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UNKNOWN ISLAND (1948) this is the only film released by the Albert Jay Cohen Productions according to IMDB and with good reason.
We start off with rich girl Carole Lane (Virginia Grey) and war vet turned explorer guy, Ted Osborne (Phillip Reed) who is in the know about a strange island he was on in the war. The go to a seedy bar in Singapore to charter a boat to take them to an mysterious unknown island, (Hey, didn't they do this bit in King Kong?) oh well, they meet up with feisty Capt and crew after a little more mysterious talk, but as luck would have it the Capt had heard tales of this mysterious unknown island. After showing the Capt a photo, which appeared to have a hand drawn dinosaur on it he agrees to take them there. So off they go ... cue the stock footage of a boat and cut!
Aboard the Pelican (The Boat) our cast of misfits are developed only slightly more. Fairbanks (Richard Denning), who would never go back to the god forsaken places again, is on board headed to the island after being Shanghaied in the bar and is now making eyes at our only female cast member Carole. Ok she kind of hot in a 1948 kind of way ... cue the love triangle between Carole, Fairbanks and Ted.
Well after a long voyage and the South Pacific native crew members (Who look oddly American with dark make up on.) are worried about the island and revolt along with a lot of meaningless dialog and a couple of fight scenes and some killin's soon as this is over and the natives are tamed, we arrive at the unknown island! Hey are those Brontosauruses? Is this Jurassic Park? No can't be there to lifeless and mechanical, truly awed and amazed our cast of clown are they set up camp. Out on adventure they spy with their little eye something that looked dinosaur-ish, well it's a giant lizard puppet or muppet-soraus or something with a back sail and pointy things sticking out of it, everybody scream!
So we get away and our adventure continues and what else do we find! Right! T-Rex's, but not just one, but several in the bone yard of their feeding ground. Now, I haven't seen dinosaurs this bad since "The Might Gorga" and "One Million AC/DC" oddly this 1948 feature is films is glorious Cinecolor, it would seem the budget all went to the purchase of film and not quality Dinosaur costumes, as the what could be call T Rex's lumbers painfully around it was more than obvious that there where nothing more than ill fitted suits that appeared the actor inside would topple at any moment. Along the way our crew encounters a giant ape/sloth/monkey/monster thing that growls and snarls and shakes limbs of trees and bushes. Be afraid, be very afraid as this critter actual looks like it poses a threat.
Ok long story short, more meaningless dialog, more fighting over the only girl, more back screen photography, more killing and deaths and we come to the climatic battle of giant ape/sloth/monkey/monster thing vs the T-Rex, let's get ready to RUMBLEEEEEeeeee!

So who wins the battle? Who wins the girl? Who dies? Do they get off the unknown island? Will there be a squeal? Guess you'll have to watch it to find out.

Over all it's a  :thumbup: :thumbup: 2 out of five.

Not bad I've seen worse, but I've seen better. Would be fun with the kids as nobody will be scared.

What did I learn form this film? Anything?
Not much, but
Don't waste all your money on color film, save a little of F/X stuff.
Have a script, scripts are good.
Virginia Grey was pretty hot in 1948.
Foam rubber, man suit dinosaurs are not very scary.
Natives are always the first to be eaten.

The DVD is a decent copy of the film, no extras just chapter search.

Great review of one of my favorites!  :thumbup:

the most amazing thing I learned from this one was that unlike their modern-day peaceful, lazy, vegan ancestors, prehistoric sloths were giant vicious carnivores that ate everything in sight, including T-Rexes!

One of the best, if not the best, "Guy in a Giant Sloth Suit" movies around. FYI that's the ever reliable Ray "Crash" Corrigan as the sloth monster. He reportedly modified his own gorilla suit to make the sloth costume.



According to Guilty Pleasures of Horror Movies, while filming the dinosaur herd scenes under those hot Cinecolor lights  one of the dino-actors got over-heated. With the camera rolling he passed out and fell over in his costume. They thought it looked so great they left it in the final print of the movie.

Is this the one where the guy who starts off with the woman loses her to the more brave, manly dude...and just sheepishly accepts it without even fighting for her?

SEMI SPOILER TO THIS EPIC MASTERPIECE >>>

Yeah the voice over talks about how he's more interested in photographing the ooooh scary dino's than getting in Miss Things britches. So she Fairbank's who was shanghaied in the bar ends up with the girl even though some of the other crew makes some moves on her resulting in fights and killing.

Ah HAH! I thought that looked unplanned. Thanks for the confirm, dude.
A promising riff fest, i do say.