The Blood Island films make interesting contrast to The Island of Lost Souls, which bought into a symbolic divide that seemed to say that Westerners were venturing outside of civilised norms and into a world where the dividing lines between human and animal, civilised and bestial wildness was breaking down. Most of this is not too different, with the exception of the locations in the tropics and the greater gore and sexual content, from the formula that served most mad scientist films of the 1930s and 40s, or for that matter The Island of Dr Moreau, or perhaps more so its first film version The Island of Lost Souls (1932). Mad Doctor of Blood Island opens with a scene that puts the focus of these films upfront – establishing shots of the jungle, followed by a native girl bathing at a waterfall and then being attacked by a monster and pursued naked through the jungle.
#Mad dr of blood island series#
The mad scientist has created a series of human monsters that proceed to run amok, attacking people (amid much gore), before abducting women and usually the heroine in the climactic scenes (amid much toplessness). Subsequently, Eddie Romero left Hemisphere to make other similar films with The Beast of the Yellow Night (1971), Beyond Atlantis (1973), The Twilight People (1972) and The Woman Hunt (1973).Īll of the Blood Island films run to an extremely interchangeable formula – an American hero (usually played by John Ashley and accompanied by his girlfriend) arrives in the tropics and discovers a mad scientist operating in the jungle or on an island. Independent International then released Mad Doctor of Blood Island with a sensationalistic promotional campaign that turned it into a hit, whereupon the other Blood Island films were pushed together as sequels, with American director Al Adamson also making the subsequent, non-Filipino Brain of Blood (1971), even though only Beast of Blood, featuring a return performance from John Ashley and the character of Dr Lorca, can be considered related (beyond all sharing the title location of the fictional Blood Island). Gerry De Leon and in particular Eddie Romero promptly turned their attentions to making a string of copies of Terror is a Man with the likes of Brides of Blood (1968), Mad Doctor of Blood Island and Beast of Blood (1971). Sherman succeeded in turning this into a modest drive-in hit. De Leon and Romero went on to make a series of war movies that gained little attention before Terror is a Man was discovered and brought up by Sam Sherman of the US-based Hemisphere Pictures and its releasing arm Independent International. Wells’ novel The Island of Dr Moreau (1896).
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Gerardo (or Gerry) De Leon and Eddie Romero had earlier made Terror is a Man (1959), an unacknowledged copy of H.G. Mad Doctor of Blood Island is one of the key films in the Filipino exploitation cinema movement of the 1970s and early 80s.