Unknown Island (1948)

Almost 50 years before "Jurassic Park..." an amateur photographer, his fiancee and their companions take a perilous journey to a place where dinosaurs, giant sloths and other prehistoric creatures thrive. Filmed in vibrant Cinecolor at a time when many movies were confined to black and white and featuring eye-popping special effects, "Unknown Island," directed by Jack Bernhard, offers a thrilling look at modern man's confrontation with the primordial past.

Unknown Island

Dinosaurs and bad special effects.... It's a laugh a minute. Buy it! You'll like it! July 29, 2008

Clasic Cheapo Dino Film

A classic cheapo dinosaur movie with guys in rubber suits that sometimes look pretty cool, but often pretty crappy. The plot is thin, the script is not too swift, and the acting is campy and melodramatic at best. Plus, the color does look more like two-strip Technicolor than an actual modern color process. Yet, despite all this, the movie is good, dopey fun, and a must-see for any connoisseurs of dino movies, rubber suit monsters, or 50s pseudo sci-fi. While not nearly as good as The Land Unknown, this is still a fun flick that I'm glad to have in my collection, and this Image DVD is a very good print of it. Look for the star of The Creature of the Black Lagoon as the former drunkard hero and the cop from The Maltese Falcon as the drunk and out-of-control captain. Enjoy! May 8, 2008

A really fun island/jungle adventure!

I really enjoyed this film, although I never saw it in my youth. It was shot in Cinecolor which, I think, must have been a "two-strip" process. As a result you see a lot of cheesy pastels but the skin tones are great. Now granted, the monsters are pretty hokey in this one and it's clear that the "beach" is a studio one... but, somehow, I still liked it. This flick is sort of a King Kong rip-off with no central monster to love or to hate. So, the principals shoot at darn near every one that they see. There are some cool weapons and the casting is near perfect, even though there are no big stars here. All in all, as a baby boomer and horror/sci-fi film nut, I find this film a nice nostalgic return to the good old days. October 5, 2007

A little gem from the past

They sure dont make movies like this anymore,, and if they did, it would be
pretty hard to secure a budget... Im glad that they did make these movies, as
they were our source of entertainment. I would rather see cheap monster
movies than gangster or war movies that were all the rage in the 60's.
There were much better creature movies out there, but only this one had
those weird dinosaurs. I just got the DvD version, and again am i pleased
with the quality, the color, the music. Its pretty bare bone dvd, without
any bonus stuff....
July 4, 2007

Great nostalgia....

"Unknown Island"....Not as awesome or frightening as when I first saw it as an 8-year old in 1948 at the Centro Theatre on 77th and Central in South Central Los Angeles....but well worth the few bucks I paid for this treasure of memories.
johnnie June 2, 2007

More reviews at Amazon.com ...