User Reviews

This thing is so mind-boggling that words almost fail me. I literally spent 80% of it with my jaw dropped in utter disbelief, punctuated by bursts of incredulous laughter. Nothing in it makes ANY SENSE AT ALL! I mean, our castaways arrive on the island in a perfectly serviceable rubber raft, and the first thing they do is set off in quest of wood **to build a raft with!** Anytime anyone mentions a specific place name (i.e., Kansas City) they suffer stabbing pains in the right forearm for absolutely no reason whatsoever! Do I even need to mention the frequent cryptic appearances ("The golden thread! The power! The power!") by the Floating Head of John Carradine, the tribe of leopard-bikini-clad island girls who are really aliens, the mad doctress Sheila Frankenstein (also a Van Helsing relative) and her platinum Tammy Faye Bakker wig, a 200-year-old colleague of the original Doc Frankenstein, and a whole lot of skulls, tarantulas, blood transfusions and rocks? Or the climactic grade-Z kung-fu battle between the ski-hat zombies, our heroes, the jungle girls and the completely ineffectual Frankenstein Monster (yeah, he's in here too)? --Hysterically funny and a DO NOT MISS for any fan of the really, REALLY bad.

Briefly speaking, nothing in this movie makes any sense at all, either on the level of overall plot or of individual scenes or even lines. This would have to be one of the most relentlessly stupid movies ever made. As soon as it looks like something is remotely intelligible, the actors and director seem to do their utmost to bring in yet another non sequitur.

The dialogue seems to have been written by someone who's never actually heard a conversation between people before, and acted by people who've never participated in one.

However, it's extremely amusing. This is an extraordinarily bad movie, but that's not because it's boring. The pink lunchbox, the contact lenses with white-out on them, the rubber skulls, the guy who keeps laughing constantly for no reason, the suburban living room in the middle of the deserted island, the power that attacks your arm when you "mix the particular place, not here but on the outside" (that is, say the name of a city)... champagne cinema.

You could do much worse than track a copy down - but beware - some video copies have the goofiest scenes edited out!

I saw this movie when I was in the Navy in the early 80s. I still remember every horrible detail. The long hair of the soldiers. No two uniforms were the same. "The Power of the Golden Thread"... which was never explained. The aparition of Dr. Frankenstein, or his son, or grandson, or whoever. I prayed to God that something would make sense before I left the theatre. It never did make sense. I assumed as I left the theater, that some director's 14 year old son wanted to direct his own movie, and did so with about $5,000 of daddy's money. This is horrible even for an inexperienced 14 year old on a $5,000 budget.

YOU MUST SEE THIS MOVIE to appreciate how truly bad it is. You will be embarrassed for all associated with it. You will be angry with yourself for wasting your time to watch it. I can't believe I'm wasting my time writing about this horrible horrible movie. Can one suffer from PTSD merely from having watched a bad bad movie?

My VCR taped this movie in 1986 at 2:30am when it was supposed to be recording "Kings Row". I have never been happier at the error. Here is a film I show to old friends and new loves. It is so bad...so beyond bad, really, that this film could be a guest on Jerry Springer. Lets quickly move from the plot: stranded balloonists discover themselves on an island with Jacques Cousteau-like zombies, amazon women warriors in spandex leopard prints, and...a weird, unresolved Frankenstein motif. That aside, it is constant hilarity. Plastic pitchforks, the same we carried at Halloween as kids, are waved in front of the camera to suggest danger. A shoe box ,, painted red on the lower half and put on a gyro is the electronic brain for the monster. The actress playing Frankensteins relative, Sheila!!!, is a hoot since she is seen reading her lines from off set (behind bookcases, etc). The ending pales since the beginning is so rapturously inane and silly. It is not to be missed. Please don't turn off when the Mighty Kung Fus scenes occur...or the tiny skulls appear in a gas-lit barbeque to intimate danger. Or when poor Cameron Mitchell appears as Captian Ahab/Queeq explaining how he allowed his crew to become zombies. Best scene: at the very beginning, when the balloon crashes, the dog on board jumps off and pees on the seaweed as the titles run. Such honesty in cinema is so rare.

Where on Earth do I even start to try and attempt to write a review of Frankenstein island? It's not going to be easy but I'll try to explain the basic plot to begin with. We open with shots of hot air balloons, supposedly over the ocean somewhere, but we never see the ocean and balloons in the same shot together so we have to take their word for it. It seems their looking for a balloon that crashed in a tornado around this area, at this point I asked myself what is there to 'crash' a balloon into in the middle of the ocean? And why are they using balloons to search for them? Why not a helicopter which would make a lot more sense? Then again nothing in this film makes sense. Anyway, one of the balloonists says "the water, man! The ocean! Anyway you shake it, those poor devils either ended up on it, in it or under it!" This sort of inane dialogue that sounds like it was written by a five year old continues throughout the entire film. After that they presumably give up as their never seen or mentioned again. Then we get the opening credits, after which we are introduced to our main characters. Four men stumble onto a beach somewhere, carrying a perfectly good inflatable raft, this obviously how they made it to the island. Curtis (Tain Bodkin), Dino (Patrick O'Neil), Mark (Robert Christopher), Dr Paul Hadley (Robert Clarke) and Melvin their dog, for some unknown reason they decide to leave their life raft behind, which is a great idea considering their trapped on an island surrounded by the ocean, and enter some caves nearby. While walking along in the surprisingly well lit cave some strange device projects the image of Dr Frankenstein (John Carridine) momentarily, for absolutely no reason, you had better get used to things happening for no reason, as it happens a lot. They all exit the cave safely and are greeted to a barren landscape of trees, bushes and fields. The directors local wood then. As they approach some trees while talking, Curtis suddenly grabs his wrist and scream in pain. This is accompanied by weird electronic sounds. Scary. The sounds stop and Curtis is fine again. As 'explained' later in the film it was down to Curtis mentioning the name of a place, in fact it happens to anyone who commits this mortal sin. Then they notice that a woman dressed in a Leopard print bikini is tied horizontally between two trees, and is surrounded by plastic skulls on sticks. Not something you would expect to see everyday. It turns out that she is a member of a tribe of young beautiful primitive females who speak perfect English. Oh and their also half alien, this film is so insane its untrue! At the half alien/half primitive female's camp, just a few rocks with a fire in the middle, Dino looks on at a woman looking at herself in a mirror. Mark walks over to him and Dino says "thats the weirdest thing I've ever seen", when the film cut back its a different woman, this time she's holding a small snake. At this point I again asked myself another pressing question, why would someone describe looking at a woman admiring herself in a mirror and a woman holding a snake as the weirdest thing he's ever seen? When earlier in the day he had witnessed a half naked woman tied between two trees and surrounded by skulls? I think this film was made up as they went along. More barmy characters are introduced, Sheila Frankenstein (Katherine Victor) the great, great granddaughter of Dr Frankenstein, two old guys who run around for her, Sheila's husband Dr Von Helsing (George Mitchell), Clay Jason (Cameron Mitchell) who's supposedly been imprisoned on the island for seventeen years, and bunch of idiotic stupid looking zombie guards who wear blue jeans, black turtle neck sweaters silly black hate and over sized sunglasses, and a few even sport fake mustache's, you have to see them to believe how idiotic they look, and eventually the Frankenstein monster itself. I could go on forever about how bad this film is, the script makes no sense at all, about half way through the film the four start to discuss leaving the island and building a raft, yet at the start of the film they are clearly seen with a perfectly good rubber dinghy, and a sequence where about ten people hide behind one tree to escape the attention of a zombie guard. The Frankentein monsters rampage is depicted by it knocking over a table with some beakers on it, and just waving its arms about. The ending is awful too, but then what did you expect? The fight sequence here is laughable, the actors look more like their dancing with each other, check out how far the punches and kicks miss by! At one point for no reason, one of the zombie guards grows vampire fangs, obviously the sort you buy on Halloween from any good corner shop. One zombie guard also uses a small plastic devils trident, probably brought from the same shop as the fangs and plastic skulls. I could go on and on about how bad, idiotic, stupid, lame, boring, and poorly made this is but I think you get the idea. Its not all bad however, at one point Doc comes out with one of the funniest lines I've ever heard in a film, while Sheila is showing our hero's her garden, Doc picks up a large vegetable and says "those are the most beautiful vegetables I've ever seen". Absolutely hilarious, as is the whole film, you really have to see it to believe it, and even then you might not. How Jerry Warren had the nerve to film this rubbish I'll never know. Not bad in a good kind of way, just plain bad.

I read the reviews. I said to myself, "Well, this could not possibly be as bad as all that." Well, it is. It starts right away. The patterns on the balloons keep changing from shot to shot in the credits. And there are many of them talking on the radio. What happened to the other folks with radios? Did they not call for a rescue ship? Nobody knows... It never comes up in the movie.

Then these four goofs come on shore and one is still holding a raft in his hand and it talking about having to build a raft. Why? At that point they just arrived and have not searched around the island and already have a fully inflated rubber raft.

And they immediately ask "How will we get over these bluffs?" Why do they need to. Wait for the pickup from the people who are coming to get you. No mention of that. Seems like the opening credits and radio chatter is from a different movie.

Well, it goes from there off onto several different plot threads. They intersect from time to time, minimally. And there is that laughing fool. He even laughs while he is drinking his moonshine. Quite a talent. And what is he laughing at so much? That spinning, pink ammo box is just too much! And the confusion of plots (snakes, tarantulas, machine guns, trident that turns women into vampires, a brain without a head running everything, John Carradine speaking gibberish) continues until, thankfully, this movie is done.

My great thanks to the director for not making the movie ANY LONGER! And you won't believe the ending. I guess it is an ending. Or they just ran out of film. Not fulfilling at all.

This stupid movie is about a group of guys who get stranded on an island run by Ms. Frankenstein (her name is really Van Helsing, but she hates to use her real name (?!) They get tangled up with lots of island freaks and a guy who could be Frankenstein's monster at the end of the film. What irritates me most is to feel ripped off when I watch a flick, so when top-billed John Carradine only shows up in dreamy flashbacks and Cameron Mitchell only has a few lines I was thoroughly let down. I was also astonished that anybody would want to waste good expensive film on such nothing. The "evil guy with a loud laugh" gave me a headache. Not even good camp, just a wasted one hour and a half of my life. I want my life back!!!

"Frankenstein Island" is among the worst made and boring films I've ever seen. Now this is saying a lot because I have seen more bad movies than just about any person on Earth! I've seen 95 of IMDB's Bottom 100 and thousands of other crap films...and this movie is clearly god-awful!

The story consists of four guys in a balloon that crashes on an island. No...you never actually see any of this....and there is a terrible voiceover at the start that explains all this. It doesn't, however, explain why nothing in the film makes any sense!

After landing, the four wander around a bit until they meet a bunch of bikini-clad women sporting the exact same leopard print. They also meet a lady who claims she is a Von Helsing AND Frankenstein as well as a bad actor in a cage (Cameron Mitchell) and a bunch of guys in black turtlenecks who love to fight. Not surprisingly, sooner or later the four realize that this place sucks.

The acting and writing and direction are garbage. The script (if there even was one) is nonsense and is filled with stange nonsensical speeches. The acting just terrible...even though two real actors (Cameron Mitchell and Bob Clarke) are inexplicably in the movie. They are bad (particularly Mitchell) and the rest of the 'actors' look like homeless guys who were picked up at a nearby shelter (I am NOT exaggerating and think they really DID do this). And, the director had the refined extincts of a naked mole rat. Overall, a garbage film that isn't even funny....just bad...and every bit as bad as "Plan 9 From Outer Space"...if not worse.

Just like the family business of the Reagans is law enforcement the family business of the Frankensteins is weird science. In fact they've now got their own south sea island where they can carry on their work without the prying eyes of neighbors or the law.

A few players like Cameron Mitchell, Steve Brodie, and Andrew Duggan hit career bottoms in this one. John Carradine at this point was doing little else but garbage like this feeling I guess he had nothing to prove.

Four hot air balloonists crash and wind up on the island where they find the Frankenstein family set up shop. Some crazy mutants are running around, the failed previous experiments and a tribe of scantily clad amazons trying to survive.

A terrier named Melvin was in the balloon as well. He gives the best performance in the film. Melvin also with a single gesture at the beginning tells us what we are about to see.

It's finally on DVD and boy was it worth the wait! This is a real jaw-dropper. There is one amazing scene after another. The dialogue is simply surreal. It arrived in my mailbox last week and I've already watched it twice. Amazing. It just doesn't get any better than this.

John Carradine once stated that "BILLY THE KID VERSUS DRACULA" had to be his all-time worst film. I am assuming, with all due evidence, that he never saw the final cut (or any cut, for that matter) of "FRANKENSTEIN ISLAND".

Quite possibly, this may be our finest piece of cinematic flourish. You won't find a study of it in any film class, which really makes one question the need for such studies, and very little referrence in books. This one registers "off the blicker" one-hundred percent.

Say what you will about the effects, acting, scenery, bikini-clad babes, zombies with ski-knit caps, erroneous use of John Carradine footage, men who wear a scarf (yet, are not gay), horrible dialogue, Cameron Mitchell's eye-patch, et cetera, et cetera... I have to say that this is one of the most entertaining films, I have ever seen. If you lower the bar, low enough, you can't go wrong. A true curiousity, for those lacking curiousity.

You've gotta love any film with the name "Frankenstein" in the title, that holds back the appearance of said monster until 78 minutes into it. Now, that's either a great example of commitment, or lack of budget. Who can really decide?

"FRANKENSTEIN ISLAND" was made in 1981, yet it looks like something out of the late '50's to mid '60's. A definite time warp. But, then again, that's Jerry Warren for you. The man's got style.

It's impossible to parody such a film, as it is the perfect parody of itself. Does it really take itself seriously, or are we fools for thinking it does? Perhaps, the joke is on us, the whole time. Either way, this film is brilliant. A definite must see for any enthusiastic or non-enthusiastic film enthusiasts.

It's not worth that much, but I urge you to see it for all it's worth. This film will either p**s you off, entertain you or, like a sliced onion, bring tears to your eyes. From a logical standpoint, there is no doubt that this may be one of the worst films ever made, but let's be logical about it... a film that bears that distinction could, in fact, be one of the best films ever made.

My philosophy: Expect nothing, and get everything.

The best performance on this mess is by the puppy dog in the first 5 minutes. He shows up again at the end, that is if you're able to last that long. It is a complete chaos with absolutely nothing worth viewing, anticipating or revealing. At 62 I have seen thousands of movies and tv shows and am quite comfortable rating this in the bottom 3 of all. The characters are atrocious, the settings abysmal, plot non existent, and resolutions unresolved. Enjoy at your own risk. You have been warned...😉

You have to admire Jerry Warren's zeal for bad movie making. This gem is soooo incredibly bad it is a masterpiece. Or should I say "messterpiece! Coming off a 15 year hiatus after he was sued for "The Wild, Wild World of Batwoman", Warren returned to filmdom with this offering. Words ,indeed, can not describe. A must see for any bad movie zealot.Be astounded and baffled all at the same time! Jerry Warren is truly one of THE kings of bad cinema.

This movie is a classic example where Hollywood wants to make a hard-science movie but the director decides to put all the money into the movie without using some to consult any actual scientists. For instance, one character walks into an electrically-powered modern-day laboratory on an uncharted island, takes a look at ONE WHOLE GAUGE and basically says, "WOOOOOOOWWW!!! Your science is the most advanced science in the whole scientific history of sciencey science!!!" (What the guy actually said makes even less sense.) And at the beginning of the movie, he was just a hot-air balloon operator, but later on, he's spearheading the project like he pulled a Tony Stark and mastered it all overnight. And what's more visually sciencey than Jacob's Ladders and Tesla coils shooting electricity into the air for no discernible reason than to channel ridiculous old B-movies that wanted to be sciencey, but also didn't hire consulting scientists? And they invoke the OH SO PUBLIC DOMAIN names of Victor Frankenstein and the Van Helsing family to draw people in, even though all they do is just drop their names in one scene. Well, except for the titular monster, can't have a Frankenstein movie without him, and they make the actor portray the monster too energetically as if it were hopped up on amphetamines. (And the role is essentially a cameo.) And what is the deal with the hologram of an old man whinging on about some nebulous golden thread and some unspecified power, The Power, THE POWER!!! Is he a scientist or is he having a stroke? And, of course, can't have a movie this close to the '70s without hot chicks in leopard-print bikinis Baywatch-running around and distracting you from the movie not not having any plot, but also not having any comprehensible story at all. I don't think they even hired stuntmen, because what is supposed to be a huge fight scene just looks like so much ugly dad-dancing...

Frankenstein Island: I watched the Rifftrax version of this. It really didn't help. This is awful. Really awful. Yes, there are girls in leopard skin bikinis, one of the main characters sports an ascot and there is a disembodied Carradine head. It just doesn't help. This is Mysterious Island with a fifty dollar budget. Don't get me wrong the boys at Rifftrax get some good lines in and it is almost worth the watch just for that. But there are simply moments of soul draining boredom that the riffing cannot soothe. Not quite to the Hamlet or Red Zone Cuba levels but certainly close. The irony is the movie has a cast and premise that could easily have been turned into watchable trash. It is just too incompetent for its own good.

Worth a glance if you are brave and have a book nearby to read during the slow bits with the Rifftrax. Hopeless movie without.

I have to say, this is one film that you do not ever have to worry about clicking the 'yes' on the spoiler option, because I literally cannot think of anything that you can spoil in this one. The film is incoherent, the characters do things that make little to no sense and the ending is one of those that seems like the writer could not think of a good way to end it. It also looks and feels more like a film made in the late 60's or early 70's than from a movie from 1981 as there is no gore, no mutants like the description says and very little Dr. Frankenstein.

The story is a bit hard to talk about as there virtually is none. Starts out showing balloons and then guys coming on shore to an island as their balloon has apparently crashed. You know you are in for a good time when they do not even bother to show you a balloon crash. Well, the arrive in a raft, but the four men and dog named Melvin go through the John Carradine caves and into a field where there are logs so they can make a raft because apparently the perfectly good rubber raft is not their thing and they would rather have one made of logs and tied with string. They come across some gals in bikinis who actually think they are sexy, but they promptly follow the pudgy laughing guy with an eye patch who leads them to Shirley Frankenstein's place, though she is married to Van Helsing, while Dr. Frankenstein is dead and only appears some times yelling about the power. Though not sure what they were doing on the island as the film is just random, the only thing you are going to see a lot of is guys walking from one point to the other.

The film has John Carradine, but he mainly floats in the sky and yells, "The Power! The Power!" over and over. A few other people in the film, but most are the type you find in movies like this one. This film needed some major sprucing up to be any good as it needed monsters and blood! Also, no point in having bikini clad girls if you are not going to show boobs. They also show the girls in the dark so we hardly see them, but they had no problem showing Shirley Frankenstein's cleavage in bright light and she reminded me of old Bea Arthur...

So not a very good film in the least. The only thing that this film has that can be considered good are the girls, but I can see girls all over the internet and in better done 80's horror than this one. Just having guys meander on an island as disembodied John Carradine shouts is not very fun. The heroes of this picture pretty much fail in epic fashion though considering the villains had a way to paralyze a person and a laser that disintegrates people, the heroes should of never had a chance...

Just awful....words cannot express how boring the entire film was. After 5 minutes I was fast forwarding. Stopped at bikini'd locals....lost interest and fast forwarded to the end in the hope for some nudity..to which sadly there is none.

If you're someone who takes comfort in watching campy films from the 70's and early 80's, when the film just looked a certain way, then this weird romp is for you.

Granted, the story line is absurd and is all over the place, but that's fine, because on the plus side, there are dozens of beautiful bikini babes (who are sadly now all in their 60's and 70's) , a gaggle of misfit heroes, John Carradine's floating head shouting 'the power' over and over, and of course, the adorable actor Melvin the dog who starred as, Melvin the dog.

I'm not even going to try explaining the plot because it really seems to serve as background for this crazy film. I discovered this film via Rifftrax, so that could be why I took to it more, but even without their commentary, it's a fun film. Easily the worst 'monster' of any Frankenstein film, actor James Webb steals every scene he's in by flailing around like a kid who had his hat pulled down over his eyes. Grandma Boobies, I mean, Sheila Frankenstein, played by camp-queen Katherine Victor, makes quite an entrance into this film. Clearly the budget was very low. Fight scenes are stretched out too. When 'the monster' comes in to turn over a table, he seems almost like he's trying to make sure none of the rented set pieces actually fall and break.

Overall, like I said, it's a fun campy watch if that is your thing. I was a child when this came out and grew up watching cheesy films like this all the time, so for that comforting factor and the retro feels, I give it a 5 out of 10 and a hearty recommendation.

With other bad films the novelty wears off fast. Not this time. True the budget is low, but not so low that new crazy elements can't be sprung on the viewer in every scene. Some of the props are not impressive. For example a barely-altered plastic devil fork (used as a magic wand?) and department store mannequins (experimented on?). Don't be deterred though, the sets and costumes are all fun and the plot moves fast.

John Carradine is in this movie less than any top-billed star has been in any movie. You will see that he was no doubt not on the same set. In fact, you will see his performance does not even demand that he be on any set.

The very end is so cheap that it will make you mad. Still, this movie pleased me and I laughed a lot.