I’ve heard some B.S. about this being the lost Terence Fisher classic or some such rot. Well, it ‘s just a rightfully obscure, slow-moving period piece that may fool you into thinking it’s a Hammer picture. It has the Hammer look down- the wonderful use of color and spooky, atmospheric English setting, deliberate pacing, right on down to Hammer mainstays Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. It’s even directed by Terence Fisher, who did some of the best-loved Hammer films like The Horror of Dracula and Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed. Also known as the Island of The Burning Doomed and Night of The Big Heat.
This snoozer really doesn’t have much action, and Lee is wasted as a mysterious (but not terribly interesting) mad doctor who has to convince the townsfolk in a small village that the recent heat wave and burn deaths are the result of alien attacks.
Lee looks constipated (“he’s not very polite, is he?” says Cushing’s character), but he’s probably just pissed that he got roped into doing another mediocre film. Local doctor Cushing, who has even less to do here than Lee, eventually teams up with Lee to fight the alien menace.
Lots of time is wasted on a lame-o subplot between a ruggedly handsome writer and his sexy brunette secretary. Includes lots of talking and shots of the local pub, with English character actors trying to lend credibility to this melodramatic turkey.
Fisher was always interested in character-driven narrative as opposed to delivering stereotypical shocks, and this soap opera–ish flick certainly fits that bill. Don’t expect to see much more of the killings than a POV shot of something chasing frightened victims before the scenes fade out right before any payoff…
The pub patrons can’t figure out why the mainland is cold while their island is having a heat wave. It has something to do with a loud buzzing sound and really warm aliens heating everything up. (But watch for the breath coming out of the actors’ mouths and Peter Cushing with his suit on!) The rock aliens get anticlimactically killed by the rain at the end and look like popped pustules. How unsatisfying!
We have a car explode for no reason, the requisite stupid characters, people getting hit on the head, obvious day-for-night scenes, and rock aliens, which kinda look like the Horta on that old Star Trek episode. For Cushing and Lee completists only. I should add, in the name of fairness, that the version I saw was on AMC with commercials and obviously edited; but I don’t see how it could have gotten much better.
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