"At first I thought we were in the hands of people that would understand..."

Frankenstein's Island(1981).

I am still not sure if this mesh of intriguing ideas filmed through the lens of insanity is supposed to be a comedy, or merely a director's personal fantasy about a island of girls wearing leopard print bikinis.
Who are supposed to be the barbarian survivors of a pre-historic, yet alien race.
Why do they do nothing but smoke  from modified human skulls, pray to the ghost of Doctor Frankenstein, and initiate each other by stretching themselves between trees?
Why is one of the alien women not a alien woman, but a human girl, daughter of the caged and raving blood-donor?
Why are they wearing leopardskin swimwear?
Why is Frankenstein's ghost raving about the power of the thread of gold?
 Why is the lab decked out with more high voltage equipment than any three mad scientist's labs -- but includes a ammo tin, spray painted pink , and whirling balanced on one corner?

This has the worst Frankenstein's Monster I have ever seen. Really. To the Stiff Servo Effect we can add the Fly Combat Combo. Or musical sound effects. Seriously, he's lurching so hard in some scenes that it looks like he's dancing to the Monster Mash.


I could go on like this for an hour.


In what world do Colonels of the American armed Forces wear baggy dark-brown jumpsuits?
 In this movie's world. In  this movie all cinematic normality is overturned. This film could b e a dadaist masterpiece, and may indeed be a hidden and unknown one.
The deliberate lack of action, followed by the epic brawl through the laboratory. The camera pausing part way through its exploration of writhing semi-naked female 'warriors' and their turtle-neck clad, sunglasses-wearing zombie enemy, (each of whom stand and walk as though their testicles ache unbearably), to watch the plucky terrier enter the battle, bark merrily and flee again.


"Those logs are tangible...rooted to the ground."

I'm willing to bet that the producers laid their hands on some footage of John Carradine...perhaps a minutes worth of film stock, something that was thrown out because Carradine looks like he'd died and was being animated by strings. They use the footage to put his name on the billing.
Its a transparent con, but still, the image of a hologram of John Carradine being worshipped by nearly naked dope bunnys on a far-away jungle island is strangely compelling.

The movie's refusal to be exciting, or to explain anything, is hypnotically tantalizing. Its like watching a strip tease where the dancer keeps shimmying and wiggling and discarding clothes only to reveal more layers of inexplicable raiment; the creeping madness kept in check by the banality of set and actions; the dialogue drifting in and out of sense like the rambling of a schizophrenic , or trying to read a newspaper in Cyrillic....

"Doctor Frankenstein, before he died, perfected a very startling theory which utilizes a intermediary - a human brain which is the connecting link for transnmission"
"the brain is kept alive by---low voltage?"
"its staying in  an expanded threshold - a super nourished state"

Thank you Madame Exposition, everything is clear, now. But why does the One Eyed Man laugh?