Island of Terror is a 1966 British horror film released by Planet Film Productions. The film was released in the United States by Universal Studios on a double bill with The Projected Man. The idea for the film came when the producerRichard Gordon read Gerry Fernback's screenplay The Night the Silicates Came. Gordon partnered with Tom Blakey of Planet Films to produce the film. It was shot in rural England using naturalistic colours. It provides one of the last significant examples of a horror film plot, common in the 1950s, in which a horrific threat introduced by a scientist is resolved by others using scientific measures.
Plot
On the remote Petrie's Island off the east coast of Ireland a farmer, Ian Bellows, goes missing and his wife contacts the localconstabulary. ConstableJohn Harris finds Bellows dead in a cave without a single bone in his body and fetches the island's physician, Dr Reginald Landers, but Landers is unable to determine what happened. He journeys to the mainland to seek the help of a noted London pathologist, Dr Brian Stanley. Stanley too is unable even to hypothesise what could have happened, so both men seek out Dr David West, an expert on bones and bone diseases. Although Stanley and Landers interrupt West's dinner date with the wealthy jetsetter Toni Merrill, West is intrigued by the problem and so agrees to accompany the two doctors back to Petrie's Island to examine the corpse. In order for them to reach the island that much faster, Merrill offers the use of her father's private helicopter in exchange for the three men allowing her to come along on the adventure. Once back at Petrie's Island, Merrill's father's helicopter is forced to return to the mainland so he can use it, leaving the foursome effectively stranded on Petrie until the helicopter can return. West and Stanley learn that a group of oncology researchers led by Dr Lawrence Phillips, seeking a cure for cancer, have a secluded castle laboratory on the island. Paying a visit to Phillips' lab reveals that he and his colleagues are just as dead as Ian Bellows. Reasoning that whatever it is must have begun in that lab, West, Stanley and Landers gather up Phillips' notes and take them to study them. From them they learn that in his quest to cure cancer, Phillips may have accidentally created a new lifeform from the siliconatom. Thinking the doctors are at the castle, Constable Harris bikes up there looking for them to tell them about the discovery of a dead, boneless horse, only to wander into the laboratory's "test animals" room and be attacked and killed by an offscreen tentacled creature, the result of Dr Phillips's experiments. The creatures are eventually dubbed "silicates" by West and Stanley, and kill their victims by injecting a bone-dissolving enzyme into their bodies. The silicates are also incredibly difficult to kill, as Landers learns when he tries and fails to kill one at the castle with an axe when they first encounter them. After learning all they can from the late Dr Phillips's notes, West and Stanley recruit the islanders, led by "boss" Roger Campbell and store owner Peter Argyle, to attack the silicates with anything they've got. Bullets, petrol bombs, and dynamite all fail to even harm the silicates. But when one is found dead, apparently having ingested a rare isotope called Strontium-90 from Phillips' lab, West and Stanley realise they must find more of the isotope at the castle and figure out how to contaminate the remaining silicates with it before it is too late. They obtain enough isotope to contaminate a herd of cattle – at the cost of Stanley's left hand, when he's grabbed by a silicate – and the silicates feed on these and begin to die. The story ends with evacuation and medical teams inbound from the mainland, and West commenting on how fortunate they were that this outbreak was confined to an island. Had it happened on the mainland, he notes, they might never have stopped them in time. This sets up an epilogue and a visit to the satellite programme, in Japan, where the technicians are duplicating Phillips' work with the inevitable result. A technician walks down a corridor, hears a strange noise and investigates before screaming.
Author and film criticLeonard Maltin awarded the film two out of a possible four stars. In his review, Maltin complimented the film's acting and direction, but felt that the end result was nothing special. Brian J. Dillard from Allmovie gave the film a mixed review, complimenting the film's "eerie" electronic soundtrack, and Cushing and Grey's performances. Dillard also noted that the film was clunky and featured poor special effects. TV Guide awarded the film two out of four stars, criticizing the film's "shaky plot" but commended Cushing's performance and Fisher's tight direction. Radio Times gave the film two stars and called it "long on logic but high on hysteria." DVD Talk gave it three and a half stars and called it "an immensely enjoyable sci-fi potboiler."
