This is one of the original 'video nasties', and still only available in a heavily cut version in the UK (although easily available in uncut R1 format). Apparently made quickly to make cash for its first time director Nico Mistorakis, it is the story of a young tourist couple, Christopher and Celia who arrive on the picturesque island of Mykonos. At first we think them innocents, entering a world of terror. Soon it turns out that in fact they are the monsters, Christopher in particular being concerned to rid the word of 'perverts', photographing the mayhem as they go through local acquaintances - at first for kicks, then to cover their tracks. Much of the film is just a pretext for a catalogue of imaginative slaughter. The acting is variable at best (Jayne Ryall, playing Celia looking particularly bemused at the whole business, and this was her only film). The film includes sex and rape, both human and animal but, like so much of its ilk, is ironically coy about these physical acts, showing only such nudity and rare bursts of pubes as would sit easily in a softcore sex comedy. The exception is perhaps the urination scene which, because it is so unexpected and rare away from porno cinema, does at least raise eyebrows. The much vaunted 'goat rape' is patently faked and unconvincing but, as it takes place very early on at least alerts viewers to the real nature of the psychopathic Chris.
Surprisingly for a film with such a strong reputation, none of the violence really shocks today, although the range of deaths (by crucifixion and paint poisoning, hanging from a plane wing, heroin overdose, sword and scythe, bulldozer, etc) have an ingenious variety - a testimony to the director's plan to outdo competing exploitation films in range. Celia's bathtub rape is loud and threatening, but that of Susan George in the newly uncut UK issue of Straw Dogs is much more disturbing as well as actually being 'concluded' in the scene. It's another case, I would suggest, of sensibilities having moved on, leaving the BBFC unduly squeamish in cutting so much. Victims of the homicidal holidaymakers include homosexuals, lesbians, a middle aged nymphomaniac, 2 hippies, a Frenchman, a policeman (sent to track the notorious duo down) and so on.
More of interest is the way in which the film provides continuous ironic inversion on a normal holiday narrative. The attractive island, full of native white buildings, blue skies and sunshine, looks to be straight out of a travel brochure, and our sense of place is aided by some reasonable good cinematography. Chris and Celia are the 'tourists' who are visiting, relaxing, and taking plenty of pictures. The difference being of course that they are snapping the humiliated, dead and dying rather than the serene landscape around them, making themselves a different sort of vacation altogether. `We do everything vice versa' as she says, and the film gains most of its power from the stream of atrocity-attractions visited upon the community in this peculiar context. It's their casual return to traditional holiday locales (the local taverna, romantic beach walks or cosy white washed rooms) between murders which is ultimately more disturbing than anything done in the meantime. Island of Death still bears watching, and is considerably better worked than some of the other 'nasties'. If you take this as a recommendation of course, that's up to you.
