Sherparsa
Up until when the 4 prisoners escape and end up in another island, the movie is tolerable enough, although at the rather heavy price of forgiving quite a number of flaws in both the story as well as the movie making style ...but when they reach the leper colony and then Jim Brown 'wins' that village woman after he kills her husband in self-defense and the movie starts copying the famous (mostly fake stories) book and its movie Papillon almost frame by frame, i just quit watching it seriously and started checking my emails and Facebook account and doing other stuff ... (and i wouldn't have given it more than 3/10 * anyway! actually, even the movie Papillon itself isn't much of a thing really compared to its book but it does beat this one surely, which was screened about a month after the original reportedly ... such a rip off indeed!)all n all, if people want to make porn but they're not sure if it will sell as much as a big screen adventure movie mixed with some low grade nude scenes and cheap sex, take my advice: quit doing both if you're as untalented as the one who made this movie and think of more secure daytime job or something! (how 'bout an associate position in one of Amazon's warehouses?)
Scott LeBrun
Superstar athlete Jim Brown plays Le Bras, one of many inmates at the notorious prison fortress Devil's Island in French Guiana in the early 20th century. He butts heads with pacifistic convict Davert (Christopher George) while also trying to deal with nasty and sadistic guards. When he gets the chance to make a break for it, he takes it, along with fellow prisoners Jo-Jo (Richard Ely), Dazzas (James Luisi), and a reluctant Davert. The four men make it to the mainland, with prison personnel, led by Major Marteau (Paul Richards), in hot pursuit.From then on, things get rather episodic as Le Bras and his comrades encounter lepers and Indians (not to mention a shark), and when they make it to a colourful community, Le Bras decides that he rather likes it there.Directed by veteran filmmaker William Witney for the Corman brothers, Roger and Gene, and filmed in Mexico, "I Escaped from Devil's Island" is passable entertainment. It's not strong on story; in fact, this story starts to get more incoherent as the movie goes on, but in terms of delivering exploitation, it does its job. There's gore aplenty as well as the requisite female nudity. There's some socio-political subtext, but it never gets in the way of the admittedly lurid thrills. The photography, by Rosalio Solano, is just gorgeous, and Les Baxter composes a flavourful and fun music score. The acting is decent from our principals; Brown is commanding as usual, he and George act well together, and Richards and especially Richard Rust make for a very effective pair of thoroughly disagreeable villains.Overall this is pretty easy to forget but it kills time in an entertaining enough manner.Six out of 10.
Theo Robertson
I saw this way back in 1983 when it was shown late one night on television , and I`m talking network televison in those days you didn`t have satillite or cable at least not in Britain where we were confined to a total of 4 channels. And the most shocking thing was that it contained very strong language , back then very very few films shown on television had swearing left intact but here it was untouched which was amazing when nearly every sentence contains the word " F*** " though much of the gore and gay sex seems to have been edited ( And badly edited at that ) for transmission especially a shark attack scene where it cuts to a shark fin then cuts to a man waving his bloody stump at the camera then cuts to a couple of fingers floating about the water , very strange and I ESCAPED FROM DEVILS ISLAND also has that low budget production value feel seen so often in video nasties that I can`t help feel that it in unedited form it would would be classed as a video nasty .Despite its flaws it`s a lot of fun , I can put my hand on heart and say I enjoyed it far more than PAPILLION and we get to see a sadistic guard who calls homosexuals bad names while twisting their nipples . Can`t get more sadistic than that
kool-j
Not a totally wretched film, as I had expected, but pretty boring nonetheless. Should actually be "We escaped..." since its Jim Brown, Christopher George, and a couple others that do escape [no spoiler, it happens, without incident in the first 30 minutes]. And what I really mean by that is that its difficult to tell [until the bitter end] who the focal character was. Has some interesting Marxist/Communist subplot, that gets buried under the rug after they escape. Let's see...you also get a really disappointing Shark attack, a leper colony cameo, Jim Brown falls in love[!] and an exotica Les Baxter score! Looks like it was filmed in Mexico by the Cormans.So basically, the title gives it all away. Interestingly enough, check out director William Witney's career! Geez! and Darktown Stutters!!! Well, why couldnt he have made this that fun?? I escaped from Colonel Sander's Chicken Fryer?!?!
AD
