Unknown Island in Golden Age Horror Forum

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lobo67.thelatarniaforums	Unknown Island	Lead	[-]
Nov 18 08 8:21 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Hi, I picked up the DVD of Unknown Island the other day. I have not seen this before, that I can recall. I see it's an early color film. Any comments on this? Carl
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Rakshasa		#1	[-]
Nov 18 08 9:03 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Yo Carl! Ahh, one of my childhood favorites. Great fun with Richard Denning and Barton MacClain battling men-in-monster suits, a giant sloth (Ray "Crash" Corrigan in a slightly doctored gorilla suit), a mechanical Dimetrodon (sp?), and more! Plus, it's all in glorious 1948 color! Classic schlocky monsters created by the great Ellis Burman (see Bob Burns' / Tom Weaver's "Monster Kid Memories" book for some amazing recollections of Bob's watching them film the T-Rex scenes). Here's a small thread from the Kong folder about Corrigan's gorilla/sloth suit in Unknown Island: http://monsterkidclassich...forum.yuku.com/topic/1449 Links To All The Classic Monster Stills I've Posted: http://monsterkidclassichorrorforum.yuku.com/topic/30758 Last Edited By: Rakshasa Nov 18 08 3:51 PM. Edited 2 times.
lencandraw		#2	[-]
Nov 18 08 9:06 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	I saw it a few years ago. Can't add much to what Rakshasa said! Has Richard Denning as a (now stereotypical) drunken pilot/guide. Fairly entertaining in a bad sort of way.
Rakshasa		#3	[-]
Nov 18 08 9:25 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Without spoiling anything, I'll just say that Unknown Island features a lot of wonderfully absurd and manic laughter from Barton MacLane as well as some of the most hilariously girlish screaming ever uttered by a grown man. Great stuff! Links To All The Classic Monster Stills I've Posted: http://monsterkidclassichorrorforum.yuku.com/topic/30758 Last Edited By: Rakshasa Nov 18 08 3:50 PM. Edited 3 times.
M F Berry		#4	[-]
Nov 18 08 9:36 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Unknown Island is a fun dinosaur picture, but not really because of the dinosaurs ... more like in spite of them, actually! The first half hour, where the young couple seeks out the grizzled old sea captain and his "wild animal ship" (a first cousin of the "moving picture ship" in King Kong) in the seedy nightspot, and we see the development of the characters on the voyage, is all really well done. It's kind of neat discovering which characters turn out to be the good guys and which ones turn out to be the bad guys. Some nice work by the actors, too, especially Barton McLane as the two-fisted, chronically horny Capt. Tarnowski. As others have mentioned, the dino effects come up short, but I'll still give the makers points for creating the first-ever dinomovie in color, and making their own new dinosaur scenes rather than recycling the black-and-white lizardosaurs from One Million B.C. And it's amazing how great the old Cinecolor colors look on the DVD! Besides being the first color dinofilm, Unknown Island also has the distinction of being the only picture in the "Lost World" genre to appear in the entire decade of the 1940s, which was a really lean decade for dinos. I guess you could call Tarzan's Desert Mystery a sort of "Lost World" movie with its prehistoric creatures inhabiting the "Fever Medicine Jungle," but that's quite a stretch. Last Edited By: M F Berry Nov 18 08 9:40 AM. Edited 1 times.
lobo67.thelatarniaforums		#5	[-]
Nov 18 08 9:49 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	I look forward to watching this. I found this and Valley of Gwangi for 5.99 each, and thought what a find! Carl
HalLane		#6	[-]
Nov 18 08 12:38 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	M F Berry wrote: Besides being the first color dinofilm, Unknown Island also has the distinction of being the only picture in the "Lost World" genre to appear in the entire decade of the 1940s, which was a really lean decade for dinos. Giant Gemora Gorilla in AFRICA SCREAMS in 1949. I'm watching it right now .
Bob Furmanek		#7	[-]
Nov 18 08 3:15 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	An excerpt from the NY Times review of "Unknown Island'" dated 1/8/49: From the numbers of stolid young gentlemen who were shoving their muscular way into the Rialto Theatre yesterday, one might reasonably assume that there is considerable local interest in paleontology. For the lurid front of the theatre, where a film called "Unknown Island" went on view, displayed a quite fetching assortment of illustrations of prehistoric beasts. Various horrendous dinosauria and simian monsters were pictured there. And it was plain that the eager young gentlemen could not resist the appeal. We regret, however, to inform you that the treatise which they saw within is not an entirely dependable scientific report. And we rather gathered from the comments of several who departed from there that their intellectual curiosity had not been completely gratified. For it must be frankly acknowledged that "Unknown Island" is a pretty flabby piece of fanciful movie-making in the "King Kong" and "Lost World" line. It might be added that the film is in Cinecolor, dominated by a shade of sickly green.
CapnDunsel		#8	[-]
Nov 18 08 6:16 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	I look forward to watching Unknown Island. I found this and Valley of Gwangi for 5.99 each, and thought what a find! Carl Like the barkers say, "You'll laugh! (at Unknown Island), You'll cry! (at Gwangi's death)." Better have that J&B handy. I have a tangential question that I'm hoping someone can answer. In "I was a teenage caveman"(b&w), there's a brief bit of stock footage of small T-Rexes mulling about in a forest. These look and behave very much like the couple of T-Rexes in "Unknown Island" except in Unk.Isle they aren't shown in a forest. And I think there's more of them in TeenCave. If the stock didn't come from Unk. Isle, then from where? Last Edited By: CapnDunsel Nov 18 08 6:22 PM. Edited 3 times.
lobo67.thelatarniaforums		#9	[-]
Nov 19 08 8:03 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	I watched Unknown Island last night, and I was very entertained with it. It didn't bore at all. Had some interesting characters and dramatic moments. And I liked the dino effects. For 1948 I thought it was well done. I am an anti-CGI person, and what they did was not bad at all. The only other way at that time would have been stop motion, or maybe animation. The models and suits I think were effective. And the short run time was good too. These days every movie has to be almost 3 hours long it seems. I do think I have seen excerpts of the dinos here in other things.... I am sure I have. Carl
BijouBob8mm		#10	[-]
Nov 19 08 12:50 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	I need to grab this up. I had a choice between it and another dino DVD from Image, TWO LOST WORLDS (getting extra mileage out of that ONE MILLION BC stock footage library) a few years back and, for reasons I no longer remember, I went for TWO LOST WORLDS.
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Bob Furmanek		#11	[-]
Nov 19 08 2:16 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Seeing this film in color for the first time was quite a treat. Like most other Cinecolor films, it was only shown on TV in grainy black and white. In fact, the DVD release was the first time it was available in color since the early 50's! The DVD was sourced from a PAL master so there are some artifacts and speed issues, but the 35mm color source material is terrific.
ryanbrennan		#12	[-]
Nov 19 08 9:17 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	In fact, the DVD release was the first time it was available in color since the early 50's! Bob, were there bootleg prints circulating in color? I ask because I have a videotape copy, 2nd or 3rd generation, that looks like one of those sold at conventions -- photocopied box art and no label name -- that's in color and obviously from a 16mm print.
TomWeaver999		#13	[-]
Nov 20 08 12:23 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	<< Like most other Cinecolor films, it was only shown on TV in grainy black and white. << I'm ready to stand corrected but I have a memory of NY's Channel 9 having a color print "back in the day." (Horror/sci-fi-wise, EVERYthing passed through Channel 9. Back then, the late '60s/early '70s, I loved reading in various books and fanzines that such-and-such a film was lost, such-and-such a film was never on TV, etc., etc. -- and thinking to myself, "You poor schlubs don't live in NY where alllllll this stuff is on Channel 9 alllllll the time!") Last Edited By: TomWeaver999 Nov 20 08 12:25 AM. Edited 1 times.
TServo4		#14	[-]
Nov 20 08 3:21 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	There were 16mm prints made by Cinecolor for non-theatrical use. Film Classics, the company that distributed the film, bought Cinecolor in the '40s, largely because of the color processing for their non-theatrical library. However, I believe Bob is correct in that the TV prints up until some late date (AMC, perhaps?) were black and white. J. Theakston Capitol Theatre, Rome, NY
ryanbrennan		#15	[-]
Nov 21 08 4:32 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	There were 16mm prints made by Cinecolor for non-theatrical use. Film Classics, the company that distributed the film, bought Cinecolor in the '40s, largely because of the color processing for their non-theatrical library. However, I believe Bob is correct in that the TV prints up until some late date (AMC, perhaps?) were black and white. Thanks for the info.
CapnDunsel		#16	[-]
Nov 21 08 5:22 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	so nobody knows if the dino footage in "Teenage Caveman" came from "Unknown Island" or a related source? I find that hard to believe. I guess it's so secret, it can't be divulged.
M F Berry		#17	[-]
Nov 21 08 7:11 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	I'm on the case, Capn ... be back later tonight as soon as I have a chance to check a couple of things (including my own book!) I must be getting old!
TServo4		#18	[-]
Nov 21 08 7:20 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Correct my if I'm wrong, but the only dino footage in UNKNOWN ISLAND are those guys in the canvas costumes that were shot in Palmdale. It's been a while since I've seen TEENAGE CAVEMEN, but isn't that footage lizards with cardboard spines attached? J. Theakston Capitol Theatre, Rome, NY
CapnDunsel		#19	[-]
Nov 21 08 10:29 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	lizards with cardboard spines attached? Nope, at the very end of "Teen Caveman" during the dead scientist's voice-over and various stock footage, there's about 5 seconds of two t-rexes (guys in costumes) in a jungle, one of which has an animal or snake hanging out of his mouth. There is a surprisingly convincing stegosaurus on the premises (behind them), but not the kind you mean. Last Edited By: CapnDunsel Nov 21 08 10:39 PM. Edited 1 times.
Monsterpal		#20	[-]
Nov 21 08 11:13 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	I think the diplodocus briefly seen in TEENAGE CAVEMAN may be clipped from UNKNOWN ISLAND, too.
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