Isle of the Damned

Isle of the Damned (2008) is a laugh riot, if your sense of humor is as warped as mine. This film is a send up of just about every Italian cannibal ever made. Someone really did their homework as instead of phony American credits, we have phony Italian credits. Add bad dubbing, obvious wigs, a little too much sodomy, crazy characters, and extreme gore, you have a little something for the whole family.

PI, Jack Steele is hired by a fat slob to help him find the lost treasure of Marco Polo. Wasn’t he the guy who invented the Polo Shirt? Anyway they land on an island off the coast of Argentina. Steele, his side kick Billy, & the Fat Guy venture inland in search of treasure. Of course we are warned that this film was banned in over 492 countries and the Make Them Die Slowly type voice over warns us that this is real.

The threesome come across some cannibals cutting off a guy’s dick. He and a woman are tied up and another pregnant woman is caught by the cannibals and has a fetus ripped out and eaten. They might have been missionaries spreading the word of God. Now they are just entrees. Steele shoots a few cannibals and he and Billy drag the comatose woman through the jungle.

They come across a mansion owned by Alex Kincaid. Kincaid has a man servant, an ex ninja hitman, who has taken a vow of silence. This adds a little kung fu to the proceedings. Kincaid originally was looking for the treasure himself, but now he lives among the cannibals. In between all this, all the minor cast members are killed and eaten in various disgusting ways. If this wasn’t tongue in cheek, the gore would be just as hard to watch as a “real” Italian cannibal film.

Not to give anymore away, you have to see this one. If you’re a fan of that dreaded Italian cannibal sub genre, you owe it yourself to see this one. You can just sit there , taking bong hits, then pick out the scenes lifted from various films. Then you can revel in the castrations, mutilations, disembowelments, fetus bashing, ass raping, face ripping carnage.

Even the DVD box pushes the envelope stating that this is the “1980 cult classic”, released for the first time in North America. The opening credits also tell us that the director “fled the country” after the Argentine authorities seized the print of this film. All in all, a worthy homage to those classic cannibal films of yesteryear.