cinema history class: island of the doomed (1967)

The session: Spring is in the Air, and the Plants are Growing
Keith shows four movies about carnivorous plants.

As always, there may be spoilers here. And the trailer may be NSFW and/or NSFL.

Week 2: Island of the Doomed (1967)
Directed by Mel Wells

My Level of Prior Knowledge:
Never heard of it.

Plot Synopsis:
Unsuspecting tourists to a remote island, guests of a reclusive botanist, start dying one by one.  They uncover the terrifying truth as they struggle to survive. 

Plot:
On a tropical island science has gone very, very wrong—and, against all odds, the plants steal the show. Seriously: the plant design is by far the best thing in the movie. It’s creative, vaguely (and sometimes not-so-vaguely) sexual, and just grounded enough in reality to feel almost believable. You keep thinking, “Okay… this is ridiculous… but also… kind of impressive?”

Structurally, Island of the Doomed is actually working from a very familiar horror template: a group of people trapped in an isolated setting, unable to escape, getting picked off one by one as tension (theoretically) builds and the survivors scramble to understand what’s happening. That formula has powered countless effective horror films—and here, the twist that the killer is a sentient plant is genuinely one of the movie’s stronger ideas. On paper, that should be enough to carry things.

Unfortunately, the movie takes its time getting to anything worth caring about. We spend a long stretch with a collection of characters so unlikable and dull that I eventually found myself rooting less for their survival and more for their creative demise. Others in the room saw it as a slow burn, though I had some trouble seeing it that way. There are hints of style along the way—the opening credits feature animation that feels like it wandered in from a Pink Panther short, and at various points I caught flashes of James Bond film series swagger and the campy energy of Batman—but none of it quite coalesces early on.

Then, near the end, everything finally clicks into place. When the character I will charitably refer to as “Miss Bitchypants” has her run-in with the plant monster, the movie suddenly wakes up. From there on out, it delivers the kind of action, tension, and outright weirdness you’d hope for from a premise like this. Even better, the closing act reframes some of the earlier material in a way that almost—almost—makes the slow build feel intentional.

In the end, the final act is what saves the film. Not too little, but definitely too late. Still, I walked away thinking: there’s a better version of this movie hiding inside the one we watched.

Of course, none of that stopped Joe from giving it a 10.