Terminal Island

It was really weird to see Tom Selleck and the black guy from Magnum P.I. in a movie together considering I have never seen either one of them in anything else. Do they always work together or was this the only time? I'll probably never know. Anyway, I wasn't expecting much from this movie and I was pleasantly surprised.Strangely, they start the movie with a news team and make it look like they will be a big part of the story but their part is done before the opening credits roll. I assume it's an original plot, although it's very similar to how Australia became a country. The fight scenes we're a bit weak, you could easily see that nobody was really getting hit, but the story was good enough to make up for it. It was a little predictable too but most movies are. I thought it was weird that there was so much nudity and so little swearing, they usually go hand in hand.It was also a bit weird that the woman who was the main character for most of the movie isn't even in the final few minutes but maybe it was just an editing mistake. This is a good movie, watch it.

Minor drive-in classic concerns the replacement of capitol punishment with exile to a guarded island. Men and women alike must fend for themselves in this rugged terrain(which looks like paradise to me).

TERMINAL ISLAND takes full advantage of it's many opportunities to present titties and sexual situations. If, for some strange reason, that doesn't manage to hold your attention, there's equal portions of violent action for good measure...it's a more professionally appointed example of it's type, and should manage to please many folks outside the trash-cinemaphile radius.

A sleazy, cheesy champion of drive-in splendor. 6/10.

Remember Escape From New York? Eight years previously, in 1973, Terminal Island did the exact same idea. Not nearly as well, but hey - being first count for something, too! TI is an exploitation film when being an exploitation film was cool. As such, it has certain shortcoming inherent to the genre, such as street talking tough black guy, the psychotic white chauvinist pig, and the heroic woman, overcoming oppression with sagacity and perserverence. I can live with those stereotypes, but I can't bear the background music leftover from a 1970's porn movie!

Marta Kristen finally gets to play the part of an action hero - quite a leap from the laid back Judy Robinson role she is best known for. She fights and blows things up and knows how to create gunpowder from nature. Very cool.

For an exploitation flick that seems to make itself up as it goes, TERMINAL ISLAND begins creatively enough, much like the same years' WESTWORLD with random interviews about the title location...

In this case, based on the actual California death penalty being overturned (making The Manson Family eligible for parole soon after), random people are asked what they think of the prison island alternative, like ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK after while based on the infamous Devil's Island, where murderous convicts are left to their own devices...

Providing a terrifically intense/lovely lead actress in DAN AUGUST black secretary Ena Hartman, with enough blaxploitation/woman-in-prison Pam Grier-esque gusto to completely rule her own feature...

But a real life injury curbed her starring role... plus there are more men on the island, including a monotone, horribly misplaced Tom Selleck as a passive doctor and his future MAGNUM PI chopper pilot Roger E. Mosely, better suited as one of the bullying alpha-males using the women like sexual slaves...

But by the time this urgent plot-line develops, providing Hartman a dilemma she must overcome, quickly, she and other starlets... including spacey brunette Barbara Leigh and intense blondes Phyllis Davis and scene-stealer Marta Kristen (in the Roberta Collins-style tough girl role)... are rescued by black gentleman Don Marshall, leading into what what feels like another movie altogether...

Two actually, within two separate camps: the bad and the good, and neither really connect...

Although former Roger Corman collaborator Stephanie Rothman directs in an intense enough manner so that the survival sequences are partially intriguing...

Making TERMINAL ISLAND several half-decent islands to themselves - despite ultimately becoming atoll on the audience.

The Supreme Court outlawed the death penalty. California created Terminal Island from San Bruno Island to exile the death row inmates. Bobby killed his bank robbery posse. Lee Phillips blew up a bank. A.J. is a cop killer. Bunny Campbell killed her parents with an ice pick. Julian Dylan is a biker. Joy poisoned her husband. Dr. Norman Milford (Tom Selleck) committed a mercy killing. Roy Teale is a serial killer. Carmen is the new inmate sent to Terminal Island. Bobby rules the main camp with an iron fist and Monk (Roger E. Mosley) is his second in command. The women are used as sex slaves.

I wanted to check this out after Selleck mentioned it on a late-night talk show. It's a violent low-budget exploitation T&A B-movie. There is a surprising number of hot babes serving death sentences. It's cheesy bad but it is almost watchable for its badness. The acting is generally weak and the overall filmmaking is poor. Selleck has a full beard. It doesn't keep my interest all the way to the end.