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Well, when the Sewer goes on the sex and death spree (Baise*Moi, Irreversible) no act is too abominable to sit on the couch and watch with glazed eyes, itself the most abominable act of all. And no matter how strongly we might steer you away from these pieces of jetsam, still you rent them, even buy them (in itself the peril of the Modern Age; by nature this crap was never intended for any Joe Schmoe to get with the click of a button). Let’s all praise Jesus that most people still have the common sense to give wide berth to films named Island of Death. I suppose if Bergman made a film called Island of Death, you could watch it, but not the Mastorakis version in question. On the other hand, while reading this you already know you want it, you need it, and the Sewer only wants what’s best for you. The Sewer has seen many egregious money-grabs touting greasy combos of amour and intestines. We are usually surprised at how slap-dash and ultimately harmless most of them are. The ones that take it seriously are generally too harsh to stomach, (I Stand Alone, Irreversible) but ones of the other ilk, like Island of Death, suffer too, through total lack of plausibility. Island of Death tells the charming tale of two white tourists (Robert Behling as Christopher and Jane Ryall as Celia) who quite capriciously decide to go on a perversion-fueled killing spree on the tiny, sparsely-populated island of Mykonos. I always thought that rabid, running-naked-through-the-streets, spontaneous assaults were best left to vacations in larger towns, but apparantly people were more open minded in the free-love craziness of Island of Death’s ‘70s. Though Christopher and Celia purport to hate perversity - so much so that they’ll resort to multiple murders to stop it – they whole-heartedly relish the voyeuristic and participatory pleasures they get out of the stained-carpet scenarios they construct. Scenarios constructed for the sole purpose of killing the perverts, and also degrading one-another. Charming. Christopher, the alternate Mike Brady, will suddenly rape with the forethought most put into buying a paper on the corner, and with the intensity with which most would chop down a tree. And so on. It’s all there, all the goodies you’ve heard of, so significant in stature and number that they deserve a brief listing – with plenty left off to give you something to look forward to while slapping your forehead in anguished disbelief. • Death by forced imbibing of paint • Death by forced imbibing of Vat 69 • Awful hippie musicians with horrifying mustaches • Blow-job de-braining • Random rape • Random goat-rape And after Christopher and Celia diddle each other a few times, we learn they’re a bit too close to really engage in that kind of stuff. Ewww. Mastorakis crafts a stylish and beautiful movie, with vertiginous, day-for-night shots of white-washed Mykonos looking like DeChirico paintings, and the actors are game, not terrible (except for the hippies) but there’s really no excuse for this movie. There is one excuse: In a great supplemental interview with writer-director Mastorakis, he gleefully explains that Island of Death was piled high with perversions because he knew it would make money, which it did. But though its base cruelties are metaphorically shocking, in reality Island of Death is just silly and grating. You’ll be begging for it to stop long before its sleazy finale.
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