The Island
An island just off the coast of mainland China, it was in 1971 that geography teacher Cheung Koon Choy last visited Tung Ping Chau, now returning for a two-night camping trip over a decade later with a group of his students, Phyllis, Timothy, Piggy, Cindy, Ronald and San-San, rowdy, bickering, undisciplined and with scant provisions beyond beer and fireworks, intending to build campfires to cook whatever fish they can catch.
Expecting to find the island unpopulated other than perhaps a scattering of illegal immigrants, they are soon accosted by three strange, simplistic and overbearing brothers, Tai-Fat, Yee-Fat and Sam-Fat, youngest and most direct in his determination to find a bride, immediately pursuing Phyllis, his previous intended Po now held hostage, the shock of their elderly mother finding her unsuitably “impure” upon examination having killed her.
Positioned as a survival thriller with aspects of Deliverance and Texas Chain Saw Massacre in the confrontation of the supposedly civilised and capable “outsiders” who find themselves at the mercy of the primitive family who see their presence as an intrusion into their lives with a dash of Friday the 13th in the campfire shadows cast by the spectre of a dead mother, The Island (生死線, Shēngsǐ xiàn, actually Life and Death) was directed by Po-Chih Leong.
Released in 1985 and now restored in 2K and being released on Blu-ray outside Asia for the first time as part of Eureka’s Masters of Cinema series, The Island stars John Sham as Cheung, with no semblance of authority or control and as helpless as his teenage charges, with Lung Chan, Jing Chen and Billy Sau Yat Ching as the three brothers and Lai-Sueng Yuen as Po who swam to the island for reasons unknown and was captured with nobody apparently concerned about her absence.
The concept slim and executed with low stakes in a series of squabbles where the behaviour is as unbelievable as the premise, the newcomers constantly tripping over objects, failing to use what is to hand as weapons, defending singly against assailants rather than swarming them and when they actually pick up a heavy branch to fight back immediately dropping rather than keeping hold to maintain the assault, the competition is seemingly for the title of the weakest camp slasher horror rip-off ever.
The idiotic and self-defeating actions on both sides depicting frightened children against a trio of men who behave like children, Lord of the Flies it is not despite the presence of a character named Piggy and the obvious theme of civilisation versus savagery, this new edition of The Island supported by two audio commentaries, an appreciation by Tony Rayns and a post-screening talk by Leong from 2023 where he confirms the presumption that “all those kids had never acted before.”
The Island is available on Blu-ray from Eureka now
