opportunity and escapes. As Foster investigates the island it becomes clear that all is not well. More people are brutally murdered, and Foster discovers that Dr. Lorca has been experimenting on the natives and Carlos's father Don Ramon that has turned him into a chlorophyll-contaminated, living, walking half plant half man monster who savagely mutilates anyone in his path! It's up to Foster to save the day.Jointly directed by Eddie Romero and Gerardo de Leon on location in the Philippines, I thought it was pretty good fun. The script by Rueben Canoy moves along at a fair pace and remains interesting throughout, there is even a couple of nice lines in there, after meeting Foster for the first time Sheila's father says "he's dealt with wino's more than you and he's a shrewd judge of character, I hate him already!". Technically the films nowhere near as bad as I was expecting, photography, music, acting, sets and special effects while not brilliant, are perfectly acceptable. The monster itself looks decent, except it's cut out eyes so the actor underneath can see, you can see his eyelids. There is a surprising and pleasing amount of blood and gore, again while not brilliant it is effective. Severed limbs and heads, and mutilated corpses with their intestines hanging out look good, there is a bit of animal cruelty in here to, so beware. One thing I really disliked about this film was whenever the monster attacks or is on screen someone made the decision to have the camera constantly zoom-in zoom-out that becomes very annoying, very quickly. The jungle locations gives the film a nice lush green look to it. It's obvious that most of the night scenes were filmed in the day and are far too bright considering that we are supposed to be in the middle of a jungle with no natural light except the moon and stars, but the up side to this is that at least we can actually see whats supposed to be happening. A solid horror exploitation film thats worth a watch at least. Good fun.

Shortly after the Beach Party cycle of films petered out, AIP regular John Ashley went to the Philippines to produce with Eddie Romero a handful of exploitation films, of which this is the best known. It is a little disconcerting to see the arch in his career at this point. All those beach party and hot rod flicks that John did for Mr. Arkoff were admirably quaint, yet seem like Kubrick compared to the standard production values of these films.Reference books all mention how awful these movies are, yet for some they are so putrid that they create a strange kind of attraction. But these films are nonetheless interesting for their bewildering atmosphere: these sweaty, tinny opuses seem to be made in the spirit of 40's B-pictures with liberal amounts of cheap 60's gore. This second entry in the "Blood Island" series (following BRIDES OF BLOOD, which is even worse) concerns the Chlorophyll Monster running amok, scaring natives, and putting viewers to sleep. As dreadful as these spate of Filipino exploitation films are, during their proliferation in the 1960's and 70's, it was always interesting to see who popped up in them. This time, Ashley's co-star is the lovely Angelique Pettyjohn, whom Trekkies would remember from the "Gamesters of Triskelion" episode, and who had yet to embark on a career of Triple X features such as TITILLATION.Romero's monster is so frightening that the height of suspense comes when the creature just stands there and stands there for the longest time when it is cornering somebody. I haven't seen this deadening rot in over 12 years, yet for some reason I am getting a craving to see it all over again. Are we that fed up with the mainstream, that we masochistically seek out films that we know are pieces of painfully inept tedium just to escape some piece of Hollywood mediocrity? Is it more important to trudge through the Grade Z movie universe to find that one moment that actually works or exhibits some whisper of technical competence, than to be de-sensitized by any standard commercial fare where production values are taken for granted? Is it just some piece of lost youth we are attempting to regain in these movie experiences no matter what the price of disappointment? I don't know, but thanks to the DVD revolution, someone is unearthing these curious pictures all over again, as it is well nigh impossible to find this stuff on VHS anymore, and the barrel scrapings of the late show are now lined with infomercials for mouthy psychics and TimeLife books. At least its sequel BEAST OF BLOOD is marginally better.

This amazingly atmospheric ,surreal and sleazy drive-in masterpiece is a must-see for all fans of monsters, exotica, John Ashley, mad scientists, and cheesecake. I bought it based on its notorious reputation (and some seductive stills) and was not disappointed. It has some HG Lewis type gore, lots of gratuitous nudity, beautiful scenery, earnest bad acting, a seriously scary monster, and more. This is B Movie making at its finest, sheer exploitation with no apologies and no holds barred. Even the eerie exotica music score is cool. Eddie Romero's Filipino horror films of this era will appeal to all fans of 60s/70s Mexican and Spanish horror cinema. They are even as unique, bizarre, and compelling as the Japanese yakuza flicks from Seijun Suzuki of the same era, and much more colorful, entertaining and original than contemporary horror cinema. I also highly recommend "Brides of Blood" (the monster is kinda like a demonic tiki, a relative of the tree monster Tabanga in "From Hell it Came")and "The Blood Drinkers"m featuring a vampire that is as suave as a James Bond villain and incredible photography. I've heard some genre fans hate these movies for being so awful. I was pleasantly stunned at how wrong these naysayers were. What a great discovery.