King Of New York (1990)

Christopher Walken is Frank White, a drug king pin who is just released from prison. Frank gets back to work immediately killing off other drug lords and trafficking drugs. He plans on using the dirty money to help the poor people of the city, unless the police, enemies or traitors get to him first.
Directed by the great Abel Ferrara (Ms. 45, Driller Killer and the original Bad Lieutenant) with a great cast. Laurence Fishburne, Victor Argo (Taxi Driver, Bad Lieutenant) and of course walken. Together the cast and crew perfectly depict a changing city and the inner struggle of a man deemed a criminal. The thing that makes King Of New York so interesting is the character of Frank White.

Hes a man who on the surface seems to be a pretty bad person capable of doing horrible things. "I have done things that you couldn't stomach to think of" but unlike Travis Bickle as the film goes on we realize that maybe he is a man of moral justice in some weird way. "I never killed anyone who didn't deserve it".


On the other hand its a bad-ass violent, shoot-em-up movie with crazy gun fights and we even get a bit of tit. King Of New York also taught me that Tampons are used for plugging up bullet holes. Then we get the china town mobsters who sit around in small grindhouse theaters watching Nosferatu. "Stick around. I have Frankenstein coming on next". Seems like my kind of people. Another thing that makes this movie amazing is that when its all over, like Bad Lieutenant, it keeps you thinking. I personally feel there are no good guys in this movie. Not Frank White or the police. They all have their own moral standards and believe that they are doing something good but in the end nobody is Innocent.

Nightmare (1964)

This one also went under the much cooler title, Here's the Knife, Dear: Now Use It. If William Castle was the low budget Hitchcock then Nightmare (1964) is a big budget William Castle. Well okay I wouldn't go as far as to say big budget but there certainly is some production value going on in here. We have some very good acting. A nice crisp picture on black & white film using shadows and lighting for atmosphere. The story was well written, filled with twists and turns. We also are treated to nice camera work and when we add these things all together we get a creepy little British horror film called Nightmare.

For me the most surprising element to this picture is that it was a Hammer film. Not particularly being the biggest fan of Hammer films, I was quite pleased with this impulse buy. As I mentioned before I couldn't help but be reminded of some of Castles films from this era. Stuff like I Saw What You Did And I Know Who You Are. For some reason even The Tingler came to mind, which really doesn't make much sense considering The Tingler is a campy monster flick where this one is a well written horror/mystery. Still I feel that William Castle fans will be happy with this one.
Its the story of a high school girl who is haunted with the memories of her 11th birthday. She had her presents, her birthday cake and the privilege of watching her mother slay her father with a big kitchen knife. Her nightmares get worse and worse until she can no longer tell dreams from reality. Of course it doesn't help when money hungry scumbags are playing little tricks on you and trying to drive you further into madness. Needless to say there is a few more kitchen knife slashings and stabbings and there are a few moments that are sure to get a jump out of you.
Check it out if you're in the mood for something a little less on the campy side and a little more on the creepy, eerie, mystery side.  From the same director who did Tales From The Crypt (1972) and Dr. Terrors House Of Horrors.

Diamonds Of Kilmandjaro (1983)

Another piece of crap from Jesus Franco. This Amazon Girls flick is one out of the thirteen or so films that Franco put out in 1983. I'm pretty sure I haven't seen any of his others that came out that year but its a little hard to keep track of a man who has directed about two hundred movies. I'm still trying to figure out if like more Franco films then I dislike. Right now my tally is looking pretty negative.

This one is pretty damn boring straight through. Its not a cannibal flick but it does take place in the amazon. I suppose it would fit into the slim Women In The Amazon genre. Its about a group of explorers who are searching for gems in the jungle. They stumble across a  bare breasted white girl amongst the black natives. The girl along with her father went down in a plane crash and the couple have been missing ever since, The nudie white girl is worshiped by the black natives and is believed to be their goddess.
My question is, if this girl has been missing for so long and running around with no clothes on... Why does she still have tan lines on her breasts? Anyway the nude girl is kind of like the female version of Tarzan. She is one with the animals and she swings from tree to tree with a hell of a battle cry.
The film also offers up a bit of decapitation and a really funny chase scene involving a hungry alligator and a naked bimbo. The alligator gets shot down is stock footage that matches up worse then a Ed Wood film. We get a total of three naked women and a monkey pops up from time to time and makes faces at the camera. The films final has a strange social message to it about the oppression of the black man and the evil whites.
I'm going to stop writing before I make this thing sound better then it is. If you want Women In The Amazon, check out Man From The Deep River. I would skip this one at all costs. It really has nothing going for it,

Female Trouble (1974)

Pink Flamingos was a giant success for John Waters. Female Trouble being his next film, I'm sure he had a lot of weight on his shoulders. Was the world really ready for his brand of trash cinema or did he just get lucky like Damiano with Deep Throat?  Either way Female Trouble upholds the level of filth that Flamingos gave us and still manages to be fresh.

Female Trouble is set in the 60's and its quite hilarious to see Divine as Dawn Davenport with a bee-hive haircut and a sheer green Mu mu. All Dawn Davenport wants for Christmas is a pair of cha cha heels and we all know that "nice girls don't wear cha cha heels!" Plus Dawn has been a very bad girl. Eating Meatball hero's in class and smoking in the girls room. When Dawn doesn't get her cha cha heels for Christmas she smashes the place up and beats up her mother, leaving mom bruised up in a pile of smashed gifts and a knocked over Christmas tree. Dawn runs away and is immediately raped by herself. Yes that's right Divine plays two characters, a male and I guess a sort of female and its pretty amazing watching Divine rape herself. After the rape Dawn finds herself pregnant and she gives birth to a total brat named Taffy, played by Mink Stole.

Edith Massey also shows up in here as a lesbian and in one of the films most disturbing scenes Massey fondles her naked breasts in front of the camera. The rest of the time she walks around in tight black spandex until she is locked in a cage and has her arm chopped off.
We get the usual John Waters insane dialogue where every line is a perfect trashy quote. "Queers are just better... I worry that you will work in an office, have children, celebrate wedding anniversaries. The world of heterosexuals is a sick and boring life.". We also get the usual Waters serial killer talk "I blew Richard Speck" and of course an extreme tacky wardrobe. The soundtrack is awesome as usual with a great title song and a track from Nervous Nervous called Dig.
Although she doesn't eat dog shit in this one Divine's character is more depraved then ever. By the end of the film she has a giant Mohawk and her face is all scared up from acid. She is a thief, a murderer and she believes she is beautiful. You just have to laugh at this stuff. She eventually has a trial and is convicted to death row where she will get the chair.
One of John Waters best. A total snotty, disgusting trash-fest right out of the sewer.

Killing Spree (1987)

This Tim (Truth Or Dare : A Critical Madness) Ritter camp gore-fest was shot on 16mm and blown up to a Texas Chainsaw Massacre 35mm but this thing doesn't come out looking anything like Hoopers gritty classic. The film quality on this thing is so low that Killing Spree comes out looking only a step above video. Despite its shot on video look. Killing Spree is a bit of a guilty pleasure of mine.

Mainly because of the ridiculous looking main character. The characters name is Tom Russo and hes played by a man named Asbestos Felt. Unfortunately Mr. Felt only has three credits to his name to date and they are all Tim Ritter movies. I don't know how he looks in his other roles but in this one he has so much hair. Between his crazy GBH style hair cut and his totally out of control beard. There really isn't anymore room on this mans head for hair. Then when he gets crazy and is about to go on a Killing Spree, they put him under a red light and they mess his hair up even more and he makes some crazy faces and goes into a sort of shaking convulsion. We also have the privilege of seeing this man in black spedo man-panties. Trust me it makes for a very odd scene.

The main problem with Killing Spree is it has the world thinnest plot. I have seen more elaborate stories in pornography. Killing Spree is the tale of a man (Tom Russo) who goes on a Killing Spree when he finds his wife's diary. He kills off all of the men he believes his wife has cheated on him with and that's it.

Where Killing Spree lacks in plot it makes up for in gore. Its a totally ridiculous splatter-fest, with decapitated punk rockers, monsters with huge mouths (They give great head),  Lawnmower-fu, complete with finger dismemberment and brain damage, gut wrenching, intestines spilling, death by ceiling fan with machete blades, electrified guts, drowning, screwdriver through the top of the skull, a old lady gets a claw hammer through her chin and has her face ripped off, Zombies, etc.
Surprisingly there is no nudity in this one. We have lots of scenes of Tom's wife in her bra, panties and bathing suit but no naked flesh at all.
This one made it on to the I Will Dance On Your Grave box set and is probably the only one in the set with any value to it. On the other hand Killing Spree is completely mindless and should be skipped by anyone who  is looking for anything more then a shitty gore flick a ridiculous main character. Speaking of ridiculous characters keep an eye out for the fat guy in the cowboy hat. Why is he grabbing his package and doing a blaxploitation act?

Dangerous Seductress (1995)

The last film from the director of Indonesian oddities like Mystics In Bali and Lady Terminator. Unfortunately Dangerous Seductress lacks the originality and madness of those other two films. This one was released in 95 but plays more like a 80's flick. The special F/X are pretty crazy. Half the time we have practical gore and then the other half is really bad and annoying c.g.i.. We get a bit of nudity but nowhere near as much as I expected from a film like this. Instead we get all these scenes with girls in 80's style bikini's and underwear. For me the entertainment in this film is all in the gore. We have Mystic In Bali style flying heads, blood drinking, flesh melting off the body, a dog is decapitated, a finger is chopped off and then it crawls around and causes a bunch of trouble. We get a harpoon through the leg, bleeding windshields (don't ask), crazy gun fights and lots of explosions but aside from the silly gore this movie is awful. Most would consider it unwatchable but I however am easily entertained. Really not much to recommend here unless you really dig over the top F/X with horrible acting and even a worse dubbing.

Cannibal Hookers (1987)

Another piece of crap instalment in the I Will Dance On Your Grave set. This one was directed by Donald Farmer, the same loser who did the equally bad Savage Vengeance.  This one has an amazing punk rock soundtrack but everything else is total garbage. The title is Cannibal Hookers but the girls are more like vampires or something because once someone is bit they join the evil cult of hungry sluts. Plus in the end we see one of these blood thirsty hookers melt into ash.

Well at least the hooker part is accurate and we do get plenty of nudity. The only problem is that these girls are all ugly as sin and I'm not exactly sure what they have all over their faces but their faces all seem oily and shiny. This just makes these ugly bimbos look worse and I know this is the 80's and big hair was the thing but the hair in this one is ridiculous. Axel Rose's hair in the Welcome To The Jungle video had nothing on these shiny-faced Chuds. We also get a leather clad hooker who cant stop staring at the camera. I mean its not like this thing was shot with film. I'm sure the director could have afforded to do more then one take.

Then we got this guy Lobo who is played by a man named Gary J. Levinson. Levinson actually has some good credits (How I don't know) to his name like the far superior Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers, Shock Waves, Surf Nazi's Must Die and Evil Spawn. Well anyway, Lobo is a retarded cannibal who speaks in third person and kind of does all the bitch work for the Cannibal Hookers. The scenes with Lobo are so bad, their good and its pretty much a laugh-riot anytime he is on screen. Some of his great lines are "Be nice to Lobo", "If you don't give Lobo take", and then we have this great scene where he knocks out a cop and says "Lobo did goooooood".
So basically what we have here is a piece of shit shot on video, waste of time, With really bad actors, bad continuity and ugly naked girls running around. The I Will Dance On Your Grave print that I own actually has the nerve to skip back about five minutes and replay a scene as if the distributors couldn't even be bothered watching the dvd to see how the prints were coming out. The tracking starts acting up from the vhs transfer at times and the audio levels are pretty bad as well. Aside from this beautifully packaged turd the film does offer up a bit of gore. We get chopped off fingers, some neck ripping, stab wounds, a bullet to the head, a vampire melt down and a really cool looking movie within the movie. So if a little bit of shitty blood is what you're looking for, I would choose a different movie because gore may go a long way but not anywhere long enough to save this awful mess of a movie.

Invasion Of The Saucer Men (1957)

When you're a teenager in a small town there is nothing to do except sit in your cars on lovers lane with your best girl, drinking beer and necking. What a town like this needs is "little green men" from outer space with big heads and long knives for finger nails. These little dudes shoot ya up with alcohol and get you so intoxicated that you die.

Hanging out with aliens and getting smashed for free sounds like a lot of fun but these teenagers get in a bit of trouble when they hit one of these little guys with their car. The police think they killed a man and they are accused of drinking and driving. Throw in a alcoholic bull and a shotgun wielding farmer and we got a pretty fun scifi monster flick from the 50's. We also get some dismembered alien hands on the loose and these guys disintegrate in the light. So get the gang together and hop in your tank of a car. Be sure to keep the brights on and don't bother telling your parents what you are up to. After all, you're just a wild "rough neck" kid and the older generation is out to get you. This goes from parents to the police, the towns folks and of course the murderous u.f.o.'s.

Mondo Trasho (1969)

Mondo Trasho is the second full length feature from the Pope Of Trash, John Waters. It was shot silently on 16mm and instead of dubbing in diologue we get a cool soundtrack that was obviously taken from Waters personal record collection. Link Wray & The Wraymen show up on the track as well as The Coasters and The Trashmen. The soundtrack is actually used to tell the story in this one and it works pretty effectively. The originality of using lyrics from music instead of dialogue makes Mondo Trasho stand out and if for not any other reason, it deserves a watch.

Being such an early film in Waters career this one is not as entertaining as the films to come after but it does offer up some chickens being decapitated by a man in a executioner mask. In another scene Divine meets the virgin Mary. Divine plays most of the movie as a drag queen but also shows up as a greaser with a bad attitude. In one scene Divine is shoplifting some nice women's clothing and even steals a pair a shoes off of a passed out bum. The whole time we think she is stealing the clothes for herself but shes actually stealing them so she can change a corpses clothes in a laundry mat. We also get a strange scene with our main character feeding some chop meat to cockroaches in a park. Then a woman gets hit by a car, leaving her a bloody mess. There is foot/shoe fetishes, A naked man hitchhiking, A nudie female cat fight, A naked flapper chick, some seriously disgusting vomit-fu and a weird surgery scene that involves the removal of human feet with some pigs feet. There is some police brutality and a shoot out with the pigs. The film comes to its climax in a real pig pen on some farm. Gross!

I Was A Teenage Frankenstein (1957)

Who pissed in the Frankenstein families gene pool? This 50's teenage monster flick follows yet another mad scientist. In fact a direct descendant of the first Dr. Frankenstein that we all know and love but this time he has a strange fixation on teenage boys. Luckily a car full of hot-roding teens crash and burn outside Mr. Frankenstein's house giving him some charred and scared teenage body parts to put together. We get a operation scene that shows us a dismembered hand and a badly torn up leg but that's about the extent of gruesome stuff this one has to offer. That is of course aside from the monsters face...

Through the first half of the movie the monsters face is hidden behind bandages and I cant help but wonder what kind of stench must be coming off of that gauze. Eventually the monster breaks free from the lab and "walks among people". Lets just say the monster stops traffic and his face is pretty nasty looking. While out on the town the monster peeps in some windows, strangles a pretty blond, pushes a fat woman and slaps a few men around. He eventually calls it a night and heads back to Dr. Frankenstein. Together the two decide the monster needs a new face. Mr. Frankenstein snatches up the first handsome greaser he can find, cuts off his face and gives it to the creature. Of course things don't work out as planed and we get a chaotic ending with electrocutions and people are even eaten by an alligator. The most unexpected thing is that the ending is in color. What the point of this is, I'm not sure because all of the good stuff has already passed but either way it makes for a fun final.
If muscular teenage monsters is your thing be sure to check out Teenage Frankenstein.

The Streetfighter's Last Revenge (1974)

I didn't know it was possible for Terry (Sonny Chiba) Tsarugui to become a pussy. Well thanks to this piece of crap I now know that it is not only possible but it is a fact. Streetfighter's Last Revenge is the third film in the Streetfighter trilogy and its an out right disgrace to the first two films. First off Tsarugui calls himself "Streetfighter" which is lame as hell and for some reason his name is Sugury instead of Tsarugui but maybe that's just on my crappy vhs print. Second he is wearing all these really dumb disguises. He even dressed up like a vampire in one scene and its all really pointless. Its obvious they were trying to make the great Streetfighter-Terry Tsarugui to be more like James Bond. Third off he is fighting these really lame, almost comic-book-like super hero's of some sort.

 As if this review wasn't bad enough, Chiba also has a new fighting style in this one. He doesn't do his normal Tsarugui deep breathing-bone-crushing Japanese boxing and Chinese Kung Fu combo that we all know and love. Instead he moves around really quick as if he is a totally different character. Then as if they realized this is a terrible idea half way through, Chiba goes back his normal Streetfighter character and pulls out the familiar, drawn out, over the top Kung Fu shenanigans. This movie is also far less violent and it really lacks in the gore department. The fight scene in the rain on the deck of the boat is pointlessly reenacted and the final fight is average.
One of the things that always made Terry Tsarugui's character so cool is that he is kind of a bad guy. He fights with pure hate. In this one he even tries to find religion. This is complete and total destruction of a awesome character. This movie is unwatchable and unforgivable as far as I am concerned. The only thing I enjoyed at all from this piece of shit was the naked flesh on display from a pretty Asian girl. If you'll excuse me, I have to go throw this thing in the garbage now...

Bedlam (1946)

I have a bit of a fetish for any movie that takes place in a mental institution or loony-bin. I love em all from big Hollywood movies like One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest to low budget cult films like Don't Look In The Basement. All the best ones (of course) are from the 70's but we get some from each era that stand out. Sam Fuller's Shock Corridor (1963) was a good one. I even like the really crazy ones like the ultra-bad Asylum Of Satan.
Bedlam on the other hand is from the 40's and stars Boris Karloff as a manipulative, sadistic ruler of a insane asylum. A woman tries to expose him for the inhumane mater in which he treats his patients and he has her committed as well. Inside the mental institution she will see first hand how cruel Karloff's character really is. Inmates are whipped, tortured, starved and are forced to sleep on straw. They are not given soap and by no means are they treated medically.

The woman takes it upon herself to reach out to these maniacs and take care of them. This infuriates Karloff and eventually the lunatics band together and get their revenge on Boris (the monster) Karloff. All they needed was some burning torches and a few barking dogs.
Speaking of barking dogs, we get one character who thinks he is a dog. Another thinks he is the worlds greatest judge. Then we have a girl who stands still like a statue throughout the whole film until the end when she goes crazy with a sharp trowel (just like the one used in Night Of The Living Dead). We also get this awesome nut-job who yells out "Split him in two" a lot and a crazy dude shackled up in a cage. This place is nuts. Unfortunately it can't be as cool as the 70's asylum flicks with nudity and foul language. Instead we get great lines like "You call that watery vessel a eye?"! Pretty harsh huh? We also get a Edgar Allan Poe scene where someone is sealed up (alive) behind a brick wall.
Only worth watching for fans of old Karloff flicks and anyone who is really into crazy, nutty, loony, asylum movies.

Blood Simple (1984)

Personally I have never been the biggest fan of the Coen brothers. I feel that their movies have a strong plot but still tend to not be the most entertaining of movies. Their films tend to have a very subtle pace with awkward moments of silence which appeals to me since I am a huge fan of 70's cinema but it limits the replay value of most of the coen brothers films for me.
Blood Simple has the same format. Its a creepy thriller about a rich club owner who hires a cowboy to kill his cheating wife and her lover. The cowboy murders the jealous husband instead and takes his money.

From here on the movie is filled with twists and turns. There aren't many characters in the movie but nobody trusts anyone. The lovers start second guessing each other and the cowboy is still at large. At times it seems as if the dangerous/jealous husband is still alive and the film doesn't allow the viewer to figure out the ending. All we know is the future is going to be as bleak as the awkward silence of the film. When its all said and done their is only one surviving character and the film kinda has an irrupt ending, similar to No Country For Old Men (A much more recent Coen brothers film).
Blood Simple is by no means a bad movie. Its worth watching at least once it just isn't the type of movie that could be watched often. Its kind of a mix between John Carpenters often ignored Someones Watching Me and Brian De Palma's Gialo-esque-thriller Dressed To Kill. Its the perfect film to watch alone but not the best of choices to entertain a house full of friends.

J.D.'s Revenge (1976)

Now this movie is fucking awesome! Its the tale of a clean cut preppy jock/medical student who becomes possessed by the demonic spirit of a dead gangster named J.D. Walker. Under J.D.'s spell our clean cut wimp becomes one bad-ass, straight razor wielding, girlfriend beating, priest bashing, rapist, psychopath.

J.D.'s Revenge differs from the average Blaxploitation flick in the sense that it starts off slow and has a bad ending but the rest of the movie is awesome. Usually these low budget black action films start off with a bang and then really slow down until the final.
Glynn Turman plays our possessed antihero and he does a great job with his personality changes between evil J.D. Walker and boring straight laced college kid.  This thing was directed by Artur Marks, The same cat who did Bucktown and Monkey Hu$tle. The nature of this film places J.D.'s Revenge in the slim Horror/Blaxploitation genre along with films like Blacula and of course Abby which is a better known possession (Exorcist ripoff) Blaxploitation flick.

This one also offers up its fair share of nudity with typical strip club scenes and of course some sweet love making scenes. We also get a few rape scenes and the most memorable one shows a woman being tossed around the house and having her clothes ripped off by our scar-faced gangster. She is bruised up pretty good and it makes for a heart pounding scene. The violence seems to escalate as the film goes on. We get slaughter house footage, which seems to have been a fad in the 70's. Some throat slashing, shoot outs, a old lady is banged up in the back of a cab with some demonic taxi driving and we also get some nasty knife fights.
In one of my personal favorite scenes a criminal is comparing a priest to a pimp. The criminal claims that the lord is like a fix that the junkies on the street need and a preacher is nothing but a king-pimp and the whores name is Jesus. Unfortunately in the end the film seems to have some what of a demented religious message to it but all in all J.D.'s Revenge is a super-bad 70's flick with pimp-wear, jive talky-talk and the perfect amount of nudity and violence. Check it out cause "They were right. This nigga's crazy".

Bad Girls In The Movies (1986)

Here's another 80's VHS promotional compilation, this time from Lightning Video. This one is a bunch of clips of bad girls and female delinquents from a bunch of different exploitation and B-Movies. We get clips from Girls For Rent (a.k.a. I Spit On Your Corpse) with Gerogina Spelvin. Lots of Ragina Carrol in Satan's Sadists and Angels Wild Women. We get some bare breasts from movies like Deadly Weapons and then we get segments from trailers, including Doris Wishman flicks (Who was a bad girl herself) like Bad Girls Go To Hell and The Amazing Transplant.
All this silliness is strung together with a really bad shot on video, movie within the movie about a bad girl who gets locked up and eventually she gets the electric chair.
Bad Girls In The Movies is only a hour long and it goes by pretty fast. Its not as good as Terror On Tape but its still a good time passer. The one thing that really surprised me is that there wasn't any scenes from Women In Prison Movies.

The Immoral Mr. Teas (1959)

"Tease"! You're not kidding the movie is a tease. I felt like somebody was poking me with a stick through the whole movie and that wasn't the kind of tease I was looking for.
This was Russ Meyer's first full length feature film and its pretty obvious. The whole thing comes off as one big annoyance right from the films opening. It was shot silently and then some narration and demented music was added in.
The 63 minute nudie cutie follows a pervert named Mr. Teas around as he goes about his daily business of looking down girls shirts, watching girls on the beach and spying on big breasted babes in sweaters make out with their boyfriends.

Mr. Teas goes in and out of day dreams where he pictures the woman around him naked. The film does have quite a bit of bare breasts and bottoms but the overall annoyance of the pace, music and narration just over laps any redeeming values that the film might have had.
I am perfectly aware that The Immoral Mr. Teas is an American film in 1959 that shows naked women and it didn't quite fit into the Nudist Camp film genre and that maybe it was an important film in exploitation cinema but this film had me praying for Doris Wishman's Nude On The Moon.
Russ Meyer would go on to do lots of great films, Mudhoney, Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls, Faster Pussycat Kill Kill, Motorpsycho etc. but The Immoral Mr. Teas is not one of them. There is a scene where a big boobed naked woman strums a guitar on the beach that will having you grinding your teeth and begging for a painless death.

Isle Of The Dead (1945)

You really have to be in the right mood for this one. Its a little on the boring side but the story is very good, with strong characters. Isle Of The Dead stars Boris Karloff as a British General who is trapped in a house on a small island in Greece. The plague has infected some of the people in the house and Karloff quarantines the perfect strangers. He threatens to kill anyone who tries to leave the house because he can not risk the plague spreading to any of his soldiers.

The thing that makes Isle Of The Dead so interesting and appealing to me is that every character has their own beliefs. Some believe in science while others believe in god and the super natural.
For me the real horror is showing the war between science and religion and the fact that an idea can spread as fast as the plague and do just as much damage.
Karloff's character is a man of logic and science and he is appaled at the fact that the people he is trapped with believe the plague to be the work of a evil spirit. An old woman in particular rants about how one of the girls in the house is a sort of demonic vampire. This infuriates Karloff and causes him to further alienate himself from the others. This is until Karloff's character becomes sick himself and the influence of the others finally corrupts his mind. This is when peoples lives are really at risk.
Isle Of The Dead is only worth watching for its subject matter. Its the perfect movie for anyone who looks at religion and finds it to be completely insane. Otherwise I'd just skip it.