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(1979/1981) Director: Sergio Martino As you probably know, Hollywood is the king of the box office pretty much everywhere in the world. With that in mind, the logical thought that comes from that is that Hollywood seems to know what it is doing. So it should come as no surprise that foreigners want to get involved and get some of that box office gold. I've seen countless times over the years as to how foreigners have meddled with releases of Hollywood movies over the years. One of the ways they do so is with changing the titles of Hollywood movies when they get into their country. Now, I do know some things can't be exactly translated from English to a foreign language, but all the same I find some title changes downright weird. For example, when the 1990 movie Home Alone was released in France and French Canada, its title was changed to Maman, J'ai Raté L'avion - which translates to Mom, I Missed The Airplane. While that does happen to the central character in the movie, it doesn't really tell what the movie is really about, which of course concerned a young boy being alone at home. Sometimes it doesn't just stop at translating titles badly, but messing with the plots of Hollywood movies. An example of this can be seen with the 1952 John Wayne movie Big Jim McLain. In that movie, the Duke played an agent of the House of Un-American Activities Committee who stopped at nothing to track down communists and bring them to justice. When the movie was released in several European countries, not only was the title changed (to Marijuana), the dialogue was changed so that the Duke was chasing down not communists, but instead people involved in the illegal narcotics trade. I could write more examples of how foreigners fiddle with Hollywood movies when they reach their country - or for that matter, movies not from Hollywood, like how Hong Kong filmmakers often stole music from Italian movies scored by Ennio Morricone. But you probably already had some idea about this practice, so it's probably not necessary. Besides, it's not like Hollywood is innocent of this kind of practice itself. Over the years, Hollywood had fiddled many times with movies both foreign and domestic in nature. One of the most popular kinds of interference has been by adding newly shot footage. One of the earliest examples of this I could find was with the 1949 movie Not Wanted. Despite the movie dealing with the then-controversial subject of unwed motherhood, it was a tasteful and serious affair, no doubt because of the uncredited input of Ida Lupino. But some time after the movie's initial release, another outfit got the rights to the movie, injected graphic birth of a baby footage into the movie, and released the movie with a new title (The Wrong Rut) to grindhouses - making it an exploitation movie. There have been many other examples of this kind of practice, and quite a few of them have had the legendary Roger Corman behind them. A example of this was when he got the rights to the Japanese movie Submersion Of Japan. After retitling it with the flashier title Tidal Wave, Corman not only cut out a significant amount of footage, he filmed new footage with American actors (including Lorne Greene) as American government officials wondering what to do about the ongoing destruction of a foreign country. As
I said, there are other examples of Corman
interfering with foreign movies he got the rights to, and I'll get to
another example shortly. Anyway, you might be wondering as to what I
think about
this practice of altering someone else's movie with newly shot footage.
Well, I generally think it's a kind As I suggested in the previous paragraph, I have not had
the opportunity to see Island Of The Fishmen
so that I could compare it directly with the alternate version known as
Screamers.
But a little online research revealed that the changes Roger Corman
made to the movie were almost all confined to that new Cameron Mitchell
opening as well as adding some quick scenes of blood and gore (which
the original version was reportedly almost free of.) Knowing that when
sitting down to watch Screamers,
it was pretty easy for my mind to figure out how the original version
more or less played out. Which of course leads to the question: Does
the inserted Corman footage improve the movie? Well, I'll start with
the new Cameron Mitchell opening filmed for the movie. This new opening
does start off the movie with a little punch, with atmosphere generated
by a combination of elements that include fog, some striking
illumination of this night time setting, and some mysterious breathing
noises on the soundtrack. Also, it's always amusing to see Mitchell
make a fool out of himself as he often did in low budget movies of this
period. Naturally, he does get slaughtered, and that just adds to the
amusement of his presence. Speaking of slaughter, this opening does
boast some pretty good gruesome material, such as rotting corpses and
bloody killings (including a head being ripped off.) All of this stuff
is indeed fun to watch. But at the same time, all this entertaining
material does not hide the fact that this twelve minute new opening has
absolutely no bearing on what is to follow. As you watch the rest of
the movie, likely you will eventually realize that this opening was
essentially just gratuitous padding. However, at the same time you can see why Roger Corman added this opening, because you will see that the original version of the movie only had a few brief trickles of blood on display. The opening of the movie, as well as a few other inserted new scenes (like a prisoner finding a bloody corpse on the beach and then getting slaughtered himself) do fix that problem. It is odd, however, that Corman didn't add any sex or nudity to the movie, since despite the presence of Barbara Bach in the original version there wasn't any attempt to have her undressed or generate a little erotic steam. But while the original version of the movie may have been light on exploitive elements, director Sergio Martino (The Violent Professionals) does manage to show competence in other areas. The movie for the most part looks pretty good. The island location looks appropriately bleak, dirty and tangled, if you can overlook that it doesn't look very Caribbean. The various sets are well dressed by the prop department, with a slight trace of rust and filth that seems just right for being far from civilization in the nineteenth century. The special effects, ranging from the monster creations to some modelwork, are also not bad at all. However, when it comes to directing the unfolding story and the characters in it, Martino stumbles quite badly. The biggest problem with Martino's direction is there is no feeling of great mystery or tension for the most part. When people start disappearing, or when the character of Edmond (who of course is hiding some big secrets) starts to reveal his true colors, the feeling that you get from the movie is, well, kind of a casual one. In fact, the movie has more than its share of slow spots throughout when a slowly rising feeling of horror that occasionally shows off its deadly fangs would have been far more appropriate. Some of the blame for this mostly passionless direction
does have to fall on the screenplay, though since Martino was also one
of the screenwriters, he still has to take the brunt of the blame for
the failure of Screamers.
One fault with the screenplay is that the protagonists are thinly
written. Claude and the other shipwrecked survivors are not only
awkwardly and quickly introduced, they are given very little
opportunity in the rest of the movie to show any real personality.
Amanda, on the other hand, is so aloof for so long that when the
screenplay eventually exposes her painful secrets, we just remember how
brusque she had been. She doesn't even look much better when compared
side by side to the character of Edmond, who we find out had been
controlling her. Edmond is a really disappointing villain, sorely
lacking spark or passion of any kind. It's not really a spoiler to
reveal that it turns out he is another Dr. Moreau (there are many
blatant clues to this before this "surprise" is revealed.) What is
surprising is that he assigns almost all of his dirty work to various
other people on the island instead of doing things himself; the genetic
work, for example, is all done by Amanda's father (Citizen Kane's
Joseph Cotten, who is given almost nothing to do.) I've heard of
outsourcing, but here it's done to ridiculous levels, so much so that
the character becomes more of a joke than anything else. Screamers
in the end is nothing to shout about. Corman was on the right track
when he decided to add the extra footage, but he would have done even
better had he just dumped the entirety of Island Of The Fishmen
in the trash and filmed seventy-seven minutes of more new material of
his own to be tacked on after that Cameron Mitchell opening. (Posted February 8, 2017) Check
for availability on Amazon (Amazon Prime Video) See also: Mosquito, Shark Hunter, Troll 2 |
of an insult. By doing
so, you are
telling the people who spent a lot of time and money making a movie
that their vision is simply not adequate. So it should come as no
surprise that whenever it is possible, I seek out the original version
of a movie. But in the case of 
