Island of Terror is a much better movie than its obscurity would suggest. A typically fine performance by Peter Cushing really lifts this onto my watch list.
Tagline: “How could they stop the devouring death…that lived by sucking on living human bones!”
AKA: Night of the Silicates, The Silicates, Night the Creatures Came, Night the Silicates Came, The Creepers
WTF Factor: ***
Notable Dialogue/Quote/Comment/Announcement:
- David: “Brian, hold it! Come back to the car. If there is something in there, we better not get too close until we know what we’re up against.”
- Landers: “What do you think is in there?”
- David: “I don’t know, but let’s not take any unnecessary risks.”
- Stanley [Peter Cushing]: “No, especially with me!”
Synopsis: The movie takes place on Petrie’s island off the coast of Ireland.
Dockside on the peaceful island, we see Dr. Lawrence Phillips (Peter Forbes-Robertson) and his lab crew picking up chemical equipment. The local physician, Dr. Reggie Landers (Eddie Byrne) calls him one of the top researchers in the world. The locals, including Constable John Harris (Sam Kydd) and Ian Bellows (Liam Gaffney), find Phillips unfriendly but Landers says the scientist likes the isolation for his work [that turns out to be a very good thing].
In Phillips’ lab, they are about to go ahead with an experiment that Phillips says may provide the cure for cancer.
Science! “The potential across the cell membrane must be maintained during irradiation of the nucleus.”
Roll credits, during which we hear the sound of crashing glass.
That night, Bellows is walking home when he hears a weird electronic, swishing noise. He goes into a cave to investigate and we hear a gross sucking sound and his screams.
Bellows’ wife goes to the Constable when he doesn’t come home. The Constable finds Bellows’ oddly deflated body and runs off to find Landers.
Landers: “You THINK it’s Ian? What’s happened to him?”
Constable: “I-I don’t know. His body’s all like… like jelly.”
Landers: “Jelly?”
Constable: “Aye. It’s like nothin’ I’ve ever seen. There was no face, just a… horrible… mush… with the eyes sittin’ in it.”
Landers and the Constable return to the cave, where Landers says the body doesn’t seem to have any bones. He plans to consult with Dr. Phillips, but first he will call in Dr. Brian Stanley (Peter Cushing), a famous pathologist, to investigate what he believes is a disease.
Stanley doesn’t know of any disease that dissolves bone. He suggests consulting Dr. David West (Edward Judd), an expert on bone disease. We meet David putting the moves on Toni Merrill (Carole Gray), a former patient.
Stanley and Landers interrupt his evening for the consultation. David is not pleased and doesn’t accept Landers’ story about a boneless body. Stanley and David plan to travel to the island.
Stanley: “When you discover what it is, I’m sure they’ll call it West’s disease.”
David: “This sudden humility astounds me, Brian.”
Stanley: “Well, they’ve named so many after me, the old boy’s liable to cause confusion.”
Toni offers the use of her father’s helicopter to return to the island, but only on the condition that she comes too. David isn’t pleased but he agrees. The copter won’t be able to stay and the launch won’t go back to the island for a while, so they will be stranded on the island for several days.
The constable says he hasn’t been able to contact Phillips, while the doctors proceed with a full autopsy.
Stanley discovers that there are micropunctures all over the body, and all traces of calcium are gone. The lights flicker and we find out that all of the island’s power comes from one hinky generator [foreshadowing much?]. Stanley, Landers, and David go to Phillips’ rather gothic house but there’s no answer. Stanley finds an open window and almost trips over another boneless body.
For the first time, Stanley doesn’t look so jocular. They go looking for the laboratory and find a radioisotope storage room in the basement. Things aren’t looking too good in the lab. One of those mucky tanks is broken and empty.
David rules out the possibility of disease and Stanley figures that the problem started in the lab, since there are obvious signs of violence. As they search for Phillips’ notes, a farmer walks out to his field and finds a boneless horse. He informs the constable, who tells him to keep quiet about it.
The group arrives back at the inn with stacks of lab notes. Meanwhile the constable goes to Phillips’ place to find Landers. He goes down to the basement and we hear that weird swishing sound. The constable investigates and gets tentacled for his troubles.
Landers goes looking for the constable and encounters the farmer with the dead horse, who is not keeping silent, talking to Peter Argyle (James Caffrey). Landers arouses their suspicions, and Peter goes to Roger Campbell (Niall MacGinnis), the island’s leader. Campbell starts an investigation.
Stanley and David discover that Phillips was working on some sort of living matter that would attack cancer cells. Landers tells them that the constable has gone to the lab, so they head there, joined by Toni. They stop to check out the dead horse, and Toni sees something crawl across the car window. It disappears before the others see it.
The group heads to Phillips’ lab to find the constable. Unfortunately they only find what’s left. They hear the swishing sound and encounter this:
Another one cuts off their escape route. Landers goes after it with an ax but it’s too tough. The creature grabs him and he is sucked dry. Then the creatures stop advancing and this happens:
They manage to run past them but the car won’t start. There’s critters out on the lawn. David fixes the car and they haul ass out of there. Back at the inn David gives Toni a sedative while Stanley goes through Phillips’ notes.
Science! “Look at this protein structure. It isn’t adenosine triphosphate.” [I certainly hope not, since ATP is not a protein.]
Campbell and Peter confront Stanley and David, and they aren’t happy to learn that Landers is dead. They’re even less happy to hear that there are “creatures” loose on the island. David asks for ten men to help them, and asks Campbell to gather all the villagers within an hour. To our surprise, Campbell is completely cooperative.
The townsfolk gather at the town hall, where Stanley explains that Phillips had apparently developed a new life form based on the silicon atom, and the creatures eat bone. They have calculated that the silicates divide every six hours and there are currently 64 of them. The scientists want to cut off the creatures’ food supply by gathering the humans and livestock together.
The team meets; they’ve got guns, dynamite, and they are building petrol bombs. David asks Toni to watch over the meeting hall and keep everyone calm. The men encounters a large group of creatures in the woods and tries out their weapons. Guns, nope. Petrol bombs, nope. One of the creatures drops from a tree and gets one of the men.
They set off a couple dozen sticks of weak-ass dynamite, nope. Suddenly one of the villagers runs up and says they found a dead silicate, beside a half-eaten dog. Stanley remembers a lab note about a dog getting an overdose of radiation. The dead silicate is indeed radioactive.
Back in the clinic they find that the dog and silicate are full of radioactive strontium 90, which came from the dog’s bones. David and Stanley return to Phillips’ lab to get a supply of radioisotope. They find a comically large syringe and suit up to get the strontium 90 [in real time].
They set up the syringe and Stanley takes it to the car. Unfortunately a creature grabs his wrist and David is forced to chop it off in order to save him. Stanley is out for the count, so David takes the strontium 90 to the corral with all the livestock. He injects them with help from Peter and Campbell.
Back at the town hall, they set up extra lights to lure the creatures. The lights keep flickering while Campbell keeps the villagers calm. David and Toni have a schmoopy moment. The cattle are not happy and we hear the creatures moving in. Once the cattle are deflated, the silicates move in on the town hall, after they divide again.
Back in the clinic, Stanley is hanging in there. The creatures surround the building and the lights go out. The natives are getting restless, so Campbell and Peter literally pull out their guns. Tentacles break through the windows and grab the worst rabblerouser.
The creatures are coming in so everyone crowds into the back clinic without windows. It’s not looking good, and David prepares a syringe of sedative for Toni (and maybe Stanley?). Just as he’s about to administer it, the creatures stop advancing. They’ve turned to mush from the strontium.
The helicopter arrives and David says help will arrive that afternoon.
David: “You know, we’re lucky this is an island. If it had happened anywhere else, I don’t think we would be able to destroy them.”
Cut to Japanese research lab, where a scientist enters a lab and we hear the swishing sounds and a scream. The End. Or not, actually.
Thoughts: This is a relatively neglected Peter Cushing movie, undeservedly so. This may be due to the fact that it came out of the U.K. but not from Hammer. Despite that, there are several Hammer folks on deck, including Cushing, Eddie Byrne, and the invaluable Terence Fisher as director. The movie was economically shot in rural England; except for a wide shot of the island in the beginning, there is no water in the film. The movie is padded a bit with regular shots of the car careening through the wooded roads and an egregious bit when David and Stanley change into radiation suits. However, the car shots are short and the story moves along at a reasonable pace.
The characters and performances really lift this movie. Peter Cushing gives his usual convincing performance in a role that calls for quite a few droll asides. Dr. Stanley’s a character you’d love to hoist a brew with. The rest of the cast is excellent as well. Edward Judd’s David is the other pillar of the drama. He comes off as smarmy in his introduction, but quickly settles in as a sensible and sincere protagonist. Carole Gray doesn’t get to do much but she and Judd have an easy chemistry that makes you believe that they could get married and make it work.
There are some glaring plot holes, mind you. The most striking is the utter lack of boats on the island. There’s an occasional launch and no other way to leave the island. It’s also unclear how the creatures could have escaped Dr. Phillips’ lab/house, although I suppose that if they can climb trees, they can climb stairs, open doors, and then lock up after themselves.
Another surprising aspect is how everyone on the island is completely ready to accept a rather preposterous story about monsters, put forth by a couple of strangers. We expect Campbell, the island leader, to put up an argument, but he immediately agrees to do what Stanley and David request to stop the creatures. These are also the most reasonable villagers ever; there’s no protest at being herded into the town hall for an indefinite period of time and no mention of any holdouts. The natives really don’t get restless until the silicates actually show up to eat them. I wonder what will happen to the islanders now that all of their livestock has been destroyed.
Credit: Special Effects Created by John St. John Earl assisted by Michael Albrechtson
The special effects in the movie are of varying quality, not surprising in a low budget feature. The corpses that we see are suitably gnarly, if a bit rubbery. On the other hand, maybe a body would actually look like this after the bones were destroyed. The creatures are wisely kept off-stage until halfway through the movie. The first shot we see of a creature is reasonably well-done, with sparkly crystals all over its back. It’s less convincing when we see large numbers of silicates in the woods; those are dull and plasticky. The creature crowd scenes make it painfully obvious that the creatures are draped over wheels that are being pulled along the ground. When the creatures tilt, the wheels can briefly be seen.
This is a quintessential B movie that’s a cut above average, with some genuinely creepy scenes and an utterly delightful performance by Peter Cushing. You could have a viewing party with a drinking game: take a shot every time you see the car zooming through the woods. If you’re in the mood for a monster that is a bit different, this is an enjoyable watch.
Quick bits:
- Island of Terror was released in the U.S. as the back half of a double feature with the decidedly inferior The Projected Man.
- Eddie Byrne (Dr. Landers) is probably best known these days as General Willard in Star Wars (1977) [I refuse to call it anything else]. That was his final live performance.
- Niall MacGinnis (Campbell) is, of course, most famous to horror fans as Dr. Karswell in Night of the Demon (1957).
Suggested double feature: This would pair quite well with The Blob (1958) or Caltiki The Immortal Monster (1959), which have some similar elements.
Tagline for Coming Attraction: “New Horrors! Mad Science Spawns Evil Fiends!…Taking form before your horrified eyes!”
