cult film freak: MARK STEVENS WITH JACK DONNER IN 'ESCAPE FROM HELL ISLAND'

Written by James M. Tate / 9/12/2018 / No comments / adventure , drama , indie , jack donner , jazz score , linda scott , mark stevens , neo noir , shark , sixties , thriller

MARK STEVENS WITH JACK DONNER IN 'ESCAPE FROM HELL ISLAND'

9/12/2018 | No comment

FROM HELL ISLAND" year: 1963 Rates: **1/2

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, and yet, surprisingly, given the pulpy tagline, Sharing a Love That Was Not Theirs To Take, the second lead isn't the sexy Cuban girl, played by newcomer Linda Scott (not to be mistaken for WESTWORLD blonde bombshell Lina Gaye Scott). 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, it might've been Bruce Dern as the skinny, chaotic Jack Donner's role as Kyle Dennison, who even gets the opening credits standalone And treatment, which usually means the second most important character after the lead...

Linda Scott and Mark Stevens

Herein Mark Stevens, who, a decade earlier, starred and directed a worthwhile and underrated Alaska-set 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, 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 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...

Title for ESCAPE FROM HELL ISLAND

As the surprisingly non-stressed captain swims in circles while random shark stock-footage is inserted to build tension, suspense...

But nothing comes of that threat... not even the usual dorsal fin cutting above the water can providing any risk for the hero... and it's hard to think they're in the middle of nowhere when the ocean floor is visible every time the athletic captain circles around and around his vessel...

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.