ALL SCI-FI

[Bud Brewster]

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Poorly done made-for-TV adventure, filmed in the Bahamas and Miami, with the choppy look of a badly edited home movie.

British actor Richard Greene ("Robin Hood" from the late 1950s British TV production) leads a scientific expedition consisting of two young men, two pretty young girls, an adolescent, and a mascot seal. Together they sail to an uncharted South Sea island where they find sabre toothed wolves, carnivorous ostriches, and growling alligators with triceratops hoods.

None of these animals are presented as being oversized; they're just German shepherds with fake fangs, ostriches with fake saw-toothed beaks and dinosaur-fins on their backs, and alligator-sized alligators with lots of added horns and fins.

Trust me — you haven't lived until you've seen a group of carnivorous ostriches being attacked by a pack of sabre-toothed German shepherds!

Because of the low budget, stock footage is badly overused. Shots of Hawaiian surf are passed off as tidal waves. Earthquakes are portrayed by jiggling cameras. Volcanoes are depicted with grainy stock footage of bubbling lava. Numerous close-ups of sharks and eels pad out the underwater scenes.

The most puzzling thing about this movie is that the script was written by actor Richard Carlson ("It Came from Outer Space") and Ivan Tors (creator of "Science Fiction Theatre"). It should have been much better.

Directed by John Florea. Underwater scenes were directed by Ricou Browning (of "Creature from the Black Lagoon" fame).
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Krel]

[Bud Brewster]

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Just in case anybody thought I exaggerated when I said this is my initial posts —