Straying from his usual racially-driven blaxploitation, Jim Brown in I ESCAPED FROM DEVIL'S ISLAND is not only pure exploitation, attempting to bank on the popularity of the novel turned adapted motion picture PAPILLON about a French prisoner who escapes this movie's titular island, but it's practically an outright remake...
Jim Brown has the Steve McQueen part, strong, brave, and escape-minded while the weak-link Dustin Hoffman sidekick part goes to Christopher George, a passive progressive that Brown has to carry (while semi-strong arms Robert Phillips and James Luisi both fill Woodrow Palfrey's middleman shoes), and, starting from the beach-set makeshift prison, where brutal guard Richard Rust (UNDERWORLD USA) reigns, there's even a resilient homosexual escapee...
The budget is excruciatingly low, almost a no-budget indie, resembling more of PAPILLON author Henri Charrière's 1971 heist-flick THE BUTTERFLY AFFAIR, each being nearly impossible to see the actors or their actions at night -- although much of this initial escape's under bright sunlight, lying on familiar makeshift-coconut rafts: which ends the McQueen feature and is the center-piece here (meanwhile a stock footage manipulated shark attack is included)...
Thereafter, much of the rather sluggish adventure takes place in what's intended as the jungles of Venezuela (actually shot in Acapulco, funded by producer Roger Corman) where, like McQueen, Brown's given his own Indian girl for sex and a cozy hut... even better than the criminal life in homeland France, which -- during the 11th hour at a colorful carnival - only Christopher George yearns for, but not without Brown's further assistance, doing his usual action-blasting thing, and even a nostalgic football tackle in what seems more fun to have filmed than to actually watch -- after all, who wouldn't rather work in the tropics than the slums?
