FILM REVIEW - TOWER OF EVIL (1972)
Region 1 DVD cover
Region 2 DVD cover ** This review contains plot spoilers**
Four American teenagers called Mae (Seretta Wilson), Gary (John Hamil), Des (Robin Askwith) and Penny (Cadace Glendenning) decide to spend the weekend in an abandoned lighthouse on Snape Island. During the night Mae Gary and Des are brutally murdered by a homicidal maniac leaving Penny in a severe state of shock, which leads her to kill an elderly fisherman called John Gurney (George Coulouris) who stumbles across the bodies of her friends. Four archeologists, Adam (Mark Edwards), Rose (Jill Haworth), Dan (Derek Fowlds) and Nora (Anna Palk) become very interested in the island since one of the kids was killed by being impaled with a solid gold Phoenician spear, which leads them to believe that Snape Island's caves are filled with similar treasures. They are accompanied on their trip by an American private eye called Brent (Bryant Haliday) whom has been hired by Penny's parents to look for evidence that their daughter did not kill her three friends since the British police are convinced of her guilt. In addition, John Gurney's son, Hamp (Jack Watson), agrees to take them over on his boat since nobody else will due to the island's bad name and the latter's nephew, a young drifter called Brom (Gary Hamilton) also comes along for the ride. It becomes apparent that they are not alone on the island and after their boat and radio are destroyed in mysterious circumstances, they will have to face the fiend who butchered the kids alone!
A disappointingly tedious and trashy slasher flick which starts off in quite lively fashion with three particuarly grisly murders including being impaled with a spear. Despite the all too obvious fake gore (the kind of thing that the Hammer factory used to such profitable effect) , director Jim O' Connolly cranks up the suspense to a hair-raising level and one thinks that this looks set to be pretty good. Unfortunately, once the action shifts to the arrival of the four archeologists, it all falls apart pretty rapidly since none of these heroes and heroines are very likeable so it is extremely difficult to sympathise with their plight. The four are both married couples but both men are having affairs with their respective wives and all we get as they mill around the island looking for treasure and frequently looking over their shoulders fearing that some mad man is about to jump out of the rocks and carve em up is the two women exchanging bitchy insults whilst smoking pot and blithering on about their sex starved relationships. The script tries to engage our attention by the addition of a sub plot involving the fisherman Hamp's family, which has a skeleton in the closet - the madman stalking the island is his brother whose wife took him out to live on Snape so that the authorities would not put him into an institution. But ever since her death, he has been roaming around the island isolated and lonely. Alas, it has been so poorly developed and indifferently acted that one could not care less about that or anything else. Interestingly, George Coulouris who appears very briefly as an ill-fated fisherman was in Casablanca and ace-cameraman Desmond Dickinson shot Laurence Olivier's version of Hamlet, which makes one regret that some of the top talent here got involved with such a low grade movie like this.
Four American teenagers called Mae (Seretta Wilson), Gary (John Hamil), Des (Robin Askwith) and Penny (Cadace Glendenning) decide to spend the weekend in an abandoned lighthouse on Snape Island. During the night Mae Gary and Des are brutally murdered by a homicidal maniac leaving Penny in a severe state of shock, which leads her to kill an elderly fisherman called John Gurney (George Coulouris) who stumbles across the bodies of her friends. Four archeologists, Adam (Mark Edwards), Rose (Jill Haworth), Dan (Derek Fowlds) and Nora (Anna Palk) become very interested in the island since one of the kids was killed by being impaled with a solid gold Phoenician spear, which leads them to believe that Snape Island's caves are filled with similar treasures. They are accompanied on their trip by an American private eye called Brent (Bryant Haliday) whom has been hired by Penny's parents to look for evidence that their daughter did not kill her three friends since the British police are convinced of her guilt. In addition, John Gurney's son, Hamp (Jack Watson), agrees to take them over on his boat since nobody else will due to the island's bad name and the latter's nephew, a young drifter called Brom (Gary Hamilton) also comes along for the ride. It becomes apparent that they are not alone on the island and after their boat and radio are destroyed in mysterious circumstances, they will have to face the fiend who butchered the kids alone!
A disappointingly tedious and trashy slasher flick which starts off in quite lively fashion with three particuarly grisly murders including being impaled with a spear. Despite the all too obvious fake gore (the kind of thing that the Hammer factory used to such profitable effect) , director Jim O' Connolly cranks up the suspense to a hair-raising level and one thinks that this looks set to be pretty good. Unfortunately, once the action shifts to the arrival of the four archeologists, it all falls apart pretty rapidly since none of these heroes and heroines are very likeable so it is extremely difficult to sympathise with their plight. The four are both married couples but both men are having affairs with their respective wives and all we get as they mill around the island looking for treasure and frequently looking over their shoulders fearing that some mad man is about to jump out of the rocks and carve em up is the two women exchanging bitchy insults whilst smoking pot and blithering on about their sex starved relationships. The script tries to engage our attention by the addition of a sub plot involving the fisherman Hamp's family, which has a skeleton in the closet - the madman stalking the island is his brother whose wife took him out to live on Snape so that the authorities would not put him into an institution. But ever since her death, he has been roaming around the island isolated and lonely. Alas, it has been so poorly developed and indifferently acted that one could not care less about that or anything else. Interestingly, George Coulouris who appears very briefly as an ill-fated fisherman was in Casablanca and ace-cameraman Desmond Dickinson shot Laurence Olivier's version of Hamlet, which makes one regret that some of the top talent here got involved with such a low grade movie like this.
posted by Michael Harris | 4:52 pm
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