Once again, let me serve as your friendly redirect to Cinefantastique, where my sort-of defense of Michael Ritchie’s adaptation of Peter Benchley’s The Island resides. The DVD – a German import as Universal has opted out of a domestic DVD release – was part of an unsupervised late nite impulse buy over at Xploited Cinema. The sort of shopping spree that typically yields enjoyable, but totally unnecessary titles like Schoolgirl Report vol.3 or Kill Them All and Come Back Alone. But I ended up quite enjoying my time on the Island – much more than the decades of ½ star reviews would have indicated. The disc (from Koch releasing) is also the first to display the film in its original aspect ratio.
The disc also features one of those crazy, wonderful extras that you sometimes find on Euro DVDs, the original 8mm filmstrip version, like the ones you used to see advertised in the back pages of Fangoria! It’s always interesting to see how someone decides to cut down a 100min movie by more than 75%
