The Island

With the mighty Sammo Hung being one of the producers, not much could go wrong and it didn’t in this bonkers 1985 slice of Hong Kong horror - a homage of sorts to American survival thriller/horrors such as ‘Deliverance’ and ‘The Hills Have Eyes’. And yet, THE ISLAND is an utterly unique experience with a distinctive East Asian flavour.

The film begins on the mainland, with teacher Mr. Cheung (John Sham) staring at an aquarium in a shop. In particular, he looks at two exotic fish inside the fish tank, with one of them ‘attacking’ the other - a sign of things to come? Next, the camera cuts to a remote island where two men are fishing for spiky looking sea urchins. Their behaviour is somewhat odd and when one of them (brothers, as it turns out) gets stung by one of the spikes from the sea urchins, the other brother takes ‘revenge’ on the culprit, cuts it open and eats the raw flesh. This sets the tone for what the brothers are like (namely not quite right in the head) but really, it’s just scratching the tip of the iceberg…

Meanwhile, teacher Cheung - this being summer season - decides to take a small group of his students to a rural island for a couple of days, so they may explore it. Mr. Cheung believes the island is uninhabited but we know it’s not, because before teacher and students land on shore, some particularly unsettling scenes play out in front of our eyes. Turns out the aforementioned two brothers have a third one. They are Yee-Fat (Chang Ging) - clearly mad but also goofy, Tai-Fat (Peter Chan Lung) who appears to be stoic but is the most sadistic and finally Sam-Fat (Billy Ching Sau-Yat) - with his deranged laughter and crazed facial expressions the most deranged of them all. Oh, and then there’s Mother Fat (Lap Ban Chan) who is just as unhinged and to make matters worse, given her old age, she is eager for one of her sons to ‘marry’ and have children, so the Fat clan may live on. But where to find a suitable bride on a desolate island? Po (Lai-Seung Yuen) happens to be on the island but it’s never explained how she got therein the first place - clearly, she’s just another visitor from the mainland but when we meet her first, she’s already in the clutches of the Fat family and yes, they are preparing a ‘wedding’ ceremony: the unfortunate Po is to marry Sam-Fat who, in his excitement, dons a (traditional Chinese) bridal gown while the others prepare the wedding bed. Clearly, the Fat family are several chopsticks short of a fully set dinner table and that’s an understatement! Before the ceremony, Mother Fat inspects Po to ensure she’s still a virgin, which she is not - and the ‘wedding’ is called off, with Po subjected to some nasty torture after her attempt to escape and after Mother has snuffed it due to a heart attack when the wedding had to be cancelled, Po is kept prisoner.

When Mr. Cheung and the students arrive, they have no idea of the horrors that lie in store for them. Talking about store: the brothers seem to have a small store of sorts with countless cans of soda pop and lollipops, whatever for? One of the female students, Phyllis (Helen Au Hoi-Lun), decides to purchase a few bottles of soda from Yee-Fat, who opens the bottle tops with his bare teeth while snot is dripping down his face. Run, girl - run fast! But it’s Sam-Fat who has set eyes on Phyllis and decides that she is to be his new bride, unaware of the fact that she is romantically involved with fellow student Ronald (Ronald Wong-Ban). In fact, both teacher and students seem spectacularly unaware of what’s going on around them (are they a bit thick or what?) and it takes several encounters with the brothers until the penny finally drops and they realise that they in mortal danger unless they agree to a wedding between Phyllis and Sam-Fat. What started out like a short holiday on an island, with our visitors in a light-hearted mood and up for fun, soon turns into a deadly game of survival of the fittest, with the unassuming Mr. Cheung and the rather timid Phyllis suddenly turning into fierce fighters who must act clever and fast if they and their fellow students want to leave the island alive…

There are some truly nasty and violent moments throughout the film, especially as it heads towards its climax. Despite the Fat Brothers being clearly deranged, they always seem to have another trump card up their sleeve when it comes to scuppering the visitors’ various escape plans. John Sham and Billy Ching Sau-Yat are particularly worth mentioning regarding the acting, while Helen Au Hoi-Lun’s ‘Phyllis’ succeeds in her complete transformation from timid to feisty and fearless!
The soundtrack glides between typical 80s’ synth tunes and almost schmalzy Hong Kong pop, and the cinematography is flawless. THE ISLAND was quite a detour for British-Chinese director Po-Chih Leong, whose 1984 war drama HONG KONG 1941 (also released via Eureka) couldn’t be more different!

THE ISLAND is available on 2K Blu-ray format and is a Limited Edition release (2,000 copies only), as usual presented in an O-card slipcase with collector’s booklet. Bonus material includes various audio options and some insightful information about the film by British writer Tony Rayns.