Review of Terminal Island (1973) by Scott R — 22 Jan 2017

Never actually seen this well known grindhouse film and was a bit disappointed. It has a cool "Escape from New York" like set up, years before John Carpenter ever made this classic film. In this film, in order to save tax payers money, murderers are now sent to a Terminal Island where they are left to make their own violent world.

To make things even cooler, the film features Tom Selleck and Roger E. Mosley who both went on to star in "Magnum, P.I." The film also features some cool Rambo-like jungle traps, also well before "First Blood" ever came out.

However, the film is painfully low budget and does not feature any memorable characters outside of maybe Selleck's doctor who was imprisoned for a mercy killing, and in the end seems amateurishly made.

Though I was not impressed with director/co-writer Stephanie Rothman who was one a only a handful of exploitation film directors. She's no Doris Wishman, but she did make quite a few exploitation films that you've heard of ("The Velvet Vampire" "The Student Nurses" "Blood Bath") even if they weren't quite classics.

Overall, this film had a better concept than was the actual film, which is pretty standard for most 70s exploitation films.