Island of the Fishmen (1979)

aka Screamers

Original title: L’isola degli uomini pesce

Prison ship physician Lt. Claude de Ross (Claudio Cassinelli) finds himself in the unfortunate situation of being adrift in a skiff on the open sea with a boatful of prisoners he rescued when the ship they were all on went under. Things don’t improve when the gang crashes on a mysterious island, for the local fish person population soon kills off most everyone except for the Lieutenant and two of the prisoners.

At least the island is not completely unpopulated of people (probably) not from Innsmouth: the trio soon encounter Amanda (Barbara Bach) who warns them off and basically tells them to shoo back to sea; curiously, that’s not an offer Claude takes. Instead, the stranded follow Amanda to the nice little mansion where she lives under the thumb of sadist prick Edmond Rackham (Richard Johnson), a voodoo priestess maid (Beryl Cunningham), and a handful of “natives”. Edmond clearly has plans for his unexpected guests, though it takes a bit for him to go beyond saying every sentence he speaks with improbable sarcasm (there’s not a single word the dubbing actor says that isn’t surrounded by invisible air quotes of doom).

Let’s just say the man’s plans have something to do with the fish people, the mad scientist (a terribly sick looking Joseph Cotten playing a terribly sick man) he hides in his house and who spends most of his time spying through peepholes, the lost race of Atlantis, and so on, and so forth.

I am a great admirer of Island of the Fishmen’s director Sergio Martino’s giallos. However, his work in other genres wasn’t always as fine, with films whose quality was all over the place. Island is very much all over the place, too. At its core, it’s a somewhat Vernesian adventure movie often pretending to be a horror film that follows the old rules of one damn thing after another plotting, and contains nary a second that makes any damn sense at all. I, at least, did have a hard time understanding what Edmond’s plans were actually supposed to be, why he does what he does, and other completely unimportant questions.

But hey, the film does feature the fish people its title promises rather extensively, as well as the obligatory scenes of our wetly clad (clearly, Martino did his best to get around Bach’s no nudity clause in a Bollywood approved way) heroine having a good time with them. There are completely useless (and mildly offensive, as are all the non-white characters, though you gotta admit the white people here are generally pretty offensive too) voodoo rituals, lots of shouting and running around by everyone, an explosion or two, a mad science villain speech each for Johnson and Cotten, as well as a pretty crazy soundtrack, and an English dub that sounds as if we’re listening to a first run through with especially bad accents (Johnson’s voice can only be heard but not described, unless nasal to the degree of cosmic terror counts, while Cassinelli dubs himself as a Frenchman with a heavy Italian accent). And fish people. In other words, I find it pretty damn difficult to find a bad word to say about the film, even though Martino’s direction is uncommonly bland for the third-most stylish giallo auteur, the plotting is, well, not actually plotting, and there’s not a single sensible idea in the movie.

Well, I’ll just admit it, this is exactly as awesome as it sounds.

The Unseen (1980)

After a ridiculous staring contest with her boyfriend (Douglas Barr) that sets the tone for all human interaction in the film, TV journalist Jennifer Fast (Barbara Bach) packs her two (and I quote) "girls", which is supposed to mean "her all-woman mini TV crew", into her car and drives off to the town of Solvang to film a puff piece about the Danish festival there with their magically appearing and disappearing camera.

Alas, since they are working for TV and aren't used to foreign concepts like planning or thinking, they forgot to reserve a hotel room beforehand and now find out that a small town with a popular festival does not have infinite space for "journalists". Fortunately, a rather bizarre older gentleman (Sydney Lassick) invites the trio into his old dark house where he lives alone with his sister (Lelia Goldoni). Virginia, as sis is called, is rather frightened by the presence of strangers in the house. She has her reasons, too. The old dark house has a terrible secret that manifests itself in form of something or someone crawling through its ducts and crawlspaces, and beginning to kill off the trio of visitors until only Jennifer survives to learn the oh so terrible (which is to say, hilarious) truth everyone has expected.

One's satisfaction with The Unseen will probably be coloured by how much one is willing or able to laugh about a film made in complete earnestness and meant to be dark and frightening that only achieves the dubious heights of the unintentionally funny. It is a little sad when a film is made with such obvious conviction of its own creepiness, yet never manages to get any other reaction than laughter.

On the other hand, this is a movie whose "monster" turns out to be a mentally disabled guy in shabby underwear and his incestuous, scenery-chewing dad, so you can't say it doesn't deserve what it gets.

There is just so much wrong with the film. Firstly, there are the little running-time filling soap-operatic discussions between Jennifer and her boyfriend which would probably be more effective if we'd give a toss about those people. Too bad we don't.

Secondly, there's Jennifer herself. Sure, Barbara Bach is nice to look at, but she plays the sort of horror film heroine who spends the last half hour of her film crawling around on her belly although she isn't hurt or tied up. Perhaps the view is nicer down there? She's also the sort of heroine who rather escapes into a chicken coop than into a well-maintained car, I suppose in the hope of the Big Chicken In The Sky's protection.

And then there's the scenery chewing competition between Stephen Furst (who plays The Unseen aka Junior), Sydney Lassick and Lelia Goldoni. Lassick and Furst are just dreadful, having never met an emotion not worth shouting and mugging about, robbing any scene they are in of even minor chances to work as advertised.

Not that director Danny Steinmann (here going under the pseudonym Peter Foleg, supposedly because the producers ruined his film by leaving out all the good material, leaving me with the horrifying thought of a version of the film that's even longer and slower) isn't responsible for a lot of wrongness even without their help. He really has a hand for the telling detail, if "telling" means something that pulls everything down into the realm of the dumb and ridiculous. See the "clever" way the death of a chicken is intercut with the first murder! Marvel at how the fat killer gets into an airduct! Watch the cherry death squish! See Junior hide in a heap of rags! Try to puzzle out the physics of the murders!

If there's a way to ruin a perfectly good scene, Steinmann will surely find it.

Still, while I like my unintentional humor just fine, I could never really warm to The Unseen as much as to other movies of its species. The film's obvious conviction of its own quality, scariness and possibly even importance might sound funny in theory, but at times I also found it grating, getting on my nerves as if it were a self-important high-schooler or one of Jehovah's Witnesses.

 

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