Island of Terror

How could they stop the devouring death...that lived by sucking on living human bones!

Jun. 20, 1966

01:29:00

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Genres: Horror, Sci-Fi

Tags: Monster,

Keywords: Chopping Off A Hand, Hysterical Female, Island, more

Overview:

An isolated remote island community is threatened by an attack by tentacled silicates which liquefy and digest bone and tissue.

Description

On the remote Petrie's Island off the east coast of Ireland a farmer, Ian Bellows, goes missing and his wife contacts the local constabulary. Constable John 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 quiet evening at home 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 (and boneless) 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 silicon atom.

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 (via Phillips' accidentally irradiated Great Dane), 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.

A pathologist investigates a series of gruesome deaths on a small island. He discovers that an experiment carried out by a group of doctors trying to find a cure for cancer has created a race of mutant creatures that suck the bones from the bodies of their human prey.

Director: Terence Fisher

Writer: Edward Mann Al Ramsen

Cast: Edward Judd Peter Cushing Keith Bell Eddie Byrne Carole Gray Niall MacGinnis Sam Kydd Peter Forbes-Robertson James Caffrey Liam Gaffney Roger Heathcote Margaret Lacey Shay Gorman Richard Bidlake Edward Ogden Joyce Hemson

Genres: Horror Sci-Fi

Tags: Monster

Keywords: Chopping Off A Hand Hysterical Female Island Scientist Laboratory Constable Doctor Professor Bone Autopsy Helicopter Tentacle Creature Axe Car Won't Start Town Meeting Molotov Cocktail Dynamite Radioactive Cattle Panic Silicon Based Life Medical Ethics Pathologist Isolated Community Cancer Cure Science Runs Amok Radioactivity Medical Research Geiger Counter Dead Dog Dead Body Biological Experiment Amputation Woman In Jeopardy Psychotronic Film Strontium 90 Scientific Experiment Scientific Research Cold Open Cave Boneless Corpse Discovering A Dead Body Mysterious Death Secluded Location Osteopath Dissolved Bones Reference To Maserati Helicopter Pilot Signal Fire Looking Through A Microscope Calcium Phosphate Electrical Generator Manor Radioactive Isotope Radiation Investigation Cancer Research Bicycle Tentacled Creature Organism Dividing In Two Inn Bone Eating Creature Town Hall Binoculars Shotgun Community Leader Islander Boneless Multiplication In Biology Clinic Multiplication Chopping Off Someone's Hand Gloves Cow Division Biological Multiplication Power Outage Breaking Through A Window Medical Clinic Barricading A Door Hypodermic Needle Japanese Scientist Scientific Progress Woman Wears A Man's Shirt Natural Horror Creature Feature Entering Through A Window Injection Gun Dead Horse Dead Scientist Remote Location Ailing Generator Breaking And Entering Reference To Wuthering Heights Reference To Napoleon Surprise Ending Flashlight Japan

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