Cinema: Deep-Sixed

THE ISLAND

Directed by Michael Ritchie

Screenplay by Peter Benchley

The temptation in describing a film like this one is to string together several adjectives—witless, ugly, brutal, insensate, stupid. But one word will serve to cover its multitude of sins: The Island is simply vile.

Peter Benchley has adapted his soft core sadomasochistic novel, which offers an explanation for all those ships that supposedly disappear in the Bermuda Triangle. He suggests that on one of the out islands is an entirely unmerry band of buccaneers, living by a squalid code unchanged since their ancestors washed up there a couple of centuries ago. It is they...

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