Escape from Hell Island

1963's "Escape from Hell Island" is a no budget yawner directed by its star, Mark Stevens, who in the 1940s had worked opposite such actresses as Lucille Ball and Olivia De Havilland. As a director, he at least showed ingenuity in filming off Key West, as a captain hired to rescue some escaping Cubans from Castro's regime. Unfortunately, the ease with which he conducts the rescue leaves the film lurching through its final hour with nothing but a romance with a woman whose weakling hubby spends the last couple of reels keeping our hero from boarding his own boat, while a little stock footage (very little) of swimming sharks makes for a feeble attempt at suspense. This was one of the 16 Crown International titles that popped up on Pittsburgh's Chiller Theater during the 1976-77 season, paired on Jan 1 1977 with second feature "The Lost World" (1960), which at least had the advantage of being in color. Mark Stevens subsequently kept busy in Europe, where he shot the German "Frozen Alive," a more suitable title for Chiller Theater that alas never appeared.

The "hell island" referred to in the title refers to post-revolution Cuba. Some refugees are helped to the U.S. by an sea captain from Key West. He falls in love with a refugee's wife -- none of these refugees has an accent -- the husband is a psychotic crybaby, and he somehow talks the captain into talking him to the Bahamas so he can grub money from his sister. The husband tries to kill the captain and steal his ship.

If this sounds like a confused mess with no real plot, it's because this is exactly what it is. There's a scene that goes on for fifteen minutes where Mark Stevens (the captain) tries to get back on his ship after the psychotic guy knocks him into the ocean . . . which is filled with stock footage (badly patched in) of sharks.

Stevens directed this tiny-budgeted, black and white mess, which is supposedly based on a story by Robert Sheckley, a first-rate writer, who, I doubt, had much to do with this fiasco.

Watching this was about as exciting as watching Jello cook. No . . . it wasn't even that good. Skip it and pour that Jello powder in boiling water . . .

There's filmmaking, and then there are films that somehow get made but that still don't seem like actual movies: Which is what the misleadingly titled ESCAPE FROM HELL ISLAND is: Basically an early 1960's retooling of TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT since actor/director Mark Stevens's ex-smuggler Captain James, a charter boat captain, is hired by two exiled Cubans to pick up refugees living in Fidel Castro's title island...

Made during JFK's presidency, an unpopular Cuba is the proverbial HELL: A locale we see for only a split second as military gunman fire at Captain James's boat while he's picking up the human cargo, and one in particular is supposed to mean everything. Surprisingly, given the tagline, "Sharing a Love That Was Not Theirs To Take," the second lead isn't the sexy Cuban girl billed as sexy, usually blond WESTWORLD and PSYCH-OUT actress Linda Gaye Scott (billed as Linda Scott, and it looks nothing like her: is this another IMDb blunder?). Rather, her abusive, deranged husband is not only the main antagonist, he pretty much steals the entire show. If HELL ISLAND were made ten years later, Bruce Dern would have played the part had by a skinny, chaotic Jack Donner as Kyle Dennison, who even gets the standalone "And" treatment in the opening credits, which usually means the second most important character after the lead...

Mark Stevens, who, a decade earlier, starred and directed in the sublime yet underrated Alaska-set FIlm Noir, CRY VENGEANCE, has little to no budget here, using what looks like stolen footage of various establishing exterior shots of either the charter boat or sailboat backed by a strange and hypnotically nautical, tropical jazz score...

Looking emaciated and worn, his performance is beyond subdued: He's neither a cocky or cool Humphrey Bogart type or anyone you'd see in a Key West Florida-set Pulpy Noir that this tries/wants desperately to be...

Especially the initial immigrant pickup involving a rummy sidekick who sneaked on board, exactly like Walter Brennan in TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT (as Eddy from the Ernest Hemingway source novel), and there are moments when the picture almost settles into a primal groove where an actual story begins shaping-up... Especially when Captain James sparks a possible romance with Linda Gaye Scott's sexy Cuban ingenue, Linda. But Jack Donner as the insanely jealous (insane and jealous) Kyle, described by his wife as an "immoral Communist eunuch," takes over at this point. And for some bizarre reason, the captain sets out on his sailboat alone with the lanky, cranky, completely untrustworthy, crooked, backstabbing, delusional husband who, during the entire bizarre third act after throwing the captain overboard, leads a prolonged cat and mouse (or cat and fish) game...

As the non-stressed captain swims in circles while random shark stock-footage pops up to build suspense. But nothing comes of that threat... not even a dorsal fin cutting above the water... and it's hard to think they're in the middle of nowhere when the ocean floor is visible every time we see the captain circle his boat...

So the rest of the film plays out with Donner going more and more berserk, and at one point imagining the boat and the surrounding ocean catching on fire. In a movie that'd been mostly wide shots of actors spouting rushed dialogue, the lunatics' imagination is better than the real thing. Making ESCAPE FROM HELL ISLAND the kind of god-awful experience where nothing ever actually happens. Then again, for guilty pleasure's sake, it can be a pretty intriguing nightmare.

A sea captain has an illegal venture on the side where he helps refugees escape Cuba. He subsequently falls in love with one of the women he brings back. The trouble is that her unbalanced husband is none too happy about this and has plans to counter-act this situation.

Escape from Hell Island is a thriller that seems to have been tapping pretty directly into events surrounding the Cuban Missile Crisis. Many films did this in the 60's and this event was partially responsible for the boom in cold war spy films at the time. To be honest, it's quite awkwardly integrated into this film to the point that it almost feels added just for its topicality. The story-line is quite messy and essentially winds up with a suspense driven final third on-board a boat where two men have a stand-off against one and other in which the good captain spends quite a bit of time in the sea trying to avoid sharks and the like. It's not a particularly successful thriller, as its focus is all over the place. At best, its a reasonable time-filler.

ESCAPE FROM HELL ISLAND is about Captain James (Mark Stevens) using his fishing boat to smuggle Cuban refugees into Florida. Along the way, James is smitten by the wife (Linda Scott) of a knife-wielding lunatic, named Donner (Lyle Dennison), causing the movie to sink deeply into the soap opera abyss.

At one point, Donner pulls his knife out, threatening to make things interesting. Nope, he rants, and puts the knife away.

Donner raves, pouts, fumes, and throws various tantrums, while James makes time with his ditzy spouse. We're supposed to get the impression that Donner is a dangerous psychopath, but he's far too comical to be taken seriously. His infantile explosions are hilariously pathetic!

Don't let the title fool you. The only "hell" experienced here is the enduring of this movie!

THE MOST BRAIN-CRUSHINGLY DULL SCENE: Donner tossing James overboard, causing him to swim around the boat for an eternity. All, while sharks -cropped in from some other, probably better movie- swim "nearby".

Lovers of Key West may enjoy seeing familiar points of interest. All others could be near death by the time this finally ends...