No sooner has Bill reunited with tribe leader Ramu (Alfonso Carvajal, who played the same role in the last film) than Myra is kidnapped by Dr.
Much later, Foster returns to the island with a reporter in tow, Myra (Celeste Yarnall, who passed away in October of this year). It rampages, as is its wont, spilling gasoline everywhere, and Foster is flung from the boat just as it explodes, killing Sheila and Carlos (who are never seen, since Angelique Pettyjohn and Ronaldo Valdez didn’t return for this round). Picking up right where the last film left off, Ashley’s Bill Foster is leaving Blood Island on a boat on which the monster has stowed away. Beast of Blood announces itself immediately as a direct sequel to Mad Doctor, which is interesting, given that previous films showed no interest in continuity. There’s nothing artsy or attractive here, just lean, mean exploitation. The final film, however, is directed by Romero alone, and it shows – for better and worse. When, in the finale, she slumps slowly down with flames climbing the walls around her, satisfied that her vengeance is complete, the image is unusually potent – de Leon had a good eye.Įddie Garcia as Dr. She has nude scenes (including some completely unnecessary skinny dipping), but she also has the meatiest part. As Marla, Alicia Alonzo makes the strongest impression, perhaps because, unlike everyone else, she seems to consist of more than two dimensions. Lorca conducts his experiments looks like something from a Gilligan’s Island episode. Presumably this was to disguise the cheapness of the monster makeup, though it really looks no worse than anything else that would have been on drive-in screens at the time. This might as well be called MigraineVision.
Another gimmick runs throughout the film: whenever the monster is about to attack, the camera begins to zoom in and out wildly. Packets of the stuff were actually distributed to theaters for brave audience members to try.
A William Castle-like introduction from the original release urges audience members to partake in the “Oath of Green Blood,” showing groovy teenagers smiling at each other and drinking together from vials of green liquid while an oath to be recited by the audience scrolls up the screen. Of course, it all just feels like a harmless drive-in romp. The sex and gore elements are even more explicit than in Brides, as exemplified in the cold open, which involves a fully nude island native running through the jungle pursued by the green-blooded monster later, partially nude characters are graphically dismembered by the fiend. In “Mad Doctor of Blood Island,” a creature with green blood stalks his prey. Foster, Sheila, and her father in investigating the killings – the crime scenes are stained with green blood – while romancing the mysterious Marla (Alicia Alonzo), who holds a secret of her own. The creature’s son, Carlos (Ronaldo Valdez), joins Dr. With this technique he once hoped to treat a man with leukemia, but instead turned him into a rampaging green monster. Lorca (Ronald Remy), and his experiments with chlorophyll injections. This latter plot is something of a red herring, as the real melodrama unfolding on the island involves a mad scientist, Dr. Bill Foster, who comes to Blood Island with his assistant Sheila Willard (Angelique Pettyjohn) to investigate strange happenings and also to find her father (Tony Edmunds), whom she hasn’t seen since she was a child.
#MAD DOCTOR OF BLOOD ISLAND TV#
John Ashley, the would-be teen heartthrob from many American beach movies, is once again the lead, now establishing himself as a key partner in sleazy exploitation Ashley would linger in the Philippines as an actor and producer with films like The Big Doll House (1971), Beast of the Yellow Night (1971) and The Twilight People (1972), and eventually produce TV shows like The A-Team, Something is Out There, and Walker, Texas Ranger.
Mad Doctor of Blood Island (1969) is, like Brides, co-directed by Filipino directors Gerry de Leon (the artsy one) and Eddie Romero (the shameless one). Having already taken a look at the first two titles in Severin’s limited edition box set The Blood Island Collection – Terror is a Man (1959) and Brides of Blood (1968) – let’s move on to our last pair of Blood Island adventures new on Blu-ray.
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