Island of Lost Women (1959)

Best movie ever!

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

"Hell on Frisco Bay" director Frank Tuttle's final film "Island of Lost Women" was co-produced by actor Alan Ladd and written by "Teenage Monster" scenarist Ray Buffum from a story by Prescott Chaplin. Chaplin is best known for writing the W.C. Fields comedy "Never Give a Sucker an Even Break." "Island of Lost Women" appears to be inspired in part by William Shakespeare's "The Tempest." Instead of a shipwreck, the two protagonists wind up on the island when their aircraft develops engine problems. The people that they meet on the island have gone into voluntary exile, but the leader of this group wants nothing to do with outsiders. American radio commentator Mark Bradley (Jeff Richards of "Born Reckless") is being flown to a news conference in Melbourne, Australia, when one propeller of their twin-engined plane, piloted by Joe Walker (John Smith later of "Laramie"), malfunctions, and Walker makes an emergency landing on an uncharted island in the Pacific. These guys have been working together for five years and what they are about to encounter is the most bizarre experience of their association. Moments before they land, our heroes hear a warning broadcast to them to dissuade them from landing. Left with no alternative but to land, Walker manages adroitly to put the plane down on the beach without it cracking up. A distinguished gentleman in casual apparel, Dr. Paul Lujan (Alan Napier of "Batman"), approaches them and brusquely inquires how quickly they can repair their aircraft.Watching nearby from the foliage are his lovely daughters: Venus (Venetia Stevenson of "Darby's Rangers"), Mercuria (June Blair of "Hell Bound") and sixteen-year-old Urana (Diane Jergens of "Teenage Rebel"), who have never seen any men other than their father. We learn later that Paul's wife died on the island. Walker discovers their host's identity when he is gathering eggs for their supper. He finds his name stenciled on a slat from a packing crate: Dr. Paul Lujan, California Institute. A cynical and disillusioned atomic scientist who is "one of the leading authorities on nuclear fission in the world," Lujan explains to Mark that his wife and he forsook civilization fifteen years ago and sought the haven of an island with their three small children after the attack on Hiroshima. Lujan never believed the Allies would have deployed the bomb. He thought it would be used only as a threat. Bradley takes a walk with Venus and they talk about his work. Urana shows up to bring Venus home and asks her has Bradley kissed her yet. Dr. Lujan furnishes our heroes with pillows and bedding to sleep on the beach. While Walker had tried to extend their stay with additional repairs, Bradley wants him now to speed up things because he senses a scoop in their serendipitous encounter on the island. The following morning, our heroes confront Dr. Lujan with his identity, and he allows them the chance to leave, but Bradley is determined to exploit the opportunity. Now, in a drastic change from his earlier graciousness, Lujan promises them that they shall never leave the island if they don't agree to never mention its location. Again, Bradley refuses to accept Lujan's ultimatum. The scientist brandishes a flame-throwing automatic pistol and destroys their plane.This doesn't keep Bradley and Walker from commencing work on a raft with Venus and Mercuria providing them with tools. Before long, Urana creates trouble of her own when she becomes infatuated with Bradley. Our heroes have built a raft, but Bradley refuses to take Venus with her. Urana eavesdrops on their conversation and informs on them to her father. Eventually, Lujan takes Walker prisoner in his storage shed. Urana finds her father's flame-throwing pistol and they struggled over it. Accidentally, they fire it and a blaze erupts in Lujan's laboratory. Trying to release Walker from confinement, Lujan is thwarted when a shelf above the door collapses and knocks him semi-conscious. Bradley rushes it as the daughters carry their father to safety and rescue his pardner. Earlier, Lujan had shown Mark his process for forging a special isotope from uranium in his small laboratory reactor. The heat from the blaze triggers a reaction. Our heroes, the girls, and Dr. Lujan survive an atomic blast. At fadeout, an air/send rescue plane is flying all six of them back to civilization.Director Frank Tuttle doesn't have much to work with, but he keeps the action moving briskly in this black and white, 71-minute opus. Alan Napier is ideally cast as the mad scientist who believes that civilization is like a snowball that grows bigger as it rolls along toward extinction. Jeff Richards and John Smith are feisty young bulls. One scene shows them in their swim trunks about a dip in the ocean. Later, Bradley saves Venus from a shark. The shark that Richards kills is hilariously limp. Of course, the girls are all gorgeous. Production values seem above-average as this is a Warner Brothers' release. The uncharted island with atomic energy must have been a stretch in those days. "Island of Lost Women" was obviously used to pack theaters. Routine and competent best describes it.

ISLAND OF LOST WOMEN – 1959This low budget film seems to have been a make work project for several of Alan Ladd's friends. Produced by Ladd's "Jaguar Productions", it employs veteran director Frank Tuttle and cinematographer John F.Seitz. Tuttle directed Ladd in his breakout role, THIS GUN FOR HIRE and worked with Ladd on several other films. Director of photography Seitz was the cinematographer on an even two dozen Ladd films. Anyways, to get back to the film, a couple of men, pilot, John Smith and reporter, Jeff Richards, are lost. They were flying to Australia in a small two engine aircraft. They ran into a storm and were thrown off course. Now they are having trouble with the aircraft and are running low on fuel.They see an island and head for it. Suddenly a voice booms out of their radio, "Turn back, do not land!" Smith and Richards though have no choice and land the aircraft on the beach. While taking a quick look around, the pair are approached by a man. The fellow, Alan Napier tells them to take off as it is a private island. After a few words are exchanged, Richards and Smith promise to leave as soon as they repair the aircraft. Now out of the jungle pop three babes in short shirts. The girls, Venetia Stevenson, June Blair and Diane Jergens are the daughters of Napier.The boys, Smith and Richards are invited back to Napier's underground home for dinner. Reporter Richards soon gets the story of who these people are. Napier was an atomic science specialist who had worked on the Manhattan Project. After seeing the power of the bomb, he had grabbed his wife and three small daughters and vanished. He had then set up a lab and a home for them on this uncharted island. The wife has since died and the daughters are now grown up. Needless to say they have never seen a man other than their father, Napier. Napier now decides it would be better if the two men stayed, so he destroys their aircraft. He does not want word of his location known.Needless to say, the girls fall for the two lugs. They now plan on building a raft and leaving the island. Of course the girls also want to see the outside world. The very world Napier wants to shield them from.Napier has managed to build himself an atomic reactor on the Island. Of course there is now an accident which causes an overload. Everyone scurries down to the beach and hides behind a few rocks. BOOM! (Thank goodness for those rocks shielding them from the radioactive dust) The government notices the blast and send aircraft to investigate. Everyone is rescued and returned to civilization. This film is nowhere near as bad as I make it sound. It does have that certain charm that some of these low budget quickies have. The look of the film is quite good, which it should be with Tuttle and Seitz handling the camera-work. All in all, it will kill a rainy day when you have an hour and bit to kill. Miss Stevenson was the daughter of actress Anna Lee and director Robert Stevenson. Noir fans know Stevenson as the director of, TO THE ENDS OF THE EARTH, THE WOMAN ON PIER 13, WALK SOFTLY STRANGER and LAS VEGAS STORY.

Frank Tuttle who was a contract director at Paramount and most famous for This Gun For Hire ended his directorial career on a sad note. A blacklist victim, Tuttle's last film was Island Of Lost Women. It should be added that their dad was with them.In fact Alan Napier who is the dad is responsible for building an island paradise for his three daughters who since the mid 40s have been growing up and filling out quite nicely. The daughters are Venetia Stevenson, Diane Jergens, and June Blair. Like Anne Francis in Forbidden Planet they've been educated in a lot of areas except the facts of life, no avenues for practical experience and home work.Into their lives come Jeff Richards and John Smith, a pair of healthy American males who get themselves lost when their plane conks out and they land on the beach. Even with those three girls for company, Alan Napier doesn't want them around. Napier was a nuclear scientist who saw the world destructing itself and he was going to get away from it all. He's even developed workable and practical solar energy and what we wouldn't give to have that about now.The story was kind of dumb even a smart guy like Napier couldn't keep those daughters of his from getting curious about the world. Special effects were laughable, especially with Jeff Richards knife in hand wrestling with a rubber shark. Paradise does come to an end in Island Of Lost Women and not to soon.

This movie is one of the B&W semi-horror films of the 50's and early 60's. Granted, the premise is totally absurd.....2 hunka hunka's running around an island with 3 babe-a-licious honeys and not one case of hanky-panky? The guys seemed more interested in each other and themselves -- swimming in those horrid 1950's spandex trunks (is that a potato in your swimwear or are you just happy to see me?), rubbing lotion on each other's backs, reminiscing about close friendships, --- hmmm --- maybe this should have been called "BROKEBACK ISLAND?" I liked the movie although it is totally predictable. I DID keep waiting for Godzilla or some other camera enlarged creature to come around and scare the swimwear off the guys, (looks like the girls would have defended the island against the killer beast while the boys were screaming little pansies scampering off into the forest), but no monster. Heck, enjoy it for what it's worth, a piece of B&W film history.