zardoz-13
"Six-Gun Music" director Nate Watt's mediocre exploitation melodrama "Fiend of Dope Island" amounts to little more than a tawdry, little B-movie thriller toplining ex-"Tarzan" thespian Bruce Bennett and former Miss Yugoslavia Tania Velia. Mind you, "Fiend of Dope Island" lives up to its bizarre title. The protagonist is the eponymous fiend, and he believes he is invincible. One sympathetic character notes in regard to Charlie that "there is a thin line between human and beast." At another one, the same character observes in reference to Charlie: "If this guy is human, nature made a terrible boo-boo." Just as there is a beast in "Fiend of Dope Island," there is also a beauty. Miss Yugoslavia looks very sexy as she undulates on the dance floor in a cute little black outfit. Late in the last quarter-hour, she appears nude from the waist up briefly when she emerges from the water with her breasts bared. No, "Fiend of Dope Island" doesn't qualify as a 'so-bad-it's-good' movie because Watt helms it with some competence. Primarily, it constitutes a portrait of a lunatic who has jettisoned his sense of morality in an island climate where he lets his desires run rampant. Basically, "Fiend" concerns a sleazy, sadistic landowner, Charlie Davis (Bruce Bennett of "Tarzan and the Green Goddess"), who has been ruling over an anonymous Caribbean island like an maniacal autocrat for five years. Charlie suffers from an acute anger management affliction. He relies on a bullwhip as his weapon of choice, and he loves to display his wizardry with its coils. If lashing harmless natives into submission with a bullwhip weren't odious enough, Charlie grows not only marijuana, but he also participates in arms smuggling. Predictably, Charlie is nobody's friend, and the locals loathe his antics. As the film unfolds, he bullwhips a poor native without mercy. "Look," he summarizes his philosophy, "nobody touches nothing on this island unless I say so. Everything here belongs to me. You got to understand that." Charlie treats everybody like slaves. Charlie's right hand man, David (Robert Bray of "A Gathering of Eagles"), supervises the laborers. Charlie tries to spice up his mundane existence by importing a dancer, Glory La Verne (Tania Velia of "Queen of Outer Space"), to perform for him. Glory took $500 from Charlie up front. No sooner has she arrived at the island than Glory finds fault with her surroundings. Moreover, she hates Charlie for luring her to the island under the false pretense that she would perform for a hundred of the most important individuals in America and Europe. Charlie tries to ameliorate Glory's feelings by offering her cigarettes laced with marijuana, but she refuses to smoke them. Eventually, David organizes the opposition against Charlie. First, he blows up an arms supply of mortars, machine guns, and rifles. Second, he disarms all of Charlie's henchmen and turns the firearms over to the oppressed island natives. David and the natives keep Charlie holed up in his cantina. When he tries to venture outside, they shoot at him and drive him back inside the cantina. Later, their evil adversary strikes at David's relief crew who were warned not to fall asleep. Charlie strangles one with a bullwhip and takes his rifle. Meanwhile, David explains to the doctor that Charlie is involved in something bigger than even he realizes. David elaborates that there are twenty other small islands like Charlie's island where guns, ammunition, and explosives are being stockpiled. Remember, the Caribbean was a powder keg during the late 1950s and early 1960s. Consequently, scenarists Mark Carabel and Bruce Bennett appropriated the volatile attitude that surrounded the Caribbean with all the uprisings that occurred in that part of the world during the Cold War. Essentially, Charlie is a low-grade "Dr. No" type. Towards the end, Glory and David fall in love. A jealous Charlie sneaks up on in the jungle as they hold each other in their arms. He lashes out with his bullwhip, wraps it around the defenseless couple, and forces them to dance when he aims a rifle at them. By this point, Charlie has gone hopelessly insane. Glory rushes back to the village and alerts them that Charlie is loose and trying to kill David. She sends out a native boy, Naru (Ralph A. Rodriguez of "Nightforce"), and he seizes Charlie's whip when the villain has the hero in his clutches. Earlier, Naru was shown practicing with a fake whip. Now, Naru goes to work on Charlie with the whip, and Watt and editor James Gaffney cross-cut between Naru lashing Charlie to images of lightning crackling against the night skies and waves angrily crashing on the beach. This generates a modicum of suspense and terror. Our heroes subdue Charlie. When his accomplice, Captain Fred (Miguel Ángel Álvarez of "Counterplot"), arrives at the island the next day. Our heroes try to hand Charlie over to him. Captain Fred's men brandish firearms, and David and Charlie fall into the water and tangle. Naru and others overpower disarm Captain Fred, but the latter escapes while Charlie and David thrash about in the water. Sharks cruise into the waters where they are fighting each other. The shark look like they were lifted from a documentary, but these shots serve their purpose. David escapes their lethal jaws, but Charlie fares less fortunate in the end.The biggest surprise in this gritty, 76-minute, black & white epic is the revelation in the last minute during an expository scene between two supporting characters that David holds the rank of Inspector with the Bureau of Narcotics. The performances are adequate, with former Warner Brothers' contract player Bruce Bennett chewing the scenery a little when he isn't doing his Lash La Rue imitation. Robert Bray is appropriately restrained as the taciturn hero. "Fiend of Dope Island" ends with Glory and David in each other's arms on the beach as the natives sing the Ken Darby song "Forever Hold Me" that opened the picture.
MartinHafer
Charlie Davis owns an island in the Caribbean. There, he keeps a group of Hispanic people in virtual slavery--toiling on is marijuana plantation. On the island, he mostly beats the snot out of everyone with his whip and he has the personality of Attila the Hun with a very, very bad toothache! Why his armed guards don't just kill him, I don't understand--especially since he beats them, too!Oddly, a blonde Yugoslavian bombshell gets stranded on the island (now THAT does not happen every day). At first, Charlie is pretty sweet. However, later, after having a few drinks, he becomes a crazed rapist and is only stopped when she belts him over the head with a statue. Only minutes later, he awakens and has a hilarious scene where he runs about having a giant temper tantrum--screaming, yelling, bounding about and acting like a jerk (you really have to see it to believe it--it was worse than Michael Richards during his comedy club rant or Courtney love just being Courtney Love). Into this mess comes David, who pounds Charlie to a pulp--but never stops to tie him up or kill him. This is a stupid cliché--I would have ended Charlie's reign of terror right there and then. Instead, David and his new allies spend most of the rest of the film keeping Charlie bottled up in his hut--shooting at but deliberately missing him when he tries to come out to play.Watch it yourself to see the thrilling conclusion or just to watch Bruce Bennett overact in a manner that almost defies description--it's all good. Well, when I say "good", I don't necessarily mean well made--it is a cheap and silly film after all. I mean good in the sense that it's good for a laugh because of the histrionics and clever ways the director figured out how to "accidentally" show off Ms. Velia's breasts. As for Tania Velia (as the blonde), she really has only two purposes to be in the film--to provide sexual tension and to briefly expose her breasts. Why they put this Yugoslavian into the film is beyond me, but she sure must have needed the money!Overall, it's bad but in a highly entertaining way. I knew it was crap but still found it all very watchable--a must for bad movie fans.By the way, Bennett COULD act, as I just saw him in THE COSMIC MAN--where he was quite sane and a good bit calmer! If you get a chance, read Bennett's biography on IMDb--he was a fascinating man.
