Battle of Blood Island (1960)
** 1/2 (out of 4)
American GI's Moe (Richard Devon) and Ken (Ron Gans) are the only survivors of their platoon and they wash up on an island held by the Japanese. Ken has been left crippled so it's up to Moe to do everything from finding food and shelter to making sure the bad guys don't hear them. As the two stay on the island long their anger towards each other grows.
BATTLE OF BLOOD ISLAND had Roger Corman as Executive Producer so that should tell you what to expect. The film was obviously working on a very low-budget and it was meant to be the second of a double feature with of course the first movie being of a bigger budget. With all of that in mind, I found the film to be entertaining for what it was but there are no questions that it did feature some flaws.
I think the best thing for the film was the story by Joel M. Rapp, which he adapted from a short story by Philip Roth. I thought Rapp was very smart with the screenplay since he was working with very little money. This meant you couldn't stage large action scenes but instead everything had to be done on a small scale. I liked the way the story developed and I'd argue that the character development was good as well. Both Devon and Gans were good in their role and this added to the entertainment value as well.
This here was one of a number of films that Corman shot in Puerto Rico and the locations certainly helped the film. With the low-budget that means there aren't any large action scenes or anything like that so one shouldn't go into this expecting anything like that. The film ran a short 63-minutes and even at that there were some moments that dragged. With that said, BATTLE OF BLOOD ISLAND was a decent little picture.
