Monster of the Day #3691

Updated on April 16, 2025 By Ken Begg 9 Comments

Oopsie. We didn’t watch Pharaoh’s Curse and From Hell it Came back to back, but in the middle watch the very fun (and for the time, quite grisly) Island of Terror. That makes sense. All are ’50s and 60s monster movies, but putting a color film in the middle switches things up. I can’t imagine any of us haven’t seen it, but if it’s been awhile check it out again. Far better than the moribund Island of the Burning Damned, it moves well and has very nice supporting roles for Peter Cushing and Curse of the Demon’s Niall MacGinnis. The bone-sucking monster is adorably Dr. Who-ish, and would have fit in well during the Philip Hinchcliffe.

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  • Gamera977

    The design of the monster always reminds me of an ancient Electrolux vacuum cleaner my mom used to own. Good thing I never saw the movie as a kid or I'd have been chasing my sister around the house with it while making weird 'electronic' noises.

  • Beckoning Chasm

    There's a very nice blue-ray out there for this film.

  • zombiewhacker

    Excellent practical FX for its time, never taking me out of the movie by breaking the illusion of "reality". Really, this is one of my top favorite Cushing films, and I have the Bluray, too.

  • Eric Hinkle

    I remember being stunned when I first saw this movie at how grisly it was. It was pretty gruesome for an SF film from the late 60's. I suppose I was also shocked to see a British SF film like this, as I thought British SF went for the more subtle horrors.

  • Beckoning Chasm

    Dr Freex told me that the "hand scene" was added for the Japanese market–I remember the version I first saw on TV omitted the details there.

  • Ken_Begg

    Hmm…sometimes. Man, that scene where the hospital tech is irradiated to death in the earlier X the Unknown. Gross!

  • Eric Hinkle

    True. I forgot about that one. Urrgh.

    Or the movie where cosmic energy causes insects to grow to about human size, and we see one poor guy getting his face eaten away by a giant ant or the like.

  • The Rev.

    The Cosmic Monsters. Saw that a few years ago. It was uneven, but that moment was pretty shocking, especially the clacking crunch sound, which I assume was the insect's mandibles snapping shut.

  • Eric Hinkle

    That moment would definitely have given me nightmares as a kid, what with my dislike for bugs.