Voodoo Island (1957) – Review

Introduction

Since I wanted to watch another fantastical film from the 1950s, I figured I’d take a look at a small corner of that decade that has so far been left out here—at least as far as I can tell (I don’t exactly know every review by heart). I’m talking about the small production outfit Bel-Air, which under the guidance of Aubrey Schenck and Howard W. Koch released several interesting B-pictures for the drive-in circuit toward the end of the 1950s.

Their output consisted largely of quickly cranked-out exploitation fare, but also of some unusual horror productions, as the genre was becoming increasingly promising toward the end of the decade. Among their films were Pharaoh’s Curse (1957), the fairly decent The Hypnotic Eye (1958), and the rather respectable The Black Sleep, which managed to round up a number of washed-up stars (Bela Lugosi in his final role, as well as Lon Chaney Jr.).

They also still had a contract with Karloff, which meant he appeared not only in The Hypnotic Eye but also in the intriguingly titled Voodoo Island from 1957. 1950s cinema, voodoo, and Karloff? That actually sounds pretty promising… doesn’t it?

Plot

To mysterious music, a voodoo doll flies into frame, its head pierced by a needle. The cast credits and title roll, and the camera then glides over a nicely done miniature set of a South Seas hotel complex before settling on a man staring blankly ahead. Karloff—playing Philip Knight, a debunker of allegedly supernatural phenomena—steps into the frame, grabs the man’s hand, and waves his own hand in front of his face. No reaction.

A man in a suit explains that there’s nothing physically wrong with Mr. Mitchell; instead, he appears to be trapped in some kind of trance, an “inner” blockage. No one knows where it came from—not even industrial tycoon Howard Carlton himself, who had sent Mitchell and several other men to investigate “Voodoo Island.” Carlton plans to build a vacation resort there. Only Mitchell returned, and in this pitiful condition—washed ashore on a beach of an island fifty miles away, where he was found by a postal station worker.

Knight’s assignment is clear: assemble a team and uncover the mystery surrounding Voodoo Island.

Review

Well… that turned out to be a swing and a miss. Anyone expecting the story to finally pick up once the group reaches the island (which doesn’t happen until around the 40-minute mark) is in for a rude awakening. It doesn’t get better—if anything, it gets even dumber. Unfortunately, not dumb enough to be fun.

Let’s go step by step, because the poster still promises voodoo rituals, a bridge of death, and monster plants! But anyone who takes the bombastic promises of 1950s monster posters at face value is fooling themselves—and yes, I still cling to hope until the very end that something will happen. That there will be spectacle, something to laugh at, something to marvel at, or at least something that makes you clutch your head in disbelief. But no—nothing.

To the film’s credit, it at least looks “nice,” especially compared to many ultra-low-budget B-movies of the era. Those often took place in empty offices or generic bungalows, whereas here Karloff’s group actually travels to an island, complete with palm trees, beaches, and coves. The film was even shot on Kauai, one of the Hawaiian Islands. But you don’t really get to see much of it. The group spends ages just sitting around in one place, then wandering aimlessly through the scenery. We hear and see precious little about any real “investigation” into what happened to the previous expedition.

By today’s standards, there’s hardly any exotic atmosphere. Maybe it felt different back then—I honestly don’t know. And that’s a shame, because the setting alone could have offered so much potential. I love mysterious islands, whether in Jules Verne adaptations or in pulp fare like At the Earth’s Core or Island of Terror. You could show all kinds of absurd creatures—apes, dinosaurs, God knows what else.

But this is Voodoo Island. Today, that title might conjure images of zombies and bloody rituals. In 1950s drive-in cinema, however, it usually meant a few drumming natives, wild-eyed chieftains, and endless dancing to strange music. And we don’t even get that here. Instead, we’re treated to endless, static scenes of “characters” talking.

Karloff plays an adventurer who doesn’t believe in voodoo nonsense. His secretary Sarah is the timid, screaming woman. Later, Captain Gunn is introduced as a sort of “hero,” who eventually enters into a completely pointless and uninspired romance with Sarah. Then there’s Claire, the stubborn, chain-smoking character who seems to have absolutely nothing meaningful to do. A few other characters tag along at the beginning, but it’s utterly irrelevant what their names are, where they come from, or what they do—if they do anything at all.

The story really does fit on a beer coaster. First, the “mystery” is introduced. Then Karloff flies the group to a base, where Mitchell stumbles around uselessly under a voodoo curse. Next stop is a jungle post station, where the main task is to bribe the resident Martin (what his actual job is supposed to be remains unclear) into taking them to the island. And then they finally arrive.

And what happens on the island? Nothing. People trudge through the jungle, sit around for the next twenty minutes, talk aimlessly, and in the final ten minutes, a few cheap monster plants and natives show up. The “bridge of death,” by the way, is complete nonsense—it’s just a normal suspension bridge, from which one member of Karloff’s group (names are meaningless here) falls into a lake a few meters below for no discernible reason and apparently dies.

There are no rituals, no tension, no twists—nothing. The advertising slogan “Men turn into Zombies” is at best technically correct if you define zombies as people under a voodoo spell. They’re certainly not violent or monstrous.

And then comes the ending. The tribal chief simply lets Karloff and the survivors go, because they promised not to talk about what happened. This, despite the chief’s supposed goal of keeping civilization away from the island. How is that supposed to work? Karloff goes home, tells the industrial tycoon that there’s nothing dangerous on the island—and then what? Naturally, the man will go ahead and build his hotels, and the chief can kiss his little island kingdom goodbye. Brilliant plan. And why did he even bother tormenting the expedition members with curses from afar in the first place?

So yes, the story is bottom-of-the-barrel even by 1950s B-movie standards: no tension, no character development, no pacing, no logic. Oh, and did I mention the film runs 77 minutes? Why it was padded to that length is beyond me. Sixty minutes would have been more than enough for drive-in audiences, and even that would have been a stretch.

This makes it all the more surprising that the script was written by Richard Landau, who also worked on Hammer’s Shock! and did a much better job with The Black Sleep, which he also wrote for Bel-Air. The same goes for director Reginald LeBorg, who handled The Black Sleep with far more energy. Here, he brings absolutely no dynamism to the proceedings. The camera barely moves, the dialogue is staged lethargically, and even the supposed suspense moments are flat and uninspired.

What truly kills the film, however, is the near-total absence of effects. A dumb or barely existent story? Boring characters? Logical inconsistencies? All of that would be forgivable if there were at least something to look at. But the highlight consists of three attacks by “monster plants,” which are thoroughly unimpressive. One involves “strangling vines” in a pond—naturally, Claire decides to go swimming there, because that’s exactly what one does in unfamiliar waters on a mysterious island. The vines themselves are nothing more than cheap plastic strips. Another attack features some vaguely moving… thing in the forest.

These fine props were once again created by the duo Jack Rabin and Louis DeWitt, who supplied effects for countless low-budget sci-fi films of the era—sometimes quite competently, or at least entertainingly, as seen in The Brain Eaters (1958) or World Without End (1956). Here, though, they really dropped the ball. I honestly wonder where the alleged $150,000 budget went (okay, a good chunk probably went straight into Karloff’s pocket).

The sluggishness of the film is reinforced by the cast. I usually credit horror heavyweights like Karloff for their mere presence—but here, the master leaves absolutely no impression whatsoever. It genuinely wouldn’t make a difference if he weren’t there at all. His character is empty, and the dialogue he has to deliver is equally lifeless. The Hypnotic Eye was a thousand times better.

Next to Karloff, Elisha Cook Jr. is probably the most recognizable name. He also appeared in House on Haunted Hill (1959) and Rosemary’s Baby (1968) and was often cast in supporting roles. Here, he likely needed the paycheck—or wanted to combine work with a Hawaiian vacation. He plays the station man at the beginning and is just as forgettable as the rest of the cast, who either overact (when encountering the monster plants) or do absolutely nothing.

The film can be found on YouTube, and there’s also a Midnight Movies DVD that pairs it with The Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake (1959).

Conclusion

So, what can one say? This film is really only recommendable to hardcore completists of 1950s fantasy cinema (even though there’s precious little fantasy on display here) and to die-hard Karloff fans who feel compelled to see absolutely everything he ever made. That said, it’s also not so bad that it made me rage endlessly. In the end, it’s just a bland, forgettable, utterly unremarkable B-movie—but not one you actively hate, either.

And since I’m always fairly generous with films from the 1950s, I’ll still give it four beers. There always needs to be room at the bottom of the scale.