Island of the Fishmen (1979)

Italian cinema is known for a number of things.  The giallo film, strange horror movies that make little sense, spaghetti westerns and hard-boiled police procedurals are just a few.  Occasionally they try to branch out into fantasy or science fiction, but most of those turn out to be Hercules movies or entertaining disasters like Starcrash.  It is as if many of the famous Italian directors from the 1970s wanted to do that huge Hollywood blockbuster, and many of them tried, only to be hamstrung by a big dose of reality. 

That seems to have happened with Sergio Martino on Island of the Fishmen, known in the U.S. as both Something Waits in the Dark and Screamers.  Although there are sci-fi and fantasy elements it seems like it was Martino's attempt to make a tribute to the old-fashioned zombie films of the 1940s, where some mad scientist was holed up in his isolated mansion outside the reach of modern society and holding a weird spell over the natives, often to the point of using "science" to bring them to heel through the local superstitions.  Only, this one has fish creatures and Atlantis as well, because one plot isn't enough.  

Lt. Claude de Ross (Claudio Cassinelli) is a doctor on a prison ship that has been sunk by a storm in the Caribbean.  Tensions on the lifeboat are high as the prisoners try to decide what to do with him.  That conversation is put aside when the boat suddenly appears to be caught in a strong current but is instead dragged by an unknown creature onto the rocks of an island.  Claude awakens to find himself on a beach and soon reunites José (Franco Javarone), one of the prisoners he is friendly with.  They find other survivors, but they soon become victims to traps as well as fish creatures that seem to roam the island.

While searching an abandoned cemetery Claude and José encounter Amanda Marvin (Barbara Bach), who warns them to leave the island.  Instead, they follow her back to a sprawling compound owned by Edmond Rackham (Richard Johnson) who lives there with his servants.  Amanda turns out to be the daughter of Prof. Ernst Marvin (Joseph Cotten), a disgraced geneticist whom Rackham has allowed to continue his work, the price being that he produce a potion to keep the fish creatures docile.  The creatures appear to be the remaining survivors of Atlantis, of which the island is all that is left above water.  Rackham intends to gather as much treasure for the ruins as possible before the volcano on the island finishes off the lost continent once and for all.

I cannot say for sure what Martino's original intent was as the version of Island of the Fishmen that I saw was the third one, Screamers.  This version has an unrelated opening - albeit with better effects than the rest of the film - featuring a treasure hunter (Mel Ferrer) and his sister (Eunice Bolt) who are brought to the island by a sea captain named Decker (Cameron Mitchell).  They are all done away with quickly and not mentioned again.  The sequence was shot at the insistence of Roger Corman who distributed the movie in the U.S. through his New World Pictures, and about 30 minutes of Martino's movie was removed.  Some new sound design was used as well as a different English dub, but it appears that after the opening most of the movie follows Martino's script.

It might be the trimming that makes this be a bit more of a straightforward plot.  I can't imagine it getting too complicated because everything in this movie, save fish creatures and Atlantis, could pretty much be a reworking of I Walked with a Zombie.  The beginning portion of the American version even hints toward actual zombies.  On that end the movie is quite decent if too predictable, and I have an opposite reaction than I usually do to adding new material and butchering the original.  I still wish this had been left alone, but I want to see the movie that branches off from the opening scene, as that seems much more interesting, involving as it would have not just our fishmen but also the resurrected, rotting bodies of former treasure hunters.  An entire film about the survivors of the prison ship battling such and having to team up with the natives on the island to fight them is much more interesting than moldy plot we got. 

Still, for lovers of b-movies, this will have a bit of charm.  It was advertised as much more violent and sleazy than it is, and at least Martino tries to give us a decent adventure movie.  It also gives us plenty of fishmen and, even though the suits don't look wonderful, they're also not as horrible as they could have been.  This is one of those movies that could have used a bit of a boost in the budget, but it still would have remained a late '70s curiosity. 

Island of the Fishmen (1979)

Time: 81 minutes

Starring: Claudio Casinelli, Barbara Bach, Richard Johnson

Director: Sergio Martino