every movie ever made, in alphabetical order
(we’re in the I’s, with anti-alphabetical cheats)

Island Trader (1982)

This is a very dull Australian movie shot on video, with music that sounds like a long elevator ride.

A kid finds a small plane crash, and bad guys come chasing after the gold bullion they’d been smuggling on the plane, which eventually has them chasing the kid. There’s also a shark attack presented so un-cinematically that if you happen to yawn at the wrong moment you’ll miss it.

Yawning is a natural response to this.

Verdict: BIG NO.

♦ ♦ ♦

Islands of Fire (1955)

This is a short documentary, lavishly restored so it looks brand new, but I’m scratching my head.

At the beginning, translated text on screen tells us about Stromboli, a volcanic island that’s being evacuated because it’s “a menace to man.” What we’re shown doesn’t look like an evacuation, though.

Peasants and fishermen go about their lives, working and making dinner and playing with the kids. Sometimes there’s singing, but it’s off-camera, lyrics in Italian without subtitles. Nobody’s packing or leaving, but some folks look toward Stromboli, thoughtfully — and who doesn’t like a fresh steaming stromboli?

At the end of the film, an intertitle announces, “This documentary was filmed during the eruptions of December 1954.” OK. We’ve seen a few images of a volcano simmering, but the volcano shots can’t total even 90 seconds. The rest of this is fairly standard ‘village’ imagery —pleasant enough, but nothing you haven’t seen before.

Nice restoration, though. Very crisp photography of poor folks going about their business in the ’50s.

Verdict: MAYBE.

♦ ♦ ♦

Isle of the Snake People (1971)
a/k/a Snake People

Here’s a hopelessly un-scary horror movie, of voodoo and temperance and Boris Karloff getting his final paycheck (this was his last film, released posthumously). Karloff is actually pretty good, but the rest of the movie wanders aimlessly and pointlessly.

Screenplay by Jack Hill (Foxy Brown, Spider Baby).

Verdict: NO.

♦ ♦ ♦

The Collapse (2019)

This is a European mini-series, never released in America. It’s ominous and compelling from the first moments, tension and drama all the way, and it feels more like a movie than a teevee show.

Each episode stands alone, with different characters, and no over-arching story except the very rapid descent of man. Eight episodes, twenty minutes each, filmed in one continuous shot. It adds up to about 2½ hours — movie length, and easily watchable in one sitting. I couldn’t turn it off.

True to my expectations for how the end will actually begin, the grocery stores go down first, so the opening episode is set in a store. Lights are flickering, shelves are nearly empty, and debit and credit cards aren’t reliably working. Most people think it’s just “supply issues,” but some are wondering whether it’s something more ominous.

Spoiler: It’s something more ominous.

Other episodes are set at a gas station as the pumps go dry, a safe hideaway where more newcomers come than can be accommodated, etc. My favorite ep has a rich, well-connected asswipe more and more panicked, as he rushes to the airport for his hoped-for emergency escape.

The fifth episode centers on a power plant, and it’s the best distillation I’ve seen of one of my long-running worries: Nuclear reactors require constant, reliable sources of water, electricity, and technical expertise, none of which will be in ample supply come the collapse.

The hardest kick-in-the-gut is the episode set in a nursing home, where one young worker remains after all the others have fled. Whatever was his original job, now he does everything — cooks meals, administers meds, empties the residents’ bedpans, etc. But it’s been 50 days since the lights went out, and provisions and meds are almost gone…

Collapse is about people trying to survive without a civilization, but makes no effort to explain what went wrong, what triggered all this hell, until the final episode pulls a surprising loop-de-loop. Each episode has taken place a few more days after the collapse, but the finale is set the day before the first episode, and we watch a late, all too familiar effort to warn the world about what’s coming.

And it is coming. The only question is when, not if, and the answer is soon.

Verdict: BIG YES.

♦ ♦ ♦

Lights Out (2016)
and Lights Out (2012)

Horror is where many filmmakers start, because we’re all afraid of the dark, and movies can do darkness real cheap. My guess is that Lights Out was made with a low- to low-mid budget, since it has no stars familiar to me, and minimal effects. It’s the first feature from David F Sandberg, based on a short film he’d made a few years earlier.

The main special effect and goose bump factor is that there’s something’s in the dark, that isn’t there when the lights come back on. Which doesn’t sound like much to build a movie around, and it’s not, but as written by Eric Heisserer (Arrival), it’s enough.

Rebecca is the big sister, 25 or so, out on her own and unwilling to truly connect with her boyfriend. Martin is her much younger brother, maybe 10, being raised by their mother, who’s believably unbalanced and likes spending time with Diana, who’s been dead for years.

They’re all just people (well, except Diana), but they’re written and acted as real, not merely lines to drive the plot, and unlike many horror movies, none of them do anything stupid. It adds up to a scary movie that’s actually scary — imagine that!

I enjoyed it so much, I promptly sought out and watched out the original short, made four years earlier. In barely 2½ minutes and only one scene, it efficiently and effectively conveys the same concept and delivers the goose bumps, without the feature film’s plot.

Verdict: YES for the feature, and YES for the short.

11/5/2025

Logo illustration by Jeff Meyer. No talking once the lights dim, and only real butter on the popcorn, not that fake yellow stuff.

Neverending Film Festival

itsdougholland.com
← PREVIOUS           NEXT →