The Secret of Seagull Island

In Rome an English woman called Barbara looks for her blind sister, who has mysteriously vanished. There have been a series of murders of young blind women and there are a couple of male suspects, one of whom owns the private Seagull Island, situated between Corsica and Sardinia. Barbara is a feisty woman who isn't afraid to trespass and put her life in real danger. I had never heard of this movie but the wonderful title caught my attention, a big thank you to Talking Pictures TV UK for screening this obscure film. Originally filmed as a British/Italian TV mini series the running time of 300 minutes have been reduced to 102 for the movie. There are a few instances where the plot suddenly skips forward but on the whole I think that they did a decent job in shedding 200 minutes of footage and turning a TV series into a single movie. I really enjoyed seeing the Italian locations and all the old classic cars from that period. IMDb classes this under genre as adventure, drama, mystery, romance and thriller but fails to mention horror, there are several jump scares, it is suspenseful and the finale is pure psycho horror. I would even use the term Giallo to classify it. The acting is not of a terribly high standard (maybe some Italians were dubbed into English) but what does impress is the Tony Hatch musical score. He is a very highly regarded and prolific English composer, having worked on over 100 movies and countless TV shows, the theme tune to the Aussie soap "Neighbours" being one of my favourites. I did enjoy my trip to Seagull Island, I'm in no hurry to go back but for fans of mystery horror it's a destination that is worth visiting at least once.

The Secret of Seagull Island is a UK/Italian television series hacked down to a movie with added Giallo and some underwater diving scenes.

Barbara Carey (Prunella Ransome) has arrived in Rome to visit her blind concert pianist sister Marianne. Only she has gone missing. The third blind girl in recent months.

With the help of Martin Foster (Nicky Henson). From the British Consul who involves the police. Barbara investigates and she follows a lead to the private island of millionaire David Malcolm (Jeremy Brett) by pretending to be blind. David has a son who is deformed and Malcolm wants to help his son by bringing him blind women to befriend.

Meanwhile the police have been finding bodies of women with their eyes gouged at. Barbara gets attacked by seagulls on the island.

The movie does not make much sense because it was cut down. Even Brett's hamming cannot save this. It falls of a cliff by the end with a sub Psycho routine.

Not surprised that this was cobbled together from a TV series as it was a bit disjointed. Although a fair bit shorter than the TV series it was too long to watch in the one go, as a longer TV series watched once a week it would have been a better experience.

I was surprised by Nicky Henson's performance as his parts tend to be of the chasing the girls but he was good in this, he may have been too old in 1982 to be still chasing girls of course.

The ending was very poorly done and a very bad ending, it was done much better in, you know what once you've seen this film.

Not worth watching, you have been warned.

I have wanted to see the series for many years. I got the opportunity to acquire the film, a slightly trimmed down version of the series.

It's a decent watch, a pretty good mystery, beautiful setting and fine performances. Overall I was a little let down by the film overall, partly because of the slightly predictable conclusion, but it's generally good until then.

Jeremy Brett is by far and away the star of the show, overflowing in charisma and personality, he was strikingly handsome back in the day, he draws you in. Prunella Ransome is also fantastic, believable as the desperate traveller seeking her sister.

I wonder if the pacing in the series would have been better, it's not worthy of cult status, but hopefully one day it will receive a full commercial release. 6/10

Despite sounding like an Enid Blyton adventure, this Italian/UK co-production is actually a murder/mystery. Originally made as a TV series called simply Seagull Island, it was later released as a feature film, with the whole five episodes trimmed to a 1hr 42 mins runtime. Barbara - an English woman - receives a letter from her sister, Marianne, asking her to travel to Italy and meet her in Rome. When Barbara arrives she finds Marianne has booked out of her hotel unexpectedly, leaving no message. She enlists British Consul Martin to help search, and discovers Marianne may have travelled to Naples with English ex-pat millionaire David Malcom. However, Marianne is blind - and recent unsolved murders of other blind women lead Barbara and Martin to fear for her safety.

The three leads are British - Jeremy Brett (David Malcolm), Prunella Ransome (Barbara), and Nicky Henson (Martin). The rest of the cast are almost all Italian, with several faces/names familiar from genre/exploitation films of the 70s and 80s. The basic story's not bad, and the leads are good. However, it suffers badly from having so much material cut, leaving some continuity not making sense (e.g. Characters suddenly changing location), as well as dialogue obviously having been removed within scenes. Still, Brett manages to be as riveting as ever (four years later he would become immortalised as arguably the definitive Sherlock Holmes). There's very little gore (although we do get a pretty convincing shot of an eyeless corpse weighed down underwater by a concrete block), and almost no nudity. However, the stunning underwater photography deserves a mention, as does the score (by well-known UK TV theme composer, Tony Hatch). 4.5/10.