The Island (1980) - D

Quick Hit: Michael Caine turns in an insane performance in this lost forgotten movie of the 1980s.


Shannon and I are constantly aware that we need to be doing things to entertain you, loyal DFP readers. That’s why we continually do things like Pirates Week. As part of doing that, we tend to have to do some research into what films we are going to watch for the different events we’ve done, and often times it turns out to be harder than others. That’s because when you Google something like “Pirates movies”… you don’t always come up with movies that are about Pirates (and some of the ones that the search returns are not the type this site caters to).

Anyways, that was a long Segway into saying that in doing research for Pirates week, I read the following:

 “Skeptical journalist Blair Maynard (Michael Caine) is assigned to explore the area known as the Bermuda Triangle, where thousands of boats have disappeared in a three year span. When he leaves the Florida coast with his adolescent son, Justin (Jeffrey Frank), their boat is shanghaied by a group of pirates led by the tyrannical John David Nau (David Warner). The pirates, who have lived undisturbed in the area for centuries, see father and son as new blood for their increasingly inbred clan”.  

If you are anything like me, I get to that last sentence and go… huh. And so, that is how this forgotten film made its way onto Pirates Week.

---

The film itself is not nearly as good as my story about how I found the movie in the first place. Caine turns in a performance that is half Taken, and half repetitive storyline (so the Taken sequels). He isn’t the Michael Caine that I recognize, but he does sport some awesome hair. Essentially what this movie boils down to is this – Michael Caine gets turned into a sex-slave/dog type person because he killed a dude, and is somehow royalty because of his last name. His son gets brainwashed, and Jeffrey Frank is terrible. In fact, the acting between Caine and Frank is just atrocious in the first half of the film – it reminded me of Troll 2.

As the movie goes along, the movie becomes to feature escape after escape by Caine – only to be captured, stung by a jelly fish (I think that’s what it was supposed to be), have his boat sink, etc. etc. It’s kind of funny after a while, almost like the Murphy’s law of escapes – “if something bad can happen when Michael Caine is escaping inbred pirates, something bad will happen”. The one thing that I left the film actually enjoying the story was the pirates attacking. The gore was traditional eighties and I loved it. The pirates really sold the enjoyment of their marauding lifestyle too.

Overall, this movie is terrible. I wouldn’t advise it. I’m giving it a “D”.

Oh I forgot to mention – the pirates speak in pidgin English the whole time. It’s ridiculous and hard to understand.

For more on this movie check out IMDB.