the audience applauded

I gave it a 7.5 out of 10

Good concept, poorly executed.

The acting in this movie is really good.

FRANKENSTEIN ISLAND is a terminally awful B-movie horror flick from director Jerry Warren, who had been working in the genre since the 1950s. The plot sees a group of cardboard characters crashing their hot-air balloon on a remote island, which they soon discover is inhabited by a descendant of Frankenstein who is carrying on his sinister experiments. This juvenile nonsense is PG rated and features all manner of plot weirdness, from cheesy zombies to laboratory scenes and over-ripe dialogue. Frankenstein's Monster makes a last-reel appearance which really isn't worth the wait. Cast-wise, the washed-up likes of Robert Clarke and Cameron Mitchell wonder what happened to their careers, while John Carradine is projected on to a wall. This film deserves note for featuring one of the dumbest lines of dialogue I can remember hearing in a movie: "I'm Sheila Frankenstein...actually, it's Von Helsing, but I don't prefer my married name".

If you thought The Wild World of Batwoman was a bad movie, you haven't experienced Frankenstein Island. You have a Murder's Row of actors who have a tendency to star in bad movies. If you're a MSTie, you know these people. Cameron Mitchell, missing his glued-on beard and warrior muumuu (Space Mutiny). Tain Bodkin, still preaching (The Giant Spider Invasion). Katherine Victor, Batwoman herself without the nose mask but stealing one of Dolly Parton's wigs and not aging gracefully. Richard Banks no longer the Mexican Zorro Ratfink (The Wild World of Batwoman). And the big kahuna himself Steve Brodie (The Giant Spider Invasion AND The Wild World of Batwoman). Throw in John Carradine's floating head looking like Jeff Dunham's grumpy old man puppet Walter, Amazon women in leopard print bikinis, lots of hot air balloons in the opening credits, a 2,000 year old man getting what I think is blood transfusions to stay alive, zombies dressed like they're cat burglars, and the monster himself resurrecting...from a body of water inside a cave. As for the plot, I wish I could tell you. Not that I'm trying to not spoil things, I just can't remember what the heck this film was about. How sad is it that the only credible actor in the whole movie is Melvin the dog? Watch at your own peril.

I read the reviews. I said to myself, "Well, this could not possibly be as bad as all that." Well, it is. It starts right away. The patterns on the balloons keep changing from shot to shot in the credits. And there are many of them talking on the radio. What happened to the other folks with radios? Did they not call for a rescue ship? Nobody knows... It never comes up in the movie.Then these four goofs come on shore and one is still holding a raft in his hand and it talking about having to build a raft. Why? At that point they just arrived and have not searched around the island and already have a fully inflated rubber raft.And they immediately ask "How will we get over these bluffs?" Why do they need to. Wait for the pickup from the people who are coming to get you. No mention of that. Seems like the opening credits and radio chatter is from a different movie.Well, it goes from there off onto several different plot threads. They intersect from time to time, minimally. And there is that laughing fool. He even laughs while he is drinking his moonshine. Quite a talent. And what is he laughing at so much? That spinning, pink ammo box is just too much! And the confusion of plots (snakes, tarantulas, machine guns, trident that turns women into vampires, a brain without a head running everything, John Carradine speaking gibberish) continues until, thankfully, this movie is done.My great thanks to the director for not making the movie ANY LONGER! And you won't believe the ending. I guess it is an ending. Or they just ran out of film. Not fulfilling at all.

This thing is so mind-boggling that words almost fail me. I literally spent 80% of it with my jaw dropped in utter disbelief, punctuated by bursts of incredulous laughter. Nothing in it makes ANY SENSE AT ALL! I mean, our castaways arrive on the island in a perfectly serviceable rubber raft, and the first thing they do is set off in quest of wood **to build a raft with!** Anytime anyone mentions a specific place name (i.e., Kansas City) they suffer stabbing pains in the right forearm for absolutely no reason whatsoever! Do I even need to mention the frequent cryptic appearances ("The golden thread! The power! The power!") by the Floating Head of John Carradine, the tribe of leopard-bikini-clad island girls who are really aliens, the mad doctress Sheila Frankenstein (also a Van Helsing relative) and her platinum Tammy Faye Bakker wig, a 200-year-old colleague of the original Doc Frankenstein, and a whole lot of skulls, tarantulas, blood transfusions and rocks? Or the climactic grade-Z kung-fu battle between the ski-hat zombies, our heroes, the jungle girls and the completely ineffectual Frankenstein Monster (yeah, he's in here too)? --Hysterically funny and a DO NOT MISS for any fan of the really, REALLY bad.