Island of Terror

Did You Know?

• To get a PG rating, the British cinematic release was cut by a few seconds by the BBFC to remove a brief shot of blood spurts after a hand is severed by an axe.
• DD Video released a collector's edition DVD on 17 Jan 2005.
• The film was released on Blu-ray by Import Vendor on 28 Oct 2014.

Plot

On Petrie's Island off the east coast of Ireland, farmer Ian Bellows goes missing. His wife contacts the local police, and Constable John Harris finds the farmer dead in a cave without a single bone in his body. The island's physician, Dr Reginald Landers, cannot determine what happened and journeys to the mainland to seek help from London pathologist Dr Brian Stanley. Stanley is unable to hypothesize the cause, so both men consult Dr David West, an expert on bones and bone diseases.

West is intrigued and agrees to accompany them back to Petrie's Island. Jetsetter Toni Merrill offers the use of her father's private helicopter in exchange for being allowed to join them. Once on the island, the helicopter returns to the mainland, stranding the four. West and Stanley learn that oncology researchers led by Dr Lawrence Phillips have a secluded castle laboratory on the island.

Visiting the lab reveals Phillips and his colleagues are also dead and boneless. West, Stanley and Landers take Phillips' notes to their inn and discover that in his quest to cure cancer, Phillips may have accidentally created a new life form from the silicon atom. Constable Harris bikes to the castle to report a dead, boneless horse but is killed by an offscreen tentacled creature. The creatures, dubbed silicates, kill by injecting a bone-dissolving enzyme.

Landers tries to kill one with an axe but is himself killed. The silicates reproduce by dividing every six hours, and the scientists calculate the island will be totally infested in days.

Production

Richard Gordon came across a screenplay titled The Night the Silicates Came, penned by Americans Edward Mann and Alan Ramsen, and decided it suited Planet Films, which he co-ran with Tom Blakey. He had Blakey revise the script to give the characters more depth. Gordon immediately wanted Terence Fisher to direct, even though Fisher had just completed Dracula: Prince of Darkness for Hammer; Fisher’s wife Morag, aware of how restless he got without work, pushed him into a two-picture commitment. When Peter Cushing joined the project, Gordon rearranged the filming schedule to fit the actor’s busy calendar. The movie was shot at Black Park near Slough, a regular Hammer location, and at St Hubert’s House in Gerrards Cross, a hunting lodge used as Dr. Phillips’ lab. Heavy rain, fog, and bitter cold plagued the production.

Reception

The film performed fairly well at the box office. The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote that although the plot is little more than a rehash of Day of the Triffids, it is quite effectively concocted and features sluggishly mobile jellied turtles waving snake-like tentacles, and that Reg Wyer's colour photography, with pale greys, browns and steely blues offset by bright colour, together with the attractive art direction and special effects, make this otherwise routine horror epic worth a look.

Leonard Maltin awarded the film two out of four stars, commending the acting and direction but feeling the result was nothing special. AllMovie's Brian J. Dillard called it a creepy yet clunky sci-fi horror flick boasting one of the coolest monsters ever to grace the screen—radioactive silicone beings that suck the calcium out of bones—but otherwise a fairly standard lab-coats-versus-creatures flick. TV Guide wrote that a rather shaky plot is boosted by Cushing's effective performance and Fisher's tight direction.

Radio Times called the film long on logic but high on hysteria. Leslie Halliwell said horror hokum, moderately done. DVD Talk gave it three and a half stars and called it an immensely enjoyable sci-fi potboiler.