User Reviews

This is a weird movie. There's really two plots here, and equal attention is paid to both. It's a little jarring, and they don't really gel, but I give the benefit of the doubt to any genre-defying feature.

On the one hand, it's a slasher flick. You got your dumb teenagers going somewhere they're not supposed to, only to be dispatched by a madman stalking the grounds.

On the other, it's a crime caper. Frank Morris, an aging escapee of Alcatraz, has to go back to the tourist attracting prison to score some clues to help him get his hands on the hidden treasure left behind in Frisco by his fellow inmates. And he won't let anything stand in his way, including the aforementioned dumb teenagers. If you think about it too much, it makes no sense. So don't.

It vacillates back and forth between these overdone devices. While I give the writer some props for focusing on character and dialogue, he really should have picked up a screen writing book before penning this murky mess. Concepts like "Pay-off" and "Show, don't tell" are thrown to the wind so we can get from point A to point B in ninety minutes. Everything that happens is so arbitrary, it develops a forward motion problem pretty early on.

And unfortunately, the director doesn't help the situation. The pacing is pretty slow all the way through, and it just drops dead in the third act, where everything that happened before melts away and it almost turns into another movie.

Yes, it's got its problems. Like lots of them. Still, I was entertained. Aldo Ray is great, the location is beautiful, and the characters are interesting and keep things moving. As long as you don't think about it too much, it's a fun little movie.

Just shut your brain off and enjoy.

WARNING: This review contains SPOILERS. If you don't want plot points ruined and are daring enough to see this movie, do not read on. If you don't care, feel free to read.

If you held this movie out in one hand and a pile of fresh dung in another, I would have a hard time deciding which item smelled worse. Nor would I be able to decide which one to sit and watch for 90 minutes, though that pile of dung would probably be a little more tempting. You see, I've sat through `Terror on Alcatraz' and I know how bad it stinks. The two or three of you that have read a review of mine in the past may know that most of what I write about are cheesy, non-theatrically released movies, so they may think it is usual for me to throw insults at easy targets. But there are a lot of good movies that work with small budgets that I see and typically fail to address, and that is what I hope to find. By writing this review, I hope to warn others that this is not one of those good films. Rather, this is a really stupid psycho killer flick that no one should be subjected to.

Perhaps the stupidest thing about this is that premise. The writer would have you believe that Frank Morris, one of the three men that may have escaped from Alcatraz in 1962, is still alive in 1986 and he needs to visit Alcatraz to get some directions to a bank key that his fellow escapees, who died in the escape, left under their bunks. Right away you should be asking questions like why he waited so long to return and what has be been doing all this time? But who cares about that? Frank is going to take a tour of the prison and sneak away from the tour so he can stick around and locate the directions. The first thing he does is bump off a former guard-turned-island ranger that Frank fears may recognize him. The scene is a bad sign for the rest of the film. Once on the tour we are introduced to a group of utter morons. The standout character is Greg, who is a Alcatraz history buff. He corrects the tour guide, spouts off random information about the prison, and all sorts of stuff that would annoy you if you were with him. Also on hand is Yerry, who lacks a personality, but Greg hits on her, so she must be the leading lady. Heck, they start holding hands on the tour like a married couple, though they never develop any pointless love angle. We also get to see two young and annoying lovers, a half-witted self-proclaimed lawyer, and a crazy Native American activist that wants to claim Alcatraz back for his people. Greg immediately recognizes Frank on the tour, and later convinces the others, who he has never met before this tour, to return to the island and look from Frank. They all agree. I'm sorry, but if stupidity spreads like that, than these birdbrains really deserve to taste death before they spread their disease to the rest of us! They sail back and picnic in the prison, immediately forgetting about the reason for coming. Frank then proceeds to bump them off one-by-one when they separate.

One good thing I can say about the film is that it seems like the writer knew much about Alcatraz's history, briefly mentioning facts about the Anglin brothers and a second escape where it is unknown whether or not the escapee survived, but they are never mentioned by name, for some reason. Another good thing is that the sets they used, which must have been of Alcatraz itself or of a reasonable facsimile, are creepy, just as the 1988 horror film, `Prison' was. But unlike that movie, this one has absolutely nothing more. Unless you consider Aldo Ray a star (which I do not) than it has no star power. Ray is actually a poor asset, as he shouts out incomprehensibly whenever he is killing someone. All the characters are brainless, separating after the first body appears, passing up useful weapons, and just being there in the first place. The acting is bad, and the direction is much worse. The killings are dumb, pointless, and poorly done on all sides. The script is also stupid. For instance, why does Frank risk exposure by killing people? And why doesn't he just up and take the kids' boat that he moved and leave since he finds the directions before they arrive? Most bothersome of all, though, is the ending. When the killing stops, you think it is almost over, but it is far from that. There's a lot of unnecessary scenes with Frank and his clueless girlfriend that should have been left on the cutting room floor. The whole finale, which I shall not discuss, is ridiculous to the thinking mind. Then again, this is not for those with thinking minds. It is for people that find fresh piles of dung fascinating to stare at. Zantara's score: 1 out of 10.