Back before the internet, back
before the proliferation of cult toys, back before the rise of comic book
culture to regal status, kids had essentially two things when it came to playtime:
really shitty toys and their imaginations.
Not all of the toys were shitty, to be fair. Some were even well-designed and encouraged
some form of thought (whether that be through their scarcity or intent, I can’t
say, though I doubt the latter), and when we would play War, the toy guns
weren’t colored like a pack of bubble gum; they actually looked like guns
(shocking today in a world brimming over with street gangs and overzealous police). I fondly remember a line of toys called Pocket Super Heroes and had quite a few
of them. Seeing photos of them now, I
have to say that said fondness is clearly fogged by nostalgia, however when I
was a child there was no other way to get an action figure of a character like
Aquaman or the Green Goblin, so that does need to be taken into account.
Still, like Moses (Sidney Dawson) in Raising Arizona said, “…when there was no crawdad to be found, we
ate sand.” And so it was, especially for
those of us who loved monsters. Oh, there
were the odd model kits, and you could probably find a nice hard rubber gorilla
that you could pretend was King Kong, but characters like Godzilla and his
cohorts were simply not to be found (unless of course you had a store nearby that
imported toys and a wad of cash in your pockets; I had neither). There are reasons why phrases like “necessity
is the mother of invention” are coined, and this is just such a one. Since I wouldn’t even lay eyes on a Hedorah
action figure until well into my adulthood, I had no option but to make
one. Armed with crayons and paper, I
drew all of my favorite monsters which were non-extant in action figure form
(that’s a lot of monsters), cut them out, and used those for my monster mash
flights of fancy. I even drew cityscapes
for them to demolish.
The pros and cons should be
readily apparent. Being made of paper,
they were pretty fragile, but the beauty of this particular coin’s flip side is
that they were also cheaply re-attainable.
Another downside was that if you admired the way a certain likeness came
out and that “figure” got wrecked, the odds on you being able to reproduce said
likeness the way that caught your eye the first time were slim (conversely,
there was also the chance that the new one would catch your fancy more). It was like those drawn out army fights with
which so many of us used to litter our notebooks, but with moveable “parts” (and
before things like Presto Magix
[another toy I relished] though not before Colorforms,
which is probably where the inspiration for the former came from anyway). I’m going
to such lengths with this because some of the creatures I created via loose
leaf were Silicates from Terence Fisher’s
Island Of Terror. I don’t remember if mine were Godzilla-sized,
but I would guess so. Everything else
was back then.
Off the coast of Ireland lies
Petrie’s Island, a small, agrarian community whereupon resides the hermitic Dr.
Phillips (Peter Forbes-Robertson). Phillips’ cancer research goes slightly awry
(with a flash of white and red and a wicked sting on the soundtrack), and soon
thereafter local villager Ian Bellows (Liam
Gaffney) is found with no bones in his body and no apparent wounds. Island doctor Reginald Landers (Eddie Byrne) calls upon pathologist Dr.
Brian Stanley (Peter Cushing) who
calls upon bone disease specialist Dr. David West (Edward Judd) whom they interrupt while working on a bone of a
different sort with paramour Toni Merrill (Carole
Grey). The lot takes off for the
island and discover just how awry Phillips’ research has gone.
This is one of those films that
skirts the line between traditional and unusual Horror. After all, it was around this time we got a
Were-Moth in The Blood Beast Terror
(also with Cushing), a Were-Snake in
The Reptile, and a Were-Gorgon in…um…The Gorgon. But what Island
Of Terror does, and to my mind does so well, is does a marvelous job of
balancing its two aspects. The Petrie’s
Island community is small, its characters very traditional, even superstitious
in some ways. They have no phones, a
problematic power generator, and a supply boat that comes by once a week; the
perfect setup for a Horror film. The manse where Phillips’ lab is housed could
easily have been a hand-me-down from Dr. Frankenstein (“it looks like Wuthering
Heights”), with its gothic masonry and twisting stairways. Yet the rooms where Phillips’ experiments are
performed are modern, antiseptic, metallic.
And even here, there are concessions with tanks full of bubbling,
brightly colored water (or whatever). As
a compromise to modern times, we get some nice effects work with the boneless
bodies, and there’s even a nice, quick gore shot when a character loses an
appendage (replete with a nifty spurt of blood). The film takes its time in its pacing,
allowing the mystery to play out of its own volition. This isn’t a sprint, it’s a marathon, and
even though the audience knows that the explanation is going to be outlandish
to at least some degree, they are engaged by the asking of questions, the
compiling of the monster’s profile.
The Silicates themselves are clearly
an example of Body Horror (and a fairly early instance to my mind, although I
also think cases could be made that a whole slew of Horror films could be
considered Body Horror). They are
artificial life intended to eradicate cancer, but this is one of those times
where the cure is arguably worse than the disease (think: Dr. Raglan’s
Psychoplasmics from The Brood). They are cells enlarged and outside the
body. They divide like cells (with the
help of a great deal of chicken noodle soup), and they attack organisms like
any aberrant bodies but from the outside in (rather than preying on individuals
from the inside out, yet they are still exemplars of the body in revolt, even
while not being naturally occurring). Silicates
have no intellect, no reasoning. They
are pure of purpose. They live only to
eat and propagate. Nevertheless, they
are an unfortunate byproduct of mankind’s search for answers, but when
confronted with the concept that there are some areas in which men shouldn’t meddle,
David pulls a Quatermass and offers the rebuttal, “Science has its risks. But the risks aren’t enough to hinder
progress.” There is the acknowledgement
that these things happen, but there also doesn’t seem to be any indication that
precautions need to be taken to prevent their recurrence. It’s almost as if the creation of monsters is
something we just have to live with, even though we’re the ones who create
them.
MVT: I love the
Silicates. They’re gross and silly and
visually interesting. And did I mention
that chicken noodle soup pours out of them when they divide? It’s disgusting and delicious, all at once.
Make Or Break: The Make is
the cell division scene. See above.
Score: 7/10
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