Woodyanders Nothing quite oozes pure undiluted machismo like a down'n'dirty low-budget guys in prison picture. Jim Brown hits it out of the ballpark with his resolutely rugged portrayal of the tough and determined Le Bras, who concocts a desperate plan to escape from the hellish penal colony Devil's Island. Christopher George likewise registers strongly as outspoken pacifist inmate Davert. Director William Whitney and writer Richard DeLong Adams bring an admittedly crude, yet undeniably effective and entertaining kitchen sink pulpy trash sensibility to the gripping premise: Besides the graphic and unflinching depiction of the brutal conditions of life in prison, we also have lots of rough'n'ready violence, a satisfying serving of tasty bare female skin, and more than enough deliciously cheap thrills that include sharks, lepers, a run-in with a tribe of savage natives (Brown even gets it on with a hot native gal!), and relentless pursuit from the police led by the vicious Major Marteau (a nicely slimy turn by Paul Richards). Richard Rust makes for a perfectly hateful villain as sadistic guard Sergeant Zamora while Richard Ely amuses as fey gay thief Jo-Jo. Rosalio Solano's proficient cinematography vividly captures the beautiful scenery. Les Baxter's robust score does the rousing trick. Sure, it's pretty raw and anything but subtle, yet it covers all the pleasingly scrappy dimestore drive-in cinema bases just the same.

Michael_Elliott I Escaped from Devil's Island (1973)** (out of 4)This exploitation film from Roger and Gene Corman beat PAPILLON to theaters by a month and features Jim Brown and Christopher George playing prisoners on Devils Island who plan an escape to get away from the sadistic guards. They duo end up on an island with many beautiful women but soon enough the prison guards come calling. I ESCAPED FROM DEVIL'S ISLAND is somewhat entertaining for the fifty-minutes or so but once we're out of the prison things really slow down and the second half of the film is a major chore to sit through. Veteran director William Witney does a pretty good job at making this low-budget film look like it had higher production values than you know it had. The first portion of the film inside the prison features all sorts of silly violence dealing with the prisoners being beaten, thrown in the hot box and various other items that we've seen in countless prison movies. This remains somewhat fun as both Brown and George are such enjoyable actors that you can get caught up with them and this helps the film move a little bit. Fans of the two actors will probably want to sit through this even though the end result isn't as good as you're going to hope. Brown has no problems playing the tough guy and there's plenty of action built around him. George plays a political prisoner who is against violence and the two actors really work well together and build up some nice chemistry. The problem in the second half of the film is simply the fact that nothing entertaining happens. We see the men fight, argue, fight some more and it just grows tiresome after a while. The exploitation level really needed to be pumped up in the second half as did the energy because the film pretty much just runs out of gas.

Theo Robertson I saw this way back in 1983 when it was shown late one night on television , and I`m talking network televison in those days you didn`t have satillite or cable at least not in Britain where we were confined to a total of 4 channels. And the most shocking thing was that it contained very strong language , back then very very few films shown on television had swearing left intact but here it was untouched which was amazing when nearly every sentence contains the word " F*** " though much of the gore and gay sex seems to have been edited ( And badly edited at that ) for transmission especially a shark attack scene where it cuts to a shark fin then cuts to a man waving his bloody stump at the camera then cuts to a couple of fingers floating about the water , very strange and I ESCAPED FROM DEVILS ISLAND also has that low budget production value feel seen so often in video nasties that I can`t help feel that it in unedited form it would would be classed as a video nasty .Despite its flaws it`s a lot of fun , I can put my hand on heart and say I enjoyed it far more than PAPILLION and we get to see a sadistic guard who calls homosexuals bad names while twisting their nipples . Can`t get more sadistic than that

kool-j Not a totally wretched film, as I had expected, but pretty boring nonetheless. Should actually be "We escaped..." since its Jim Brown, Christopher George, and a couple others that do escape [no spoiler, it happens, without incident in the first 30 minutes]. And what I really mean by that is that its difficult to tell [until the bitter end] who the focal character was. Has some interesting Marxist/Communist subplot, that gets buried under the rug after they escape. Let's see...you also get a really disappointing Shark attack, a leper colony cameo, Jim Brown falls in love[!] and an exotica Les Baxter score! Looks like it was filmed in Mexico by the Cormans.So basically, the title gives it all away. Interestingly enough, check out director William Witney's career! Geez! and Darktown Stutters!!! Well, why couldnt he have made this that fun?? I escaped from Colonel Sander's Chicken Fryer?!?!