The Island of the Bloody Plantation (1983)

Original title: Die Insel der Blutigen Plantage

AKA: Escape from Blood Plantation

Director: Kurt Raab

Writer: Kurt Raab

Composers: Jurgen Marcus, Warner B. Ryder

Starring: Udo Kier, Barbara Valentin, Tet Antiquiera, Karl-Otto Alberty, Karen Lopez, Hans Zander, Karina Fallenstein, Mike Monty, Rosemarie Sarita, Kurt Raab, Peter Kern, Fouad Mediouni-Zaoudi, Ronald Buenaventura

More info: IMDb


Plot: A women's prison on a tropical island is a hellhole where the inmates are raped, tortured and otherwise abused by the evil commandant and brutal guards. However, one of the guards falls in love with a beautiful inmate, and decides to help her and all the other prisoners escape.

My rating: 4/10

Will I watch it again?  No.

Wow!  Where to start?  This picture looks fantastic!  The cinematography is very good and it's probably the best looking WIP (Women In Prison) film I've seen that was set in a jungle.  This film is the sole feature film from Kurt Raab and I"m not sure what he was going for.  He died young in '88 so I'm sure I'll never find out.  It's a little different than your standard WIP pictures.  One way is that there's barely any nudity.  I know, right?  There's just enough to say, "Yeah, we know this is probably why you're watching this but we don't want you to like it.".  It's like when you get really shitty service at a restaurant and you leave a few coins to let the server know that this was intentional and we didn't forget to leave a tip.  I've done that.  Anyway, it's a crime about the lack of boobs.  Just by making a movie about this subject, you're already in exploitation territory so you might as well go there.  Raab didn't and we're worse off for it.  I watched the English dubbed version which is bad.  It's not so much the line readings that suck but more the choice of voice actors for each part.  Udo Kier's dub sounds like a naive fourteen year old.  The voice doesn't suit the face at all and there are examples like this almost across the board (at least with the male actors).  The story is OK but shit balls, the movie is missing the violence, gore, nudity and sleaze that this genre commands.  The anamorphic widescreen print looked amazing but I can't recommend this movie on that alone.  Fans of this genre will want to see it for completist reasons but other need to avoid this one.  It is worth noting that the film opens with a song called 'The Island of the Bloody Plantation'.  You might want to watch the first two minutes just to see how those words in that order can possibly be sung with a straight face.