Sunday, April 2, 2017

Video Trash: Savage Island (1985)

Savage Island (1985) - Cobbled together from two existing Italian/Spanish women in prison movies, Escape from Hell (1980) and Hotel Paradise (1980) which were shot back to back with much of the same cast, Savage Island adds a wraparound of new footage starring Linda Blair as an introduction and conclusion to the story.

An elegantly dressed, attractive woman (Linda Blair), walks into an office high-rise one evening, shoots a security guard in the head (Penn Jillette of all people), and finds her way to the office of a sleazy emerald mine owner (Leon Askin) who has been using women prisoners as slave labor for his mining operation. She is there to tell him a story about one of his mining operations, and hence follows the original movie footage.

Being cobbled together from different movies, even with many of the same actors, Savage Island is at times sketchy, even outright jumpy in its presentation. Some actors are in only one or two scenes and then disappear from the movie, while other scenes are roughly edited together. Even with the bizarre editing of two movies into one, they actually succeed in making it work, having one cohesive, though at times hard to follow, plot throughout the movie.

Savage Island though is not about the plot. Women in prison movies often aren't. It's about the sleaze, and Savage Island is notoriously filled with it. Either of its two parent films could contend for the sleaziest of WIP flicks for iits time, but Savage Island upped the ante by taking some of the best parts of both and having more nudity than either of its parents alone.

Sweaty naked women, lashings (of naked women), fights between the prisoners (while naked), and of course naked while taking a communal shower, and some threadbare plot about a revolt and escape that nobody really cares about is what makes up this movie. Those looking for sleaze will find it in abundance. If you're not looking for sleaze then you'll want to avoid this one because it doesn't have anything else to offer. This was and is a direct to video release and the image quality is not great.


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