The Island (1980)

H weird. I love the amount of glee that you have because I feel like you have to have a level of like demented glee to talk about a movie that within the first five minutes cool Mark Okaine is taking his son to go buy guns. It's just like, what the this movie sets the fucking tone in a way that like was bizarre to say the least, and off putting is probably a better phrase. Oh, this movie speaks to me. It speaks to me.

I mean, you know what I actually I think I know what you mean because in a lot of ways, I'm like, you know, if I were them, though, like I'd kind of be okay with this, like just like in the middle of the yeah, we'll talk about it. Blazes and gentlemen, boys and girls. On this episode of the Culture Cast, I am still your host Chris Dashie, much to the chagrin of many, and I'm joined by my good friend. He's all the way from somewhere in the Midwest, but he's a professor of film at Northwest Turn. Northwest Turn Turn Gotta put the turn in there, where he's shaping young minds through the magic of cinema.

Your friend and mine, Spencer Parsons. Hello, Hi, Hello. The amount of excitement that you have to talk about this movie, I don't know if I can match it, but I can. I think I can match it with the amount of confusion that I bring to the proceeding rings because to finish Pirate Month, which has been um, well, you were here for the beginning, so yeah, I feel like I'm bringing it full circle now because well, I'll get to my point about how it comes full circle for me in a moment. But our what a fucking nightmare this month has been.

I've seen one other good movie. It was Pirate Radio aka The Boat That Rocked, which was fun, but I don't think I've watched the movie as strange as the one we're about to talk about, which is the nineteen eighty adaptation of the nine seventy nine book of the same name, The Island. For three hundred years, a terrifying secret has been kept from the outside WORLDE pirates crazy that you better believe me. The Island, the super thriller from the author of George tend to Be. The Island stars Great dar So.

The film is directed by Michael Ritchie, who has directed one of my favorite movies and we'll talk about that we get to It directed by Michael Ritchie, based on a screenplay by Peter Benchley based on his book of the same name, and it stars Michael Caine and David Warner. Michael Caine plays Blair Maynard, a man who is trying to figure out why so many boats disappear in the Bermuda Triangle. Does he find out why? Yes? He does.

Does he figure out who it's David Warner? Does he figure out how? Maybe? Yes, Well we'll get into the logistics of what is actually going on. But Michael Caine and his son go to the Caribbean and then they're kidnapped by French pirates.

Savage pie Rits of the Caribbean. Amazing Spencer, glorious filmmaking. I know I'm here. I am here to throw down for this movie. I fucking love the Island and I did not expect it because, uh so, so here's something funny.

As last time we talked about this a little bit, you know that it was coming up in advance. I had it confused with the Deep another Peter Benchley, which I had seen before. I had not seen the Island. But somehow that you and so I had a wonderful surprise. Uh with with this uh, with this bat shit insane movie.

Um that I think totally deserves a cult. I'm like, I'm I'm ready to lead the charge for midnight screenings where people like, you know, bring plastic cutlasses and you know, shout weird the weird pilot argo that they speak in this movie, you know, back at the screen like you know, frigg frigg X yeah, frig frigg uh yeah, just just absolutely a bat shan insane movie. Um. And you know, I think so, I like this movie so much. I read the novel to prepare for this, Like, I enjoyed the experience of this because I had to know, I had to know about some of the mysteries.

And so one I can confirm Peter Benchley is definitely one of the worst novelists ever. Like the novel of Jaws is terrible. I'm the biggest Jaws fan in the world. But I read that novel when I was a kid, and I knew it was bad then, and I know it's bad now. And I just read The Island and it is also a terrible novel.

But it's a terrible novel that provides like this amazing crazy material for Michael Ritchie to go just absolutely nuts with a nuts he goes because this I mean again, like I wasn't kidding. Michael Caine five minutes into this movie is going to a gun store with his son to look at guns, and it's just it's like, it's it's it takes place in this nonchalant world that they're constructing where nothing at any point is bothering anybody, is what it feels like, Like none of the weird things that are going on anybody at any point. He's like, yeah, this is kind of weird. Everyone's just like yeah, like we we live in a crazy world apparently, is what it feels like. And that is straight out of the novel.

Like it's like maybe inst five minutes, it's like fifteen pages into the novel. They're in a gun store. They're having the same kind of interaction. The kid really wants him a gun. It is it is, it's it's really it's really bizarre.

Uh. Like I thought for sure that part of the like I thought for sure that part of the weird tone of arriving at the gun store the way that they do, uh, was was a matter of some kind of compression. Like I knew that Peter Benchley had done the script, so so I figured, okay, well this is this is sort of a you know, it's Chekhov's gun. This movie has so many Chekhov's guns going on, and there's also a Chekhov's flare gun. That's that's pretty good.

Uh. And flare guns are one of those things for seafaring movies that are just like one of the worst tropes because like, really, seriously, you can't kill with a flare gun, but somehow it always works. Nah. I don't know, I've seen enough of these movies to know that I think you might be wrong. I think you can you can kill someone with something that's just on fire on the end.

No, yeah, yeah, yeah, sure enough. But it's like it's it's just always like go for the flare gun. Uh, might better off just throwing the flare gun at them, Like take the flare gun and just throw it at them, like it would do more harm. Possibly exactly. So we've got Chekhov's gun store at the movie at the beginning.

We know that this is coming back around at the end. Uh. But one of the crazy things here too, one of the one of the things that makes eventually such a bad novelist. Uh. And this is the case with this novel as well as with Jaws.

He does not fucking know how to end a book to save his life. Like the end of Jaws is like basically, the shark gets tired and die, Like that's the end of the novel, is it? Like the Shark is you know spoilers if you haven't read the novel, you know, like, uh, the shark is taken out Quint, It's uh, it's taken out Matt Hooper uh in a kind of spectacularly gnarly way, and only Chief Brody is left on a sinking Orca and then the shark just dies. No wonder Steven Spielberg had to blow it up, like, you know, come up with the thing with the air tank and whatnot, because it's it's just like and it's it's not a kind of it's just a kind of ending that doesn't make any sense. Similarly, here he's setting up with this this this like trip to the gun store, and the gun does play into the ending, but it doesn't play into the ending nearly as well as it does in Uh in the movie, Like I don't know whether Peter Benchley ironed it out or Michael Ritchie came up with the right idea, though I do think that the the gun moment at the end that's key is definitely has the Michael Ritchie touch of the kid being backed by an American flag.

Um, and I guess we'll come back to this in a minute. So it has a Michael Ritchie touch to it that's very much like, um, you know, bad News Bearers kind of territory but now with like dangerous firearms. Um. But uh but but yeah, So this movie has a it's still kind of a wonky ending, but it's a much better ending than the book. Like if you think the ending to the movie of the Island is bad, well just buckle up because the ending to the book has many of the same elements but is just a disaster just totally totally doesn't work, feels an anti climactic, like how did we end up here?

Did you even know what this story was about? Did you just like stop typing at a certain point and that was the end? You know? Well, and you know what that is the thing about this movie that you know just to to to jump to the ending, which I think the ending has like notes of other things that you've seen before, but it feels like a very like a neuter version of it, like in a In a lot of ways, it's like, oh, we finally the moment where he gets to turn his aggression on everybody else. It's like, and this is it.

It's just like a bunch of moron standing on the deccum of a boat letting themselves be murdered by this guy. It's just it's like, it's it's it is the equivalent of the Jaws ending in that book. I do remember the ending of Jaws where it's like the shark's just taken too much damage and it's just it like, okay, like fuck at this, this unstoppable threat dies to this like yeah, yeah, I mean it's sort of there's a level, at least in the ending of Jaws, there's a level of realism, but it just does not feel like the writer is commanding the sort of realism of Okay, you fought with the shark, it fought back a lot, and now it's just gonna die. Um. But it doesn't.

It just does not have the sense that he knows what it means for the shark to die. In this way or to leave off at this point, or you know anything. I mean, it's it's uh and very similar with the Island. So I guess, like, just to back up, this movie has the craziest sort of tone, and one of the things that makes me like about it is that. And on the basis of reading the book and having seen the movie and rewatched parts of the movie in prep, I'm going to throw down that while Michael Ritchie is no Paul Verehoven uh and uh and and Peter Benchley is uh you know, certainly no Robert Heinleine, the sort of subversion of somebody else's story here reminds me a little bit of Starship Troopers.

Believe me, Starship Troopers is a masterpiece. I'm not comparing this in a way to say that, like this is as good as Starship Troopers. This is definitely not as good as Starship Troopers. Um, so don't misunderstand me in that way. However, Uh, you know, when Verehoven did Starship Troopers, he and Ed Newmeyer took this Heineline novel which was super freaking fascist, and they turned it into a attire against creeping fascism.

Uh. You know, in the United States at the time, and so it's a really really you know, brilliant subversion of a text that was straightforward fascist, like not sort of crypto fascist. No, no, no, Like the fascist lessons are right in there in the hind line and and Verhoeven and Newmeyer transported them in. Well, so you got this Benchley novel that that's about pirates that have somehow you know, it's band of pirates that have survived to the modern era, and begins with a scene where a father and son to go to buy a gun. Right after, by the way, the father has basically absconded to another state with his child.

He has like this is a kidnapping story, which I actually think is like key to the whole to the whole thing. And I'm just not sure that Benchley is aware of what's going on, but I do think that Michael Ritchie is aware of what's going on in the way that this goes. And I think Michael Ritchie is at once sort of you know, yes, he's bringing actually some pretty well staged act to you know, to bear throughout the film, and there's there are like some really nice gory effects going on, and apparently Stan Winston you know, worked on this fairly early. So Richie is going in for the gore and for the action, but he's like twisting this in the direction of being like, you know, kind of a I don't quite want to say satire because I don't know that it has a firm object that it's satirizing, but a kind of black comedy, of of of like you know, American life in the late seventy.

Um. I think there really is. I think there is a great through line from like Bad News, Bears and Smile into this movie, which is completely batshit, and I think that there's there's evidence within the film that he really means to do this. And I'm going to throw down Okay, spoiler alert for everybody out there, but I don't think you can really spoil this movie because it's so freaking insane while you're watching it. Um, the kung Fu interlude.

Can we talk about the kung Fu interlude for a moment. Yeah, let's let's please. So one the kung Fu interlude not in the book. There was like one of the first things I looked for. I'm like, okay, I gotta go to where they raid the schooner, so they raid a schooner full of hippie drug dealers who've got a boat full of cocaine, and they and like they take over the boat.

And there's a really interesting you know, more of the more interesting things that I think Benchley is up to, where he's trying to make a kind of point about modern criminality versus old criminality, where the pirates have this booty, they have this amazing treasure of cocaine and they have no clue what it is, and and they throw it all overboard as the hippies are like, wait, that's worth thousands of dollars. You could like, you could take it. Like the hippies just want to save their lives, but the pirates are here to like, you know, kill the hippies, take anything they can from the ship, burn it down, all this stuff, and they just hurl all the cocaine overboard. Well, so Michael Ritchie does an amazing thing with this where there's a coked up crew member and I have to assume that he's coked up because it's the only it's the only shred of sense to the entire sequence.

There's a coked up crew member in a blue speedo who who arrives to try to fight the pirates off with kung fu making all of these horrible fake Bruce Lee imitating sounds as he's you know, like punching and chopping and kicking his way towards his very certain death. I mean, you know, this guy is not survived. Well, one of those scenes where they'll all stand it's they all stand back and they let you know. They're like, oh, we'll let you know whatever. Whoever wants to fight him, go for it.

But we're just look like, like you said, like, there's no way that this guy gets out of this situation one way or another. Well, and this is one of the things I love about these Pirates is that, like David Warner is this perfect like pirate king who is constantly it's not just at this moment this is the big one in the movie, but at many different points throughout the film he stops people from committing violence or doing anything because let's just see how this plays out. It's like David Warner is kind of like it's kind of like, you know, a snarky audience member who is no, no, no, wait a second, it's gotten a little crazy. I just want to watch and see where this goes. I love David Warner in this movie.

He's so good. I mean, he's great in everything, right, but like in this like I feel like without him in this movie, oh no, it doesn't work. No, Like his commitment to the role of now is again, like it takes that kind of actor like and I would even go as far as to say Michael Kine in the same way, Like the role that Michael Kine is playing is the most Michael Caine role I've ever seen him play. It's so Michael Kane in like every sense of the word. Like what he is, what he's doing in the movie is very much a like Like it doesn't feel like an affectation of the expectations of him as an actor, but like it like they were like, just be the most British dickhead possible, do that and there you go.

It's clearly so. Like. One of the things I love about Michael Caine in this movie is this is in a longline of Michael Caine rolls where he just shows up for the money. And there was a lot of money put into this film. This is a twenty two million dollar movie in nineteen seventy nineteen seventies dollars.

That is a really big budget and this was a major flop. This was a major failure at the time because it cost that much money. And Michael Kine shows up and he is just doing his usual Michael Kine collecting the paycheck level best. And this is why Michael Caine is my favorite ever Oscar winner. I do not give a shit for the Oscars, but one thing I love about the Oscars is like Michael Caine won an Oscar while on set for Jaws the Revenge.

That's that's my Michael Kine. That's the Oscars I want to believe in because he's he is just clearly Michael Caine's an amazing actor. But he is totally willing to be in like all kinds of slummy films. I mean, he's in like blame it on Rio. He is.

He's in all kinds of terrible film in on deadly ground with like shoe polish, black hair, opposite Steven Seagal, and he said he has said in an interview, you know, well, I did if all the money, but I could have picked a better place to be because they were in the middle of fucking Alaska. Like I mean, like, motherfucker took the Jaws job because he got to be in the fucking Caribbean and they were paying him to be there. Like I would take that job too, be stupid not to. So so it's Michael Caine doing that. And then it's David Warner, and David Warner great villain.

I mean, obviously he played so many villains, but this is this is one where David Warner's presence and this is also part of why I really love the movie. It's not just that he holds it together. It's that he tips the balance of the film just like completely towards the Pirates. Right, there's a certain there's a certain point at which I am not rooting for Michael Caine anymore at all. I'm rooting for the pirates.

But the story is more interesting having Michael Kine around to continue trying to get away or whatever, so the pirates can do as much shit as the Pirates are gonna do. I like, I'm totally on the side of the Pirates for the latter part of this film. And so is the score, Anyo Morricone's score. Every time the Pirates are going out to like, you know, the beginning it's played is horror when the pirates murder people and stuff. But then part of the way through, when Michael Kine is along and they attack this schooner or they go and they attack the coastguard, any of more Cone's music turns into like, you know, jaunty seafaring music that's like this is really fun, as like heads are getting lopped off and like cutlasses go through arms and like blood splatters everywhere and means there's some really good gore that that happens throughout this movie, and the tone just completely shifts u that the tone is completely shifted in this bizarre direction where the pirates are obviously horrible, They're doing terrible things.

They are just murdering people flat out, and the music is rooting for them all the way, which is of course beautiful in Italian style. And I'm so glad that like Ennio Morriconi was allowed to bring that kind of you know, Italian cock eyed going against the emotional grain sort of energy to this and that Michael Richie let him do it well. And I think, honestly, that's maybe my biggest problem with this movie. Is it the stuff when they get to the island with All of the Pirates is a lot of fun and it's super weird, and again, like it's just tonally at odds with the first twenty minutes thirty minutes of the movie. And I think that the first thirty minutes of the movie don't work very well because it's trying to be a horror movie.

I mean, the poster is trying to be a horror movie. This summer. The most terrifying thing in the water is the island. What fucking movie are you advertising? Like not this one?

Like, no, not this one at all, because this shouldn't like it shouldn't have I'm not saying it should be like a high seas adventure because again, like a lot of the pirates are pieces of shit. But yeah, but like, can we revel in the fact that they're pirates? Are pirates in this movie? They're unabashedly pirates, Like that's this is the first movie this month that doesn't feel like it's ashamed of the fact they're pirates in it. Well, and to be frank, going back to uh, you know, Roman Polanski's Pirates, this is what I This is the movie I wanted from Ropan Polanski's Pirates exactly this is this is the movie that I wanted there, like the kind of gritty, weird you know.

So one of the things about it the casting of all these pirates and even the way that like David Warner uh is sort of presented like he's sort of the big star among the pirates. But this is a band of pirates that have body types and like scars and toothlessness and all the stuff that is not allowed in American cinema and especially now now like if you had you made this movie now, now, all these pirates, however old they were, they would have all been to the gym. Uh. And this is Zoe was in Pirate to the Caribbean. Don't forget like good looking Zoe Seldonna, like she has she can't hold a candle to Don Henderson.

Okay, you know no, it's just like this is the rattiest, gnarliest band of pirates. Uh. And and they're stealing children in order to like, you know, juice their gene pool, which I love and uh, you know that's the they're getting. They're bringing in the new blood. They've also got some kind of wacky religion where there's like prophecy around the kids that they're that they're pulling in and the kids are all down.

So this is another connection with Bad News Bears. The kids are totally down for going off with the pirates, even though the pirates are completely bloodthirsty and horrible and ugly and like physically repellent. Like the kid I love that. I love that, Like every one of these kids is just absolutely with the pirates. The biggest conflict between kids in this movie is with each other in this movie, where like one of them is like, hey, I thought I was the new pirate kid when there's when there's another one that's come along.

And so there's this like a little bit of treachery among the kids, but there's sort of like the they're like the dark, nasty version of the Bad News Bears, who are frankly like for for a lot of cinema, the dark nasty version of a lot of like normal suburban kids. So it's like, you know, Richie's taking the opportunity to take it even that much farther, and in particular the sun. He does not have a lot to work with for the script, He does not have a great amount of screen time. His change doesn't really make any sense from like kind of grudging going along with dad on this adventure to like I hate your dad, I'm joining the pirates. There's like there is there's no change that you witness.

There's simply like two different scenes where he's behaving in different ways, but never a less Richie is actually drawing out a kind of wonderful performance from this kid, who just from the first minute in the film is so it like he's so snide to his dad. You know, like right out of the gate, he's like introduced reading a Playboy, which is which is a great introduction, fantastic introduction. Again, so seventies, So the kid's introduced, like, you know, reading a playboy, and he's like snarky with his dad, and like their big bonding moment is like going to buy a gun, and the dad's just i mean, like Michael Caine's not even really bonding. He's just trying. He's sort of like, okay, kid, i'll give you the gun if you want to Maybe you'll love me if I buy you the gun.

And then after the after they get the gun, it's clear the kid still doesn't love his dad, is not really going to love his dad, but then makes this hard turn into this like kind of snarling little beast who like really fucking hates um you know Michael Caine, and I love that. I love how that runs through this And again it's it's like what I wanted out of the Roman Polanski Pirates. Uh, like you know the kid that that kid and pirates ultimately has no purpose whatsoever except to kind of run around with that one girl. But in this movie, the kid is like sort of key in uh in this like nightmare that Michael Kane is having about being a bad father, and he is a bad father, like that's the thing of a father, and he's he's yeah, I hate when this alarm goes off.

He is the absolute worst father, like with without a doubt like he is. He's a terrible father. I mean for his son, that's the other thing, Like you you completely understand why his son acts the way that he does in this movie. Like yeah, because again, like I was saying, like, Michael Kane's such a stodgy dick, Like it really is that. Like when I say stadgy dick, it's almost like you exactly said, like this is the role that he was doing for the longest time when anybody wanted him to just show up like the just just be British, be a British dickhead, like and here you go.

Because this character is like in this movie, it's not too dissimilar from the character he plays in Jaws. Like it it's just think that's same, just like you're British, be British. I mean, that's kind of what it feels like. The one difference is it like in Jaws The Revenge, when he goes when he falls into the water, it's like a stunt person who falls into the water, and then when he climbs back out, he's dry by the time he's back in the boat. That's like one of my favorite Jaws for things where it's clearly like Michael Kane will only take things so far.

Whereas in the Island, Michael Kane goes into the water, he climbs out of the water, he does all these like kind of you know, try hard stunts and everything. But but this is this is a level where like I don't know, like maybe you know eventually he's obviously like a smart guy and all of his books are predicated on some some research, you know, so like he really researched Great Whites and cannot wait to show off his research about them in Jaws and to the same thing and like White Shark. And also I have also read on Forgetting a Beast his Giant Squid book, and that's just full of like I went to the I went to research giant squids as much as possible, And so the characters don't make any sense, the action doesn't make any sense, but there's all this like weird sort of scientific stuff about squid.

And then similarly, he's really researched, you know, pirates and piracy, and he's thinking about what would it be like for pirates to live now, And he doesn't really have like a handle on the story, so I don't know. I mean, maybe it's sublimpinal to him, maybe he intended it. But there's a kind of wonderful symmetry of like the dad abducts his own kid, then has his kid abducted by David Warner who plays now and sort of taken in with the pirates, and it's this nightmare of being a bad father, and it ultimately could be and you know, the movie probably would have failed even harder if it had the ending that I want for it, which is that the kid should shoot my Chael Caine in the head at the end and go off with Now, like that's what the whole movie has been working up to.

Now, was that not the ending? Is my question? Like, No, there's no way a studio allows such a thing in nineteen seventy nine, nineteen eighty. Sure, now I think they would. You think I think they were more likely to allow it in nineteen seventy nine or eighty.

That's interesting, Well, I guess, I mean I could see I could see you making the case either way. I think. Now it's like there's so many places that you could put it, Like I think, no, I don't think there'd be anybody who would raise an eyebrow. But at the same time, like, yeah, like the seventies is rife with like people experimenting and not taking the usual way out of a narrative, the expected western happy ending, which the movie doesn't earn its happy ending, like it's an ending for a different movie, completely different movie. Well, and I think Michael Ritchie even knows that because it's it's interesting, like the moment, the moment at the end where father and son are sort of reunited does not play as that happy Uh you know, yeah, Like Michael Kine gets there and he's he rescues the kid, but it's the movie's not suggesting that it's going to be okay between him and the kid.

And then there's this strange coda. I love this coda where where like we cut away from Michael Kaine and the kid to like looking through some kind of window on the boat, uh, you know, to see um, a helicopter outside, and we get this, uh we get this dialogue between the helicopter and another Coastguard vessel or whatever and there and and and they have this funny bit of like, uh, there are you know, it looks like there are pirates aboard. And then the guy on the other goes pilots and then he said, no, no, pirates, not pilots. And and so it's this strange thing of of of just like the final moment before the credits hit and and then the the the helicopter continues to sit there, just kind of hovering while the credits all go up on the other side of the screen.

It's the most bizarre thing ever. The helicopter continues to hover as music plays and the and the credits play, and these are these are just characters from outside coming into comment on how ridiculous the whole movie has been. It's it's basically like this little coda to say, now, wasn't that completely batshit insane? And I'm here to go, Yes, it was completely batshit insane, and I'm er for it. No, I'm with you.

Like again, like where the movie ends up going and where the conclusion takes place, and it's you know, I'm probably gonna misspeak, but isn't Dirty Dozen or is it the Wild Bunch where at the end it's like a massive like machine gun gun down. Is that right? That? That's what it reminded me of. But in that movie, it's earned and they all die like there's got to be some like mutually assured destruction here.

And I really thought Michael Caine was going to get lit up as he was lighting up the Pirates because again, totally it's like it is weird. The movie feels like gets at odds with itself because Michael Kaine is, in a way the villain of the movie. Again, like villain is like right, like a villain is kind of a weird term because he's clearly meant to be the audience surrogate and the hero of the piece, but nothing about him as a character is remotely appealing. He's such an asshole that I mean, he almost gets his like island wife killed how many times? Like no, and she keeps defending him.

It's like she's also great. I love I love her performance. She's so weird and I don't know that she fully makes sense. But the actress is so committed. But I'm like, Okay, your character doesn't make any sense, but I like you.

I like every time you're on screen, I will accept that you are basically, you know, a human being playing a device to keep Michael Kine alive throughout this film. Yeah, I kind of feel bad for the actress because she's really like to say some some words, a couple words, but don't say too much. But yeah, like what a thankless role. But like, yeah, like the way he treats her like it's just none of it jibes with me being like, oh yeah, I can sympathize with him, Like no, I'm kind of just like you put yourself in the shitty position more on, like, yeah, you got what you wanted. I like the idea that the explanation of why all the boats disappeared in the Bermuda Triangle or these moron pirates, But that is a beautiful explanation, makes the most sense, one might say, or not at all, not at all, or not fucking at all.

That's like, I mean, there's this whole Bermuda Triangle thing that's that's like, uh, and this is so it's a natural explanation to a supposedly supernatural thing, where the natural explanation is actually stupider than the supernatural. One would be right like it to think that, like because again, like they're ascribing all of the disappearances in the Bermuda Triangle to these pirates, and like we mentioned, at one point, a coastguard cutter shows up and they overtake them. But imagine if it were a bigger ship like which they claimed have disappeared, Like, how are those pirates even getting on the ship? Guys like right, yeah, well there's even there's that that hulk of a burned up ship that's on screen a bunch of times early on in the film that people like kind of go around and it's talked about.

It's like what happened to that? And it's just like floating out there, which is an image I really loved, and I think this movie is shot like really beautifully. Um. It has it has some like really arresting photography um and uh and definitely like the design work and the visuals and how they how they spent all this money as like convincing us of the world of these pirates, but the world of the pirates is still like totally bonkers and um and it's kind of I mean again, this is one of the things I really like about the movie. It's it really I think I think that Michael Richie went in for the goofy dream logic of it that like, if you want to read the movie a certain way, the moment that Michael Hayne gets hit in the head and passes out before he's like taken to the pirates, I can totally read the rest of the movie as his like crazy fever dream as he's dying because like somebody came aboard his vessel and hit him in the head.

Though like there's sort of one damn thing after another, like evolving plot of this movie is so it is so weird, and it's the same in the book, but the movie feels there's a there's a feeling like this is it's bought into the weirdness as weirdness, it's not oblivious to the weirdness. Well, and that's I mean that feels like that extends to like the casting of the Pirates, because you have like a bunch of really interesting British character actors, like you said, all playing very unique and distinct weird looking weirdos like Frank Middlemass, who's I mean playing one of them again, not one of the pirates but sort of. But Don Henderson and Dudley Sutton and Colin Jeevans, like just like all of them are so weird looking, like yeah, and again like David Warner is the least weird looking of all of them, which is saying something.

Yeah, but I think they made him lose some weight or something to do it, which is great. Like so when he takes off his shirt, he suddenly looks weird looking among these pirates, Like David Warner's face is there, but it's like his ribs are showing a little bit, and he's like kind of scrawny. I don't know, maybe I don't know that I've seen him with a shirt off in another movie. That's just maybe what he looked like. But it's kind of a it's kind of a brilliant thing about like creating the world of these pirates that they really are rangy and they do look like you know, they talk about how they're inbread because yeah, they would be right.

And so they take a bunch of very interesting looking people push them farther out, like into you know, real greasy, semi mutated kind of looking zone. They're all dirty, they're you know, they're gross, but they're gross and such an amazing and to me ultimately very um, you know, sort of sympathetic way. My sympathy goes to these pirates and like Michael Caine, why do you have to come show up and like basically demolish this band of people who have been living outside of civilization you know, for century? Um, you know, as one of the characters says, this is you've you've come to an anthropologist dream or you know, it's a line that's that's kind of like that, you know, there's this population that's been preserved since the seventeen hundreds, uh, you know, away from a darnity.

It's it's kind of beautiful. Well, I like the frank Middlemass character of windsor this kind of who you meet him as a doctor who you know, lends Michael Caine or he's renting his boat to Michael Caine, and then you find out later in the movie he's actually kind of not the leader of the pirates, but he's kind of like in cahoots with them. I guess he's sending it seems like he's sending people their way, right, But yeah, I mean it's this interesting kind of back and forth that he has with Michael Caine where he's like, yeah, you know, like why are they not turning on me? Because they see the value of this relationship and like, ultimately, like you could too if you just chilled out a little bit, Like I don't know, like my it feels ultimately like Michael Caine is just too uptight to fit in with the pirates.

But like if I were in this position, like fuck it, like fuck it, like fuck it, I don't know, Like, yeah, you know what as as life becomes more and more complicated, like their life looks a hell of a lot more exciting, like well, and that they're genuinely murderous and horrible like makes it really interesting. I mean, like it is like that that sort of tunnel thing that it's yeah, we've gotten stories about pirates where oh yeah, you want to go off to join the pirates or like you know, Treasure Island. There's there's a there's a there's like a certain side to like wanting to go along with Long John Silver. That's like part of the pirate mythology. But this is one where it plays them as like genuinely murderous and vile while still like while still kind of making them interesting, and there's a there's a sort of beautiful, rough um sort of humanism to that.

And when I say vile, I want to point out that there is a really awful moment of using a giant jellyfish as a weapon in this film, Like I do not that scene is nasty. This is so I mean, I just do not even want to talk about what they do with their jellyfish. And I would not be surprised and I would not judge somebody if that was the point in the movie where they're like, I'm out, I'm not I'm not watching anymore. This jellyfish action too much. Not okay, um, you you're to like in my book, you tried.

I sympathize. Some of us will keep going with this. Some of us will will still kind of enjoy this movie, but it has some moments that are like truly disgusting. Was I just mentioned I am surprised anyone I just mentioned Jeffrey Frank When they show up at the island, they stick like pieces of wood under his eyes to make it so that his eyes can't close. And that's an awful image to see, Like it's so off putting in like fucking weird, because you're like, what's going on here?

Oh, they're like refusing to let him sleep, and it kind of they go with this scene for a while and they come actually come back to it. You see this twice where they're doing this, but like it's like it's immediately so off putting that I could feel like you could stop watching the movie at that point and be like I'm out, Like this is getting a little like it's getting a little like rough and weird. And again, like we talked about this throughout the month, and we mentioned it on our Roman Plansky's Pirates episode. We did at the beginning like I'm sorry, but Pirates are fucking gross. Like that was kind of the point that all the movies this month have missed.

I mean, pirate radio obviously can be forgiven. Yeah, yeah, definitely kind of thing. But pirates are fucking nasty, Like they're gross, they're on the ocean, they don't bathe, they smell bad. They're like scoff laws of the highest order. And they have no problem with raping, pillaging and murdering.

Like that's the pirate way. Why not embrace it? Why not embrace it? Yeah? And uh so, I don't know.

I mean, I think there's a lot that's really I think there's a lot that's interesting going on with us. And I read a number of reviews and for sure, the tone is the big problem with this movie. People cannot hang with the tone. They're like, they're just that first twenty odd minutes gets them going on like, oh, this is gonna be kind of horror, and they're expecting that from a Peter Benchley thing. And by the way, this is also this is not just Peter Benchley as the Jaws connection.

It's also Zanek and Brown who produced and they also produced The Deep as well, So it's like after Jaws, those guys went all in on Peter Benchley until the Island and they're just gonna knock out one after another, and I think The Deep actually was, you know, kind of a hit, but and I expected that one to be good. It has its moments, but like it's directed by you know, Peter Medac, and so I'm like, oh this is this is gonna be great, and it has some moments to it, but it really gets boring. I mean, The Deep is a totally boring movie. If there's one thing about The Island it is not boring, it is it is weird and crazy and keeps getting into more and more ridiculous kind of situations. And then like, after after feeling comfortable enough to laugh at it for a little while, little spike with some violence that's like, oh no, this is not okay, this is not not cute, and then it's and then it rounds out with this moment that should be that should be the sort of tragic you know, the in the in the classic like Shakespearean sense, the tragic ending to the movie where the kid has the gun that his dad bought for him at the very beginning of the movie and uh and confronts Michael Kane after Kane has like murdered all the pirates with his with his giant machine gun and the flag, the American flag is like rippling behind the kid's head as he points the gun practically into the camera.

Uh, you know, to shoot at Michael Kane, and it's like go through with the kid. You gotta kill him. That's the real ending to this. That's the tragedy that that's the nightmare that this like bad father has been living. That that like he's a bad dad and uh and and his son has gone over to the dark side and is gonna murder him and uh.

And that's that's my ending. That's the ending I want. And I think that is kind of the ending that that Michael Ritchie wanted. But then they had to like do a couple more things because like there's a failure of nerve and the kid can't kill his dad, and so they got to face around the ship and then finally kill David Warner with the the Tchekhov's flair gun. Well, and I fail to understand, I mean other than just we can't we don't think that the audience can handle it a complex or possibly quote sad ending unquote, which I get, Like I get that hesitancy there, but why tell this story if that's not going to be the payoff in a lot of ways, Like, in a lot of ways, it feels like this is the kind of story that has to have that kind of ending, and to not deliver on that ending feels like there there needed to be a reassessment of why you're telling this story, begin with if you're unwilling to commit to that ending for sure?

For sure? Right yeah, yeah no, And so it is definitely a compromise. It's a compromise that like you know, I will say fails the film much as U And the only reason I'm I will permit this terrible ending is that it does not seem happy between Michael Caine and the kid when Michael Caine finally rescues him, the like who looks on their faces are kind of fucked up and traumatized, and this is not going to be ultimately like a great bonding moment between father and son. Uh. And then that ridiculous thing with the the helicopter, which is you know, like, look, these are these are kind of crappy saving moves h to try to salvage something that's like not a good ending.

So it's it's still not good, but I sort of I guess I appreciate the little bit of like, yeah, you know, we wanted to end it the right way, but we can't. So here you go, um well, and like for me, it feels like they're the way to end it, like you've said, even if and if you want to kind of maybe guild the lily a little bit and maybe you know, give yourself a little bit of a backdoor, is do what you were saying. Have the American flag him framed in the shot and then you cut to black and you hear the gunshot and that's it totally. And then you like, did he kill his dad? Did he fire in the air?

You don't know, it doesn't matter. The movie doesn't give you any more than that, and you can write the ending in your own head. Like may even just give us that because like as I'm gonna recut the movie to do that, and it's gonna be the ideal version of the film. Uh, it'll be my fan at it this one the island. The fan at it of the island, the most absurd thing.

But man, I'm really serious though, I would love to see this at like you know, midnight are kind of cult screening because I do think it has. I think it has this like really strange, not totally controlled, but like dream like sort of tone that that is uh, you know, rare and Okay, So I'm a case for it being intentional on Michael Richie's part. Maybe it's not intentional, maybe he just fucked up. I don't give a shit. I love this tone.

I love this weird, erratic, like kind of mercurial tone to this movie. So if it's a mistake, you know, I'll be the Bob Ross for the Island and say it's a happy accident. Just don't tell me it's a mistake, and I can assume that you did it on purposely exactly until you say it's a mistake, I just ooh, it's a very much intentional good job. Like, yes, intentional, I meant to do that. Yeah.

Yeah, well that and that is the other thing about this movie, you know. To mention Michael Ritchie, I mean he directed Fletch, which is one of my personal favorite movies totally, and I don't know what he brings to that movie in a lot of ways, but I know what he brings to this movie because it is readily apparent that he has a very much a grasp on what he wants this movie to be, even if it's again like, even if that is not imminently successful, I think he, like you said, he kind of understands where he wants he personally wants to go with this story. Yeah, and yeah, there does feel like a little bit of like fighting with maybe not with yourself quote unquote, but the you know, studio or Benchley even to fight for a different a different movie, because there is another movie kind of poking out through this movie that I feel like would have been a lot better.

But also I think it would have been very much not like the movie was successful, but even less mainstream of a movie, right, yeah, yeah, or challenging of a movie, totally totally. I think, Yeah, I think that there's there is a more challenging version of the movie that's that's like you know, trying to get free, and it works enough at the time that I, you know, I was just surprised. I was really surprised by this movie. I did not expect this to be good at all. Uh No, it's not as good as Jaws, however, however, like I will class by Jaws as totally a Steven Spielberg movie, totally belongs to Steven Spielberg, stole it away from Peter Benchley.

I'm going to throw it down that this is the best Peter Benchley movie. Uh. This this actually, this kind of captures the fucked up, wayward bad writing spirit of Peter Benchley and turns it into something that is is like kind of wonderful trash. And I don't mean that as like a so bad it's good sort of thing. This is enjoyable trash.

This is this is like you know, great junk food where the flavors just coalesce in a way that, like, you know, some hoity toity restaurant is not gonna do or they I mean, look, they just pretend that sugar fat and salt together don't taste good. This movie has no problem telling you that's the case. Yeah, sugar fat and salt all the way. Yeah. Like and that and that is the thing about this movie that I do appreciate, and like you you have said, I mean, it's in a lot of ways.

And you know, I would employ people who are interested in finding this out for themselves. Go read The Godfather and then watch the movie. Go read Jaws and then watch the movie. Two very different movies two very different books, but the movies are also different from the books because The Godfather is exceedingly trashy, like exceedingly trashy. But you know what, I loved it for that.

I loved it for that because again, it's taking the world and being as honest with it as the as the source material wants to be. And look, the Godfather movie has pomp and circumstance, and it's got that great score, and it's got the Godfather love theme, and all of that elevates it into this romantic idea of what the mob is. The book ain't that way at all. And Jaws the book, Jaws the book, Cooper's plowing Brodie's wife multiple times, just given it to her, given her the Great White and there's none of that, And there's none of that in the movie because that doesn't jibe with Steven Spielberg. But this Michael Ritchie really does not give a fuck like and I appreciate that because, yeah, Peter Benchley's stuff is not this like family story bullshit that Steven Spielberg just loves telling and will never stop telling because he loves telling stories about families.

Do they have sharks? Do they have dinosaurs? Do they have the Nazis? You tell me who it is and I'll tell you what family. Steven Spielberg's gonna I mean, fucking more of the Worlds became the most Steven Spielberg thing ever when he turned it into a movie Like it Yeah, like even his stuff's one note, but he takes the multi notes of other people and boils it down.

I think this works because it's not all the way boiled down into some like kind of pasteurized bullshit, Like it could have gone further in the in the like the column of just like let this be weird, and again like it is pretty weird, but it's it's it doesn't go all the way. And I wonder why Benchley chose not to end it that way even in the book. I wonder what his reasoning would have been, because I looked, I couldn't find him speaking to why the ending of the book is the way that it is, other than he just isn't a good enough writer to have realized that that's the end. Now I'm not saying we are, but like that feels like such the obvious conclusion to this story, that like, why set it up that way?

If you're not going to pull the trigger, no pun intended. The book builds up more to whether the book just doesn't know what it has. The book builds up to whether Michael Caine's character is going to kill the kid or now is going to kill the kid, Like that's it. That's the sort of weird not exactly Mexican standoff, but like that's that's the weird zone that it ends up in, Like is the dad going to be able to kill his own child? And the answer course is no, But that's not actually what the psychodrama of the whole thing has been, either in the book or the movie.

The psychodrama is is the kid going to kill the dad? Like that's it? And and Uh eventually just sort of whiffs it and then makes it this we again like the Pirate. The pirate dies in the way that the shark does, uh, kind of at the end of at the end of Jaws, it's like the bizarre thing where David Warner's character now Um gets gets stabbed by the dad and then and then decides to sort of commit suicide by viscrating him. The pirate then commits suicide by a viscerating himself and It's like I did not know where this comes from.

This doesn't this is not supported by anything that happened before. It's kind of like I need to wrap this up, and I don't know what to do with these characters. Um. And also just has like no sense of the meaning of the whole thing. And the last couple of sentences are then about like the dad and the kid uh kind of you know, coming back together like that.

It's more of a genuine rescue of like the kid is grateful that his dad is there. Uh. Is sort of the ending after the pirate like pointlessly kills himself, you know, like like you know in Jaws, the shark just kind of like floats and dies. Um. It is it's really it's really bizarre to me.

Um. Maybe maybe Peter eventually just needed to like see a psychotherapist who could like read some of his drafts for him and go, hey, wait a second, Freud says, you gotta do this, and maybe maybe the story would have come out better. Well, that's the thing. Like, it's just it's such the obvious ending, or at least like the obvious scenario to put yourself in where it's even a possibility because in the movie, that's not really even a possibility. And we see this kid murder another human being.

Oh yeah, we know that he can do it. I mean, and he in that scene on the boat with those the hippie drug dealers, like he does not really hesitate no in a way that like when when it got to the ending and the ending doesn't go where it's supposed to go, I was like, well, what was the point of that then, Like, what was the point of showing that? Like he's this you know, I you know, to bring up another movie that we recently did a show on Tusk. At the end of that movie, he goes full Walrus right and like okay, like you have now embraced that and you have lost your humanity in the process. Like that is what this story is supposed to be, is losing your quote humanity or your connection to polite society in the process of becoming a pirate.

Like like you said, like why Peter Benchley misses that? Like with Jaws it can be forgiven, like oh again, you know a air tank in the mouth, Like that's yea Mithbuster said, that's not happening anyways, but fine for dramatic effect. It works in the movie, in the in the book and in the movie, the ending does not work, and it hurts this movie irrevocably. Yeah, yeah, it does. It's a shame because it makes it feel like Michael Kaine gets away with being an asshole the entire movie.

Yeah no, that's that's right. That's right. And because I'm not rooting for him at any point in the movie, just like you said, like, there's no point in this movie where I'm like Michael Kine is a hero that I can like identify with. It's like, no, this guy's kind of a dickhead, like and he got himself into this situation like well, and you know, it's also it's baked into Benchley's conception of the character. So I'll give I'll give Benchley points for honesty here.

The character in the book is is really like this journalist who's uh, you know, his his whole thing is like, oh, I'm stuck with my kid. But I'm I'm like really a super ambitious journalist who wants to go do my do this job to like break this story about the uh the Bermuda triangle, uh and and and clearly there's a path to just like filing the story that the editor wants and staying home and being good to his kid, but instead he's gonna like drag the kid along on this like you know, sort of ridiculous thing to advance his career. So the character is definitely an asshole, uh, you know in in both and and the book sort of underlines that more and um. Again, like Benchley doesn't write likable characters, which can be good, um, but he's not a good enough writer to make that work.

Um. So so you know it like in Jaws when there are no likable characters. Uh, it's it's sort of a disaster, uh you know for that that book and makes it just kind of you know, vile by the end. Uh. I mean, Quint is really terrible.

Matt Hooper, as you mentioned, is terrible. Brodie's not even that great. Um. And then and then the mayor, Oh I love this in the book, the Mayor's like involved with the mob, and the mob kills the Brodie's dog and stuff. I mean, it's just it's totally ridiculous.

It's grotesque. Um. And it's very similar in the Island. There are no likable characters. But like you know, Benchley is not the kind of writer who can make that work.

It's just this question of like why do you see people this way? What kind of misanthropy is this? That's that's uh being brought out. But again I think I think that like, you know, that's great for Michael Ritchie, who has this kind of jaundiced eye where where people are fun, but they're fun by being kind of awful, you know, like Fletch, like Fletch exactly, or or or like uh you know mathou in um uh in in The Bad News Bears, he's like giving beard to the kids and uh, you know kind of only has these moments where he rises to being a proper adult when the kids are definitely like, you know, wrong. You know, it takes the it takes the kids kind of aid and lack of experience, while also uh you know, while misbehaving and stuff for uh, for Walter Mathout to kind of come around to being like a decent authority figure.

Um and and that really that that's like a kind of humor that's kind of dark comedy that like really worked, and where Richie makes everybody um uh you know in in The Bad News Bears makes everybody likable in their kind of rangy unlikability. Um, he doesn't quite pull off the same thing in the Island because the character writing is just not that good. But uh, but the kid in Warner and the whole idea of like joining the pirates and uh attacking these vessels. Oh, it's just it's what I want from a pirate movie. And so I was, I was very I'm happy to be able to come for the last of these episodes and round out Pirate Month with some some real love for scruffy you know, distempered like unhappy, fucked up, weird, ridiculous movie.

And and I'm with you, like I didn't know what to expect when I picked this movie, and in a lot of ways, like it's not what I was expecting, because yeah, I mean the moment the movie opens with these like bunch of old dudes on a boat and then they all just get diced and sliced and murdered. It's like, it's like what is this? Like what? And then the next thing you see is Michael Caine going al multi you to Walt Disney World, and then they don't go there and they go buy guns instead. It's like, you know what, whatever the fuck this is I'm on board with it, and that you know that for me, I think is why I'm glad that you are as effusive about this movie as you have been, because like it made me, through your effusiveness, enjoy the movie more than I thought I was going to enjoy talking about it at least, like I am remembering it more fondly because you have a very strong opinion about it, and I can see exactly where you're coming from, and I agree in a lot of ways.

Like I think the problem with the movie ultimately for me is it's the best of the pirate movies I've seen this month, which in a lot of ways is like damning it with faint praise. But it is a fun movie that totally deserves to be reappraised by a certain audience. I'll say that much. And look Shout Factory rereleased this in twenty twelve. In twenty eleven, it was an Amazon exclusive on through Universal.

So I mean it's like, this movie is not, you know, out there in the twenty first century, but it's definitely not something that's getting remembered as fondly as saying, like you said, bad News Bears or even Fletch for that matter like no to Michael Ritchie, things that are obviously a lot more well known, or even something like The Golden Child, even like those things I think a lot more frequently than The Island, And obviously, I mean, look, I think the other thing about The Island is if it were anybody other than Michael Caine and it were like a big name actor, I think it might get remembered a little bit more. Maybe not fondly, because I think Michael Caine is perfect for what this is, but it might have a little bit more visibility because again, one actor who's still working now throughing weird things is fine.

But if it were someone that was like not known for these kinds of things, like maybe it might push it in a kind of well, this is something you need to check out, not just a Michael Kine completionist, which is probably the way this movie has been viewed for the longest time. I with you like it is a genuinely bizarre and fun movie that like there's so many just like we didn't even mention the fact that at one point Michael Caine is holding out a jackfruit and his son just blows it up. And I couldn't convince me they didn't actually do that, like incredible. We also haven't talked about that crazy plane crash. Oh Mike, hey, we're gonna be a little it's gonna be a little bump.

What the fuck are you talking about? That does not make any sense whatsoever? And then like the pilot's reaction after his plane blows up is like, yeah, well I guess we all survived. Like what what? What is this?

Brad Sullivan is the best, just like, oh, well we're here now, Like why are you fucking serious? What is this crazy insane madness? It's it's like it is, what the hell cartoon world? That's what it is. It is.

It's a cartoon world. And and like the I mean seriously, on the page, that stuff is there. Uh so eventually wrote this and it's on the page, but it is. It's even more sort of poe faced than in this movie. It's like eventually just thinks, oh, that's gonna be fun to describe this plane crash or whatever, and it doesn't have to make any sense Richie, and doing it like seems to recognize that this is surreal, right, No, it is.

I mean that Brad Sullivan goes, hey, the landing gear's not down. It's like the plane is landing. The plane is landing. Well also its plane his feet feet off the ground, feet off the ground, feet off the ground. What's also crazy about it is like then landed in the water.

They're they're coming in on an island, like well, you know, pull up again and like go land in. What the hell is going on here? He just goes, Oh, it'll just be a little bump. But it's like the plane exploded, Like, oh, there's that giant pig on the plane too. I felt so bad for the pig.

They like spend a moment with this gigantic, freaking peg. That's like part like absolutely like this is this is the kind of thing that you cut out of a movie because it doesn't make any sense, and I'm amazed that it's still there, Like you get to the editing room and go, what the hell is what does this pig have to do with anything? It hasn't exactly nothing to do with anything in the film. And they spend a couple of moments on the peg before they take off in this plane, and then the plane explodes, and and there was a part of me just like so worked up about like oh, my god, the peg like died in a fire. It's burned up all the way up.

Yeah, I was like bacon on that. And then then then and then we haven't mentioned Zakis Moke, who shows up and I guess just kills Brad. Soliman's like he's like, hey, he'll last like a day, which is, you know less not as long as they left him out there. Probably they're like, oh well bye, I love him. Yeah.

This is such a This is such a strange movie, but one that, like you said, like it's fun in a way that things just fun and discombobulated in a way that like if movies like this, movies like this aren't allowed to come out like this anymore. No, they're not allowed to come out this is This is definitely like one of those last of the seventies like kind of misbegotten studio specials, uh, you know, where just a lot of money was thrown into something that never quite makes sense, but nevertheless. I mean I put it in a in a category with something like The Whiz U, which is another like gigantic spectacle nineteen seventies movie. I mean, I think I think The whiz is ejectively like a worse film, but it's a compulsively watchable movie because all these images and like this crazy music and like the miscasting of Diana Ross and like front of you know, all all this stuff is going on in a movie like that.

This is this is another one, and I guess we still get these kinds of films every so often, but it really is something where like bizarre tone was allowed to run free, because part of why I think of The Whiz is because like that's a movie that has some of the scariest shit in any movie ever. And I know The Wizard of Oz does as well, but there's something like distinctly unnerving about you know, those like weird puppets in the Subway for instance, and that nobody seemed to notice that this is like really running against the overall sort of tone. And I don't know, I love these like tonal disaster area kind of movies that I think we're more common like in the seventies because people took bigger swings and we're just more you know, cinema was more willing to incorporate like a bunch of weird tones.

You have, like great movies like Taxi Driver out of the nineteen seventies where laugh out loud and also like utterly horrifying within the same film, but it all, you know, fits together cohesively. A movie like this doesn't fit together cohesively. But the wildness of it is something that only is possible when you can have these like masterpieces that are of you know, such wild, differing kind of crazy tones. Well, and it's also I feel like now people would be apologizing for this, like this is unapologetic, Like I didn't see anybody going I'm sorry, I played a pirate in the island. It's like I had a great time fuck you, Like, oh yeah, no, this movie has big fuck you energy.

Yeah, I mean, which totally does. Like and if it had the ending that it should have had, then it really would have been like a big fuck you to the kind of establishment like and that's the thing, like if feels like the movie should have taken the establishment to task as far as possible, and it just for sure in delict why not give us that down with the fucking man like down with the man like fuck absolutely, Well, it's it's a very down with everybody kind of movie in an interesting way that I find kind of wonderful in this seventies moment or like seventies turning into eighties moments. So it's like nineteen eighty. Uh, you know, of course when they made this, Carter is still president, but like an eighty when it when it gets released, we're about to have, you know, big election for Reagan.

A lot of things have turned. And I do think that it's it's an artifact of that era in this weird way that like, first the pirates attack a boat full of hippies and just like slaughter them. Uh. And there's stuff about the drugs and that that also that of course brings out the eventually the drugs are are what draws in um the Coastguard to to find the pirates, and then the pirates murder the government they take on the Coastguard. Um, and so it's it's this really interesting sort of it's this really interesting sort of moment of being like no, we're we're like, you know, we're fine with these these like outsiders totally attacking the hippies who just a few years earlier might have been played as like really sympathetic, but in this movie they're not very sympathetic.

They're ridiculous. Uh and uh. And then later we're also going to totally attack the government. Um, and we're gonna put that big American flag behind the kid when he's pointing a gun at his dad. I love how mean they are to the hippies in this movie.

The one woman tries to leave and they just fucking murder her ass, just the whole none, bang bang bang, Like oh damn okay, Like they're fucking around and they have these little trials for people and judge them to be sinners and throw them off the boat. It's just like, oh, it's so good. Yeah, I love these pirates. No, this these are the pirates that I've been waiting for all months, and they did not disappoint. I mean again, like Frank, I could have had a movie where there's no Michael Caine and it's just those pirates doing pirates stuff, like oh a thousand percent.

I mean like, if there was to be a sequel to this movie, it should just be like this kind of band of pirates going around and attacking people in the most spectacular way, right, modern day weird pirates, anachronistic pirates like I just watch I just watched Swarm, and that's basically like, you know, a serial killer who in every episode is going to find new people to kill. And I kind of loved it, and I would I would love a series that's like The Island with these kind of pirates that's just like every episode they're gonna find somebody to go, you know, hijack and kill and you know, pillage and steal treasure and like you know, go crazy. Why not, right, Like these are the real pirates of the Caribbean, the real pirates of the Caribbean.

Yeah, Like Amazon's gotta get on it. They gotta they gotta make a series out of the Island. The I mean again, like I don't adapt stuff that's good or like you know or mainstream good. Oh you know, reredo stuff that like people didn't resonate with necessarily, because there is a story to be told here, Like there is, like we've we've talked until we're blue in the goddamn face of what the actual story is. Just because Peter Benchley didn't want to write his story the right way is not my fault or your fault.

I like how that's our big takeaway is like Peter Benchley just really like fucking staring him in the face, and it's like, no, never mind, like whatever that is. No, I'm not doing it, Like, okay, dude, why but in a weird way, that's also what that's That's like part of what I love about it. Like a better writer might not have been as this fucking insane. Yeah yeah, they might, like, you know, a cooler head would have prevailed to like rain in you know, some of this stuff. And uh and what is benchually added the kung food to the script?

Mind? Did Benchley added or did or did Richie? I don't know. I mean, I like, let's assume, let's assume if we don't know who did it, that it's got to be one of those two. I'd like to err on the side of bench because he's just putting weird shit in anyway, just weird shit.

Yeah, but the kung fu moment is just like amazing and that you know, I was enjoying myself pretty well up until that moment, but it was like, at this point, this movie can do no wrong, and like, even if it fails utterly after this, I will love this movie and in the future I'll watch it again. Up until the kung fu scene, but it keeps giving after the kung fu scene. That's definitely the high point of the film by far. The Kung Fu scene is where it truly becomes like the most the most bonkers and the most what I came for. Um.

But that said, it does not disappoint until pretty much the very end. Um it keeps it keeps delivering insane weirdness, uh with with this group of people that are uh just not what not not exactly what we would normally imagine or what we would get now. Uh and it just it feels so awesome and and and freeing to have this this this kind of um, you know, this a bad writing taken seriously by technicians who can deliver, you know, like Michael Ritchie and this this like group of filmmakers can actually deliver on this really crappy book script story. And that's, um, there's there's something wonderful about that. Well, you know, as someone who reads a lot, as I'm sure you do, like I love a good like just like paperback, Like yeah, you know, like I like a good like I read Brad Meltzer last year book of Book of Secrets.

There is no Book of Secrets in the book, which is the funniest part. But like it was like it was the most bombastic, weirdest book I've ever read, because it does nothing, says nothing, and it's like each chapter is like maybe five pages, but it's just like constantly moving and doing things and like just throwing weird shit at you constantly and like not waiting for you to go, oh this is strange, just like bombarding you with stuff. And in a lot of ways it's a testament to like the tension span of people now and like go go go, constantly need to see and be entertained. But I am I am a fan of that, and Peter Benchley very much is in that same camp of like just writing entertainment quality be damned, Like yeah it's not Michael Crichton, Okay, Like Michael Crichton.

Michael Crichton was entertaining but also could write like yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. No. Michael Crichton is like a great hack writer, h for real, Like the greatest hack writer of all time I think is Michael Crichton. Like he he elevates premises that were paperback premises to a movie that Steven Spielberg could direct, which I mean, I mean draw the parallel, because you know, I gotta say, like, so you got me into Jurassic Park now, but I am, and I guess um for our listeners, so they kind of have a sense of where I'm coming from. I will say that the absolutely best of the Jurassic Park movies is The Lost World, because it is the craziest, meanest, most sadistic of all those movies, and absolutely one thousand percent when Jeff Goldblum's daughter defeats dinosaurs with gymnastics, this is brilliant cinema.

I will not take any argument about it. You're wrong if you think that that's bad. That is objectively great and amazing, and this is the kind of astonishment that we deserve. I am a little disappointed that you are not going to bat for the third Jurassic Park movie, which has the best scene in any Jurassic Park movie, And I would like to preface my explanation of that scene with one word, Allen, the talking velociraptor in Jurassic Park three is like it existed to be in the trailer. It existed to be a weird little thing in the movie.

But it makes no sense and no place in any Jurassic Park movie does a talking dinosaur need to exist. But apparently we got it there. I'm there with you in spirit. But it's just, uh, Spielberg is so much more sadistic than Joe Johnston. And when Spielberg is let loose with like you know, because this comes up in Spielberg's films.

I mean like when people were surprised that the opening of Saving Private Ryan was like so horrifying, I was like, did you not watch Temple of Doom? Did you not watch Jurassic Park two? Like this, this guy is he can be really really nasty. I mean there's like part of what's great about Jaws is that as much as it's the family thing, uh, you know, that movie is nasty in a couple of moments like the you know when the when the um that kid gets eaten by the shark. Uh you know that is that is gnarly.

That is like not fucking around and is a genuinely upsetting kind of like horrifying thing. Spielberg can definitely be be sadistic, and the gleeful sadism uh delivered with like all the Spielberg pinash is great. But I am I am also here for Jurassic Park three, and I'm a believer in any movie where dinosaurs e people. So I'm with you. I do love the second one.

I mean the second one, the second one for me, Like I love everything about the first two movies, I'll be perfectly honest, like all the promotional stuff and just the color schemes of the movies and all everything about those first two movies, just like I was the right place, at the right time, the right age. But yeah, man, like those premises of those books are pretty schlocky, and Michael Crichton is just is just better enough than Peter Benchley, but like exactly, And I don't think of Michael Crichton as like a great writer. I think of him as a guy who has really fun ideas. Yes, like Timeline, Like go go read that book. Tell me that the movie isn't a pretty good approximation of the book, because yeah, the movie's not great, but neither is the book.

Yeah, like it's not a serious work of fiction. Motherfuckers, like they travel back in time and fight in medieval nights, like what do you want? Like what do you really want? Here? Well, so while we're on the super supermarket paperbacks, I'm just gonna throw out that I wish, I wish that there was an equivalent of the Island for a VC Andrew's novel, because like that trash is so delicious and so ready for cinema, But there has never been a Flowers in the Attic movie or anything that like came close to like delivering on the you know, ridiculous dream like fucked up incest porn promise of that trashy paperback series that like, you know, teenage girls throughout the seventies and eighties all carried around in their backpacks to school.

I have never heard of this book you were talking about. Oh my god, there's a whole world of them, and like, uh, they're they're special. I never I never read any of them until just like the last year. Uh, and I read them for research for a project uh that that I'm you know trying to write. You know, we'll see where it goes.

Uh. But uh, they they were they were this thing that like these older cousins of mine when I was like a little kid, uh, you know, carried around and they had there are these paperbacks that have little windows in the cover. Uh. So that so there's like a picture of a house with a window, and then but it's like a literal window. So you open it up, there's a hole in the cover to like then show a picture of these like sad, weird kids, you know.

Inside. At any rate, there are these like gothic novels for like sullen teens. Um. They're really trashy and gross. Uh.

They were huge hit and all these like teenage girls read them and uh and and like I had this fascination with them because basically every teenage girl that I had a crush on from the age of eight to like nineteen at some point carry it around. Uh, you know, m VC Andrews novel um and uh. And it was it was like that those those books became this kind of like weird siren song to me. Interesting. Yeah, So they're they're but they're they're like they were popular with teenagers, but they're not appropriate.

Like they're they're they're sort of you know, very much like Peter Benchley is just going to go to weird, growdy places. Uh, you know, in a story that's just supposed to be about a shark and defending a town from a shark, he's got to do like you know, ridiculous kind of uh, you know, gross sex between Chief Brody's wife and Matt Hooper. Similarly, these VC Andrews novels just are like little a little too gross with these stories about you know, children locked in an attict together, you know, by by family members, and like the naughty things that they get up to. Um, yeah, really really gnarly. But it's a it's a kind of supermarket pulp that I think Benchley is is in that category.

And I think he was lucky enough to one, of course, get Jaws, which hit the jackpot. You get one of the greatest American movies of all time made out of out of your dumb ass novel. And then The Island actually captures the sort of supermarket paperback like sleazy, gnarly, tonally obtuse, you know, kind of spirit and just delivers the goods cinematically, a much better movie than book, but in the way that the movie is better, it also captures the book, whereas the movie of Jaws leaves everything in the book behind. But I was gonna say, like, when I think about Jaws, like it really is like the mic rib of movies. Like, I mean, the source material is fine, but like the product on the other end is like barely recognizable to what it was meant to be.

Like, yeah, that movie is so different but so much elevated beyond where like hog slop deserved. I'm not saying the book is hog slop, but like compared to the way, like compared to the way the movie at least talked about though, like Jaws is considered like an American classic, like in the nobody talks about the book. Nobody, nobody, nobody, noboddy's talking about the book. Ever, like some people probably even forget that it is a book, Like yeah, yeah, probably, Like um Spielberg does what Spielberg does way too well, like in a lot of ways, like he Jurassic Park. The book is good, Jurassic Park the movie is good.

They're not very good versions of one another, but because it's Steven Spielberg, it's good on its own. Yeah, Like that's that's just that's what it is. Like Peter Benchley and Michael Crichton both really lucked out. Let's just put it that way. I would love if Steven Spielberg adapted my book.

I mean the Watchamjigie, the other guy tried and Steven Spielberg couldn't work the magic for a third time. The what's the dude. The Ready Player One Ernest Klein, Oh right, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's like like, you know, he can work his magic up into a point. But now that's some hog slop. Sorry.

I have very strong opinions about that book. Yeah. I couldn't. I couldn't read it. I have uh you know the somebody told me about it and I was so repulse.

Putts doesn't excite you, Yeah, I mean it was. It's yeah, like I don't have that many limits, but like Ready Player one is one of my limits, and like the Human Centipede is another where it's just like all I have to know is the premise and I'm out. I'm out. It's fair. That's fair.

That's very fair. But two very different sides of the coin, but bare nonetheless so Spencer. Final thoughts on Peter Benchley's The Island. Oh uh, I love it. I love it.

It's um, you know, ridiculous. It's not it is not a good movie, but it's a lovable movie. Uh. It is not a bad movie, but it's a very it is a very weird, exciting like this is this is the thing that we talk about when we talk about pault films. Like, you know, I love I love The Princess Bryan as much as the next guy or whatever.

But like that's not a cult movie that it kind of gets treated as a sort of uh you know, cult movie sometimes, but uh, this is this is the kind of like this is this is like a real like old school kind of uh cult film before people tried to make them cult, you know, right out of the gate, uh, or or before we called certain movies, uh you know, sort of cult because they didn't make much money initially and then became like you know, big big sorts of of classics. This is you know, a real cult film is a little bit broken. So like to go back to something like The Princess Bride, that's a that's that's like a really perfected film. It's beautiful, it's great. It has like to the degree that it has um a sort of cultish devotion that people have given to it.

Uh you know, awesome. Uh. I feel kind of the same about a movie like uh, Harold and Maud, Like that's not a broken film. That's that's uh you know, it has it has a darkness to it that makes it not necessarily to everybody's taste, and it had a cult in um in that it opened poorly and then eventually ended up in uh, you know, in in like this Minnesota theater for a really really long time. But but The Island is something a little bit more into the true crazy cult zone of a movie.

That's a bit that's that's uh, you know, flawed and broken. But the flaws and the brokenness about it actually are what make it like really really exciting. Um uh you know, for that matter, like a rocky horror picture show. That's another call that that has a certain kind of cult for the performance and everything. But as a film, I think it's just it's actually like kind of too good, uh in a way, like a really really great cult film has to be broken.

Um and uh. And so that's that's that's the basis of my love for uh, The Island. It's it's uh, it's an island of misfit toys, and I'm here for it. No, I agree with you. I feel like the term cult movie gets thrown around a lot, and this movie is ripe for reappraisal, and I think a lot of people would resonate with the weirdness of this movie.

And again, Michael Caine's career being what it is, and him being kind of a meme. I mean, anybody who's anybody who can have an impersonation done of them is memable or at least mimetic to most people. So, you know, Michael Caine, I think being in this movie should bring more eyes to it. But I think, yeah, this is a movie that is a lot more fun than I was expecting, and it goes places that I wasn't expecting, and that yields up a tone that is all over the place. And I think you're right, totally problematic movies and again, totally problematic based on Western film practices.

Yeah, right, Like any of those movies tend to have a different audience that's willing to or wanting to ignore the genre conventions of whatever cinema you happen to be a part of. So I'm with you. This movie was a lot of fun. I had a lot of fun with it. I wish it had ended differently, but ultimately, by the end of it, I was having a good time.

And I think, you know, is everybody on screen having a good time? I don't know, but there the performances seem to be committing one and I can't. I can't, I can't say anything but praise for pretty much everything but the ending for this movie, because yeah, it's a weird movie and it doesn't really work in parts, but it works enough that I had a good time. And hey, watching a child murder an adult right after a guy bites a bunch of pirates using kung fu, manh yeah, I can't none wrong with that. I now frig frig has entered by lexicon freig frig.

I think that's that's I mean, like we barely even mentioned it, but there's like a whole language they created. This movie is just it. There's a lot going on, so check it out for sure. If you're if you're on the fence it is you will definitely have fun at least, which you know, in this day and age, like having fun is like three quarters of the battle. So absolutely.

Yeah. So on that note, let's take a break and we'll play a preview for the next culture cast. I got my feet on those sides of the fence. I planted them there a long time ago. Sometimes I see you look, come into your eyes.

I can't explain it. It's like something terrible is happening to you deep down inside. All I can do is wait, until I split right down the middle schizophrenia acute, advanced and curable. Don't say I'm not that kind of guy, because you just don't know within the mind of this man, within your mind lurks and evil screaming to be set free? Are you all right?

Stacy Keach being the Killer Inside Me? So it's right. In the culture casts, we're gonna be taking a look at a movie that comes from a book, because all the culture cast next month are movies based off of books. We're gonna be talking about the adaptation of Jim Thompson's The Killer Inside not the Casey Affleck one though, oh, talking about the Stacy Keach one from Yeah, I know that the Casey Affleck one is not very good and I've watched parts of it, and I have no interest in watching Casey Affleck, so I don't have any interest in watching Ben Affleck either. It's an Affleck thing.

So so we'll be talking about The Killer Inside Me until then, Spencer, where can people find you if they were looking for you around around the internet? Where you know? I guess until I am not and never will be verified on Twitter? But that that that flaming dumpster fire that still goes on. You can find me there at Spencer Underscore Parsons where I'm I'm going by zaman King because I might as well because Zalman King's not alive to complain and I am.

I am unverified. You don't want to pay to get verified? You know that I have big benefit. The big benefit that the Elon Musk is now offering for getting verified is like, only if you're verified will you get for you? And it's like nobody likes for you.

I'm cheering. I was like, yeah, no, of course, no, of course not now, like I don't want that cluttering up. I don't want that for you, polum anymore, Like, please take that away. Oh he's a smart businessman. He's much smarter than the rest of us.

Okay, Like he knows what he's doing. He's running Twitter into the ground intentionally, we swear wink. Wait, God, I fucking hate social media, so good on you for mentioning it, but I'm not going to You can find me at weirding Way Media dot com, where this show and all the other shows I work on can be found. So that's where you should go for that. As for this show, culturecast dot com, Patreon, dot com like rate and review the show.

You've heard me say it before, I'll say it again and I just did. Spencer, thank you so much for joining me. It's a blast. As always, thank you so much fun. I'm glad I got to see this movie.

Yeah, I'm glad that you thought this was something else too. I'm glad that that I didn't even I didn't even comment on that, but I'm so glad you were, like, I think this is gonna be one thing, and it is not that I know, I love that and that that that you enjoyed this. I feel like it's just that's icing on the cake for me. So I certainly was for me too. Yeah.

So as always, well, we'll catch you on the next episode.