The Action/Adventure Section — A regular column that will exclusively highlight and review action movies. The most likely suspects? Action cinema of the 1970s and 1980s. But no era will be spurned. As the column grows, the intent will be to re-capture the whimsy of perusing the aisles of your local video store with only ragingly kick ass cover art to aide you in your quest for sweaty action glory. Here we will celebrate the beefy. This is a safe place where we still believe that one lone hero can save humanity by sheer force of will and generous steroid usage.
Taglines:
– Where we dump our human garbage
– Men and Women Condemned to Devil’s Island, U.S.A….Where Living is Worse Than Dying!
Terminal Island is one of those movies that should be a way bigger thing than it is. Maybe because the biggest name to come out of it was Tom Selleck (whom our younger readers might recognize as a reference made in a Family Guy gag that they didn’t get). Or maybe it was because it got overshadowed by the thematically similar Escape From New York, which came out a full eight years later but has the advantage of being a John Carpenter movie. Whatever the case may be, Terminal Island doesn’t get nearly the love it should.
The story is pretty basic: in a future where the death penalty has been outlawed, people convicted of first degree murder are given sweet denim outfits and shipped off to an island called San Bruno (which, I’m guessing, is not supposed to be this San Bruno). Ena Hartmans’ Carmen, the latest convict to get dropped off, finds herself in a war between Bobby (Sean Kenney), the islands leader, and a small group of rebels led by AJ (Don Marshall).
The first thing you need to know about Terminal Island is that there’s a guy who looks so much like Yaphet Kotto that it’s off-putting AND a guy that looks just like Eric Clapton if Eric Clapton had come down with the mumps.
The second thing is that it’s way, WAY better than it needs to be.
After an enjoyable cheesy fake news report that drops all the needed exposition (and delights us with a menagerie of stiff line deliveries and ill-advised 70s fashion choices), we are dropped right into the action. The movie is relentlessly paced, which is a rarity in 70s cinema. There’s no stopping to smell the roses here. No more than five minutes goes by without a fistfight, some gratuitous nudity, or the spilling of some 70s blood, which I think we can all agree is the reddest and overall best type of blood (you exploitation fans know exactly what I’m talking about…)
So that’s pretty great. But like the best exploitation flicks, there’s a subversive sheen to everything here. All the actors are so adept at the sort of endearingly straightforward B-Movie performances that these movies require that you tend to forget that they’re all basically horrible murderers.
The ostensible leader of the rebels, AJ, is a cop killer. Lee (Marta Kristen), blew up a bank, and everyone who was inside at the time. Dillon, the comic relief character is a murderer AND a confirmed rapist.
(SMH, The Seventies…)
Really, the only character who could arguably be said to have a leg to stand on morally, is Selleck himself, as a kind of proto-Jack Kevorkian. And even he’s a vaguely useless drug addict.
So the fact that the movie gets us to root for these guys is kind of impressive.
It helps that the bad guys are delightfully despicable.
Bobby, our main villain, is the sort of guy who plays chess naked by himself. Which seems like it should be a euphemism, but is literally a thing that happens.
On the one hand, you’ve got to admire his guile in crafting a workable society out of a population consisting entirely of ruthless murderers. But then on the other hand, he does it through conscripting the female prisoners into sexual slavery. And this is just one man’s opinion (that man being me), but that’s just not something I can get behind. So shame on you, Bobby.
And put some pants on if you’re going to play chess, man. Stop being so gross.
(His hulking sidekick Monk is no picnic either, but he’s played by Roger Mosley, which helps humanize him a great deal. And also makes me wonder how often this movie came up on the set of Magnum PI.)
When you get right down to it, it’s just too much fun to watch these guys play cat and mouse all over the island. Director/co-writer Stephanie Rothman keeps her tongue placed firmly in her cheek as she shoots the endless parade of exciting encounters, sexy seductions and deadly confrontations. And because nobody comes to the party with clean hands, who dies and when isn’t as pre-ordained and predictable as it usually is in these things.
If there is a complaint to be had here, it’s that Carmen, the audience identification character, fades into the background about halfway through the movie, which is disappointing because up until she more or less disappears, she gives an impressively flinty performance.
(And also, maybe don’t give the comic relief rapist a heroic sacrifice scene…)
Still, it’s hard to complain about a movie that’s so proficient in delivering the kind of entertainment us old school exploitation fans crave. Any movie that kicks off its exciting conclusion by having someone say “Let’s get this done by lunch” is the sort of movie that deserves to be a part of every cult fans canon.
(ALSO: Bonus points for the catchy, Johnny Cash-soundalike theme song)
