Island of Blood

This little-seen early-'80s slasher is fully deserving of its obscurity: the unimaginative by-the-numbers plot sees a group of young film-makers gather on an island where they are bumped off one-by-one by an unseen maniac who likes to play a really bad new wave/punk song on his tape player while he is at work. The acting is basic (one of the actresses can't even blow out a candle convincingly), the direction and editing are clumsy, the characters are all unlikeable, and the dialogue is absolutely terrible (my favourite line: a guy hands a girl a nail gun "Take this - it fires nails like a gun." Talk about stating the obvious!).

To be fair, the deaths are quite nasty in concept, however the majority of the movie takes place in the dark, and many potentially disturbing scenes are hard to make out. A bloke is boiled to death in a swimming pool (the only death that takes place during the day), someone is speared, another guy is attacked with a chainsaw, a man is stabbed by a machete, and a girl taking a (nudity-free) shower is burned by battery acid, but the effects aren't great and gore-hounds will be left disappointed, at least until the final act in which we get to see a couple of the victims a little clearer (a guy's severed head with nails in his face and a girl with nails in her forehead).

In an attempt to differentiate his film from countless other slashers of the time, writer/director Bill Naud chucks in a twist ending that is totally implausible. And if you haven't already had a gutful of that terrible new-wave song (Face to Face by Factor Four), it plays in full over the end credits. Aaarrrgh!